as "ripa" mentioned, throttle, hat and 4 buttons do work well simultaneously in dosbox with any usb-joystick connected. but in contrast to "descent" the majority of games with advanced joystick support (FCS or Flightstick) lack support of one of these features. i think this has one of the following reasons (please correct my assumptions if they are wrong):
Thrustmaster.) In some titles throttle does not work because dosbox is not able to simulate the supporting WCS device. some games seem to completely ignore the X/Y-axis of the 2nd joystick which dosbox simulates for the FCS, because the game is looking for the WCS throttle-axis.
CH.) Some games do not support a Flightstick Pro, but only the Flightstick. This joystick does not have a hat, so do not expect any hat-support for these games. But even if the game supports explicitly a flightstick pro like "armored fist" does, hat works but throttle won't. Other examples are "comanche" or "F-15 III", here booth hat and throttle work (if you switch the 2nd x- and y-axis if i remember correct) but you get only 2 buttons in these titles ;-(
So if you don't want to map joystick- to keyboard-events with the dosbox mapper (CTRL-F1), playing simulations isn't currently very fun because of these joystick problems. maybe some future dosbox versions will tackle this problems.