Allegiance is another space simulator, and I played it sometimes this week : I found the multiplayer concept incredible : in each team, there is a commander that will give order to players, buy installations (miner to get cash, or r&d installations to get new weapons), order a bomb run, ...
And the other players fly space crafts : at the beginning, they fly scouts to explore the maps using jump nodes (these are called alephs or wormholes in this game) and deploy sensors that will inform the commander on what is going on. But they are able too to repair other units, and can take some hidden items in the maps that can help the technology improvement.
Then, when the map is fully explore, and when the commander got some technology, players can fly fighters and bombers to capture the opponent general quarters, or just destroy enemy miners and installations.
However the way of dogfighting - and the graphics - are very odd, and the weapons aren't as diversified as FSO (the same for fighters and bombers). In fact, I think that if this multiplayer concept could be bring into a kind of new type of multiplayer missions, combinated to the very great dogfights and graphics of FSO, it would be a really perfect space simulator.
Anyway, that's just a supposition : I imagine a multiplayer match where teams starts with an arcadia station, and then send stealth fighters to explore jump nodes, and 30 minutes later a gtva Collossus is being constructed to head to the enemy post.. ^^
