I'd hate to be responsible for any anxiety.
I will say that I am trying very hard to push for a paybeta for the holidays with an auto-update system so we can make rolling upgrades. The paybeta (or Prologue) is for those chaps kind hearted enough to support the completion effort and in return you get something to play with. Plus, come the full release (if you're not bored by it all already), you get to play with all the goodies from the gunnery range in the full version.
I need to make an announcement regarding what to expect with regard to features, this announcement will appear on the official site probably at the end of this month.
We have tentatively agreed to publish a roadmap and schedule regular updates once the Gunnery range is released, everyone will know when (approx) the next upgrade is coming and what it will contain.
Networking and multiplayer *won't* be active in the first release but will appear at some point in the Prologue for testing. The Hellfire missile system won't be available but will be the among the first major updates (major bugs permitting). Also speech assets are still missing with the exception of the avionics.
We have talked about adding a simple bare bones mission script system so you can knock up some challenges of your own, a simple text based script anyone can edit in Notepad. A full editor will be forthcoming. Some areas are a little rough and everything is subject to changes.
So with that big health warning, don't even consider if you can't live with unfinished software. If you just want to help, by all means. We get more funds this way than by you spending 20 dollars on a t-shirt for which we might see 2 dollars. Also remember we're just 2.5 people and this production was funded out of my own pocket and the teams (enormous) goodwill. Don't expect a AAA title from a 20 strong team with a 10 million dollar budget.
I signed the cheques, wrote the code, tweaked the shaders, designed the core systems, blogged about it for two years and published the damn thing. So if it's a load of rubbish then it's nothing to do with me. It's all Daves fault and he made me do it. *cough*