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Just posted a review of the new version of the Firestorm Armada rules on my blog:

http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2012/07/21/firestorm-armada-hardback-edition-review/

What do you guys think of the new rules? Have you had a chance to play them yet?

I heard so many things on the forums that bothered me about the new book that I'm going to pass on picking it up.(mainly the seeming lack of a compilation of everything that was/is posted in their download section.) Our group hardly plays anymore anyway so I'll spend that rulebook money on something else.

I'm waiting for the Campaign Book to come out. I like the game but it feels a bit stale due to the lacking missions / scenarios / campaigns. Once the new Campaign book is out hopefully that will re energise the game for me.

The new rules are a nearly untested Beta cluster fu@#
You need the 15+ pages of errata and officially answered questions to play it. If you've played Firestorm before, prepare yourself for all the new limitations that are imposed and many of the now removed options you had from version 1.

Interesting...what options were removed? I didn't notice any being taken away when I read through the new book, but it has been a couple of years since I played FA. I keep seeing comments to the effect that the new book is seriously flawed, but honestly it just didn't seem that bad to me. This might just be because I haven't played the rules yet.

You can no longer intercept worth a damned, only Fighters and Interceptors can intercept and you can no longer intercept ships.
You can no longer split fire against ships in a squadron with wings/flights, you can only attack a single ship with a flight.
You can no longer split your flight up to attack multiple squadrons/mines/flights, it's now all or nothing.
You can no longer make wing activations on the turn they launch. Now you have to wait an entire turn before wings can move after they carrier has launched them.
You can no longer launch more than one flight at once. Say you have a carrier with bombers and fighters onboard, in the Version 1 rules you could launch both at once during your Carrier's activation. Now you can only launch one or the other per turn.
You can no longer land and re-group flights on a carrier. In the Version 1 rules if you had two flights of the same type of wing that had lost some from each you could land both on a carrier (large enough to hold them all) and you could re-launch them as a single larger Flight. Not anymore in the new rules.
Tactics Points have been removed. Instead you get the single Star Admiral and his special abilities which IMHO are a poor alternative to Tactics Points.
Ram has been removed as an option.
You no longer have the option of using Escape Pods. (While optional it was a fun option that made the game I tried them in interesting.)
Ships can no longer start the game/deploy with Cut Engines status/token. (which really screws Destroyers)
Ship squadrons can't even defend themselves against wings anymore under the new Point Defense rules. A squad of three cruisers have no hope at all of driving off a maximum sized (6 wings) bomber flight, you're just gonna get hit. At best you could roll all sixes and destroy all but one, but the odds of that are iffy at best.
Ship and wing construction rules have been removed.
You no longer get double points for boarding and capturing a ship. Now boarding has simplified to a single turn event and instead of capture, the ship is just destroyed for regular victory point value.
There was about half a dozen more things but Spartan actually fixed them in the Errata.

Other issues:
The Errata I mentioned contains more than half a dozen major rules re-writes and corrections. There are serious differences to how the game plays with the book and with the errata rules included.
The Errata also goes a loooong way towards better explaining the rules in the book, some sections of which had enough details were left out that like above radically changes game play.

The new book may be pretty and full of good Fluff and tips on model assembly and painting, but the rules are basically untested Beta material and rules ported in from Dystopian Wars with no modifications to make them fit smoothly into Firestorm Armada

Ah, thanks for the rundown. I can't help but notice most of the changes you mention center on the attack craft rules, though. To me, when I read the changes in the new rule book it struck me as a vast improvement; my biggest issue with the first edition rules was that the attack craft rules in general and the interception rules in particular slowed down and complicated the game a lot. So, I see it as needed streamlining, instead of removing options, but YMMV.

Looks like I will have to make sure I have the errata handy the next time I play FA!

I still don't like the fact that now that fighter-craft are now easyer to use, but you can do less with them. They've been pidegeon-holed into limited options.