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The inside of Land Battleship No. 2 probably looks like USS Eldridge post Philadelphia experiment considering that the crew literally melted from the heat
I'd say experiment. There's nothing wrong with "normal" controls, but you'll want to swap to expert at some point so you're able to control the plane better.
Modern AC has become incredibly easy so there's nothing to mess up or anything. The tech tree used to unlock new planes looks confusing at first, but there's no wrong way of going about it.
I suppose the core gameplay has changed since the PS1. You now have wingmen to command by ordering them to attack what's in front of you, find their own targets, or keep you covered from aggressive enemies. They don't do a whole lot though.
Planes also have upgrade parts now to fine tune them. What that really means is that everything is gimped compared to previous games, with upgrade parts just ungimping that specific attribute when equipped.
High-G turns let you turn much faster in exchange for bleeding more speed. You can pop a finite number of flares to ward off missiles. The games are more "cinematic" so expect to be flying around just waiting for dialogue to finish up sometimes.
I'm sure there's something important I forgot to mention, but really the only time the newer games are challenging is when you're fighting the newest fat-assed superplane for the first time and you're trying to figure out where the weakspot is without crashing as it Walmart power-scooters its way around the map.
Start at Elite difficulty and lower it if it's too hard. That way if it isn't, you'll unlock Ace difficulty when you beat the campaign the first time. The first difficult mission on a blind playthrough is probably mission 5, since you have to juggle two or three different areas of targets. If 5 ends up making you restart a few times, I'd lower difficulty to Veteran.
Thankfully their wiki figured it out for the both of us
Search and Rescue
When a player is shot down, an X mark appears on the map in their last known location while they respawn. If this mark is flown over by a player on their team, their respawn time is shortened.
Resupply Targets
Resupply targets occasionally appear in certain modes in the form of CH-47s and supply trucks. A player destroying one completely refills all ammo (including countermeasures) for that player's entire team.
The bombers will come in from the northeast corner of the map at pretty high altitude and speed. You can sprint away from the ships immediately, they won't bitch about you running ahead. From their entrance until the turns after the first bombing run they'll be faster than every plane except maybe a MiG-31 maxed out for top speed. The bombers will do a bit of an S-shaped turn after MLAAing Banker squadron, so if you can get the pattern down you can get an early window for damage before they start attacking the fleet. I think you need to be at 1100 meters before you can lock-on with missiles, but cannons can reach out to ~1500 meters without parts.
I had the FA-36 unlocked by the time I got to M15 on Ace, so I loaded up with top speed and anti-air SPW + gun parts and only took HPAAs. Bulk of the damage was probably guns, but the HPAAs can finish an engine pretty quick. If you can catch one on the entrance turn to get it smoking and match speed well enough after the first pass, you can kill both before the second pass. Once one goes down, the second will activate CIWS modules on both sides of the aircraft. Make sure you target those with standard MSLs/guns before firing more HPAAs at the engines. Just unload your gun whenever you think you might hit.
Matching speeds on their turns after the first bombing run can be tricky, they'll slow down to below 2000kph at their slowest so I overshot a couple times on my first attempt at S rank. I don't think the wingmen can do much against them. They might be able to target the bombers when you can even if they're beyond 1100 meters, but I'm not sure.
It slows down after its attack runs, the wings come out to signal this. I beat it first try on my first run through the game with the F/A-18F and 4AAMs, it wasn't that hard. If you set it up correctly, you can even catch them and kill them as soon as they become vulnerable after the first attack run.
It means PA is experimenting with cross game progression for Ace Combat Online. For supplies you have play Air Combat Mission 10 twenty five times in a row. For rescues you have to go back to Assault Horizon and save fifty allied players from enemies while in DFM. Submit for credit in the form of Xbox DVR footage.
though I was hoping regular ports of all the classics were on the way 
