"1) How do you actually win online in the main battle arena? do you have to take over all of the enemy bases, just a percentage or is time limited or what ? "
Reduce one of the enemy countries to just 1 base. The country with the MOST bases will then "win" the "war". This means that there will be a "winner" country, a "loser" country, and the third country which neither wins nor loses.
"2) Can you get more than 1 person per bomber, it's pretty hard to fly and rotate through all of the gunners, can you get a friend to gun while you fly ? "
the .join command allows a player to join another player's plane. In the case of bombers this allows a player to act as a gunner onboard another player's bomber. This command works like this :
.join (name). EXAMPLE--if I wanted to join your plane, I would type the following:
.join jonbuf
Only one player can join another player's plane though, although this is definately enough in most cases.
"3) Is there a way of joining and just spectating another players aircraft cos I'm really bad at this game and thought to learn I could maybe just spectate someone (a pro) to see how it's done."
The .join command works for fighters as well as bombers. If you join a player who is in a fighter, you can watch what he does and how he flies. If he dies it will have no effect on you in scoring. ALWAYS ask a player before you use the .join command; it causes a message box to pop up on his screen which is a very very bad thing if he happenbs to be in a fight.
"4) Are there any small maps that I can use, say 3 bases per team so me and my friends can have quicker games? "
There are a number of small maps for use in H2H games available on various webpages (I think some of them are on the HTC links page). You can also make your own using the Aces High Terrain Editor.
Hope this info is helpful
J_A_B