If you mean beta access for preorders, there hasn't been a date announced. The beta itself you could probably play until release



The learning curve isn't that great. There are some advanced features that aren't documented in beta that you can pick up by digging around the forums and asking questions, but the basics of the game make it pretty easy to jump into. The ingame tutorial is currently somewhat lacking because the game is still changing and it makes no sense to spend effort on a complete tutorial that would not be final.



To be completely honest, unless you are planning on playing MP games, you will probably get bored of fighting the AI as it is currently. If you don't have more than an hour or two a day to play, the AI in single player can last you a while, but as with the tutorial above since the game is still changing the AI for the beta has taken the back seat since all the features need to be final before creating the best AI. MP games, though, are quite fun and with beta 4 games are not difficult to find



It actually shouldn't take long at all to download. Maybe 2 hours, max, though I imagine you can get it done in about an hour, recalling the last time I downloaded.

Should be decent.



"Easy to learn, hard to master". There are several poorly documented features, but you should pick it up quickly enough, especially online.

YES!

This game is fun, even in its beta state, and its more stable than most released games. Not to mention more fun!

That said, you also get to help shape the game -- I have fun hunting down bugs and helping the devs fix them, you may too.

I generally use a static view angle, but one of the huge benefits of the current UI is that it uses infinite zoom -- you can zoom out to view the entire map, or in to watch a single window on a capitol ship (not that I recommend doing the later... the models aren't that interesting )

That said, you can rotate and adjust the camera to your hearts content, as well as zoom in and out and pan.

see you in the game lobby

Since when are you lurking in the game lobby, Craig?

I most definitely do. Several actually

Like that would happen...

*lordkosc secretly creates his smurf account, so that when he is beaten by a n00b that has only owned the full version of the game for 1 day , he won't feel as bad*

Why would a developer be so fantastic at his own game anyway? They hardly get any time to play the game.