Lets talk about gameplay. I played the preview beta zero for half an hour or so and was very impressed with what I saw at this point. Ships use physics based inertia with a fixed maximum speed. Beginners can fly around Wing Commander style with thrusters burning all the time while experts can strafe and shoot in directions other than the current heading. This is what we've needed all along in space shooters and should hopefully eliminate turning battles.
Every team has one commander who can give orders to players via a top down zoomed out screen.
Players can choose to accept these orders or not, but I predict the top squads will use this to good effect. If you setup your own server you can have, if I remember correctly, up to 32 players. Microsoft's servers should allow up to 100 players and they plan to host events as well as persistent rankings. We'll see in about half a year if it's worth it. Fighter Ace II is a subscription based massively multiplayer WW2 fighter simulation, similar to Air Warrior 3.