I heartily agree that AH2 really needs a better manual (no offence to the guys at HTC who have made an awesome game) to bring the newbie from log on to ace. The way I see it (and I've been writing technical documents for a few years), the user needs to have this information at hand. Information that would be useful, even critical to become successful at this game, is spread like shrapnel from one end of the internet to the other. It's very difficult to figure things out, like what the hell is a spawn point or how come I wipe out in a buff at the end of a runway (don't answer these, just e.g.).
I'm old school, I don't mind looking for things I'm interested in, but it can be off=putting sometimes if you need to log out of the game to figure something out. The forum is great, but you have to look for it (pull), it's not documentation per se (push).
Along with a Primer and a few quick ref cards (printable of course) for key commands, it might benefit HTC and the game to have a full-on handbook available with everything, and I mean everything, like even plane specs, performance data, maps, strategic and tactical concepts, all of it.
It might even be worthwhile to split the information up so as not to overwhelm newbs... I mean, you don't want to push strategy or base killing on them while they're still trying to learn how to land.
The more useful information that users have to hand about the game, the easier it is for them to be successful at it.
Then again, I think there are any number of trial signups that are looking for an arcade-style game, and those people will always be disappointed and leave, that's not what this is.
It might behoove HTC to have an arcade-style game for demo that would possibly entice new people, however I don't know that the investment of time and resources into AI and such would be worth the gamble.
