Can you explain what you mean by linearly? And what is stall dodging exactly?
Okay I replayed Luftrausers just to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass and basically I was merging two completely different nitpicks:
Gravity seem to works the same way, what's different is the plane acceleration: it's a little slower in Luftrausers which makes the plane more weighty and also makes it easier to move at slower speed, which to be fair is way more useful in Luftrausers' bullethell dogfight than in your game so it's probably better for what you're going for,
By stalling I meant just cutting off the engines while going upwards, you can still do it here but it doesn't help at all against the homing melee enemies while in Luftrausers it's an high risk maneuver that lets you aim better while still messing up the enemy tracking since you're constantly decelerating.
Sorry for the confusion, I was going by memory.
Bonus feedback: waves using a timer are kind of dull, a score requirement for advancing would be more fun.