This was probably one of the first (if not THE first) wargame that I ever purchased.

The basic game is good enough that even though I learned the intermediate and advanced rules (which added rules for altitude, relative speed of the aircraft, ammunition, fuel, etc.), I never found anyone willing to learn anything above the intermediate rules.

The good point about the game was that it was highly portable.

The bad point was that at anything above a 1 vs. 1 dogfight, the system quickly became bogged down and the appeal of the game (it's quick play) got thrown out the window.

One has to wonder about the rationale for grouping the aircraft the way they did, i.e. Handy Rotary, Powerhouse and Flying Machines. What aircraft the players flew didn't really become significant until one flew the intermediate and advanced games but in the handy rotary game, they painted themselves into a corner because of the fact that the Central Powers, through most of the war, used in-line engine craft...thus, the Handy Rotary series only had four available aircraft for the German player, all of which were only in service for a short period of time (the Fokker Dr. I, although it has become highly symbolic of the air war, was only used in small numbers and was withdrawn from service due to concerns about the robustness of its airframe) and which left certain Allied aircraft, i.e. Nieuport 11, 17, Sopwith Pup and Triplane with no real contemporaries to fight with. The Deluxe Edition of the game attempted to address this issue by adding the one of the early Fokker biplanes (Fokker D.III, I believe) into the game - however, this merely served to add another relatively obscure and not often used aircraft to the Central Powers livery.

You could always have the Allies flying rotary aircraft against a German flying a powerhouse aircraft. All of the game books are interchangeable and useable with each other - as long as you have a copy of both the rotary and the powerhouse games you're never forced to stick with the same system for both aircraft.

Your other criticism is valid though - it was hard to fly with more than two players. This was why I eventually transferred the game to a boardgame format. All the manoeuvres were based on a hex-grid system, so if you have a hex grid and counters (any hex-based WW1 air combat game can provide these - I used my old Richthofen's War game) you can figure out how the manoeuvres work on the hex grid and play Ace of Aces as a boardgame with multiple aircraft. In my view Ace of Aces, when played as a boardgame, is by far the best WW1 air combat boardgame, as it's simple and effective. I always found other WW1 air combat boardgames to be either too complicated or poorly designed.