Hello,
First time on the site and of course love what you've done with ANH. I have read your proposed changes and thoroughly agree with your ideas, though there are a few other issues you may want to consider:
(1) all of the imperial craft shoot GREEN laser bolts with the exception of the hand-held blasters. It would be more consistent for the AT-ATs to shoot green lasers as opposed to the Rebel-associated red lasers.
(2) when the asteroid chase first begins, there is a peanut shaped asteroid that has a small, mysterious explosion inside a crater that occurs for no reason right before the MF and Tie fighters come around the right side of it. This could be removed.
(3) as you stated before, it would be cool to see 4 or 5 star destroyers with blinking lights or no lights at all when Luke leaves Hoth to show further ships hit with the ion cannon clearing the path for the escaping rebels.
(4) it seems you agree that the less of the Wampa the better; I would excise the "munching" scene and the very silly "wailing" scene and keep it as close to the original as possible.
Other than the 2 issues above, it appears you have a very special edit in store and I look forward to its release. The real challenge is going to be editing JEDI into something far more serious to fit better with EMPIRE.
Thanks for all the hard work and effort,
Sincerly,
Christopher Seay