I’ve tried using a joystick with my left hand. Oh how I’ve tried!
One of those 3D controllers in the left hand for analogue strafe control and a mouse in the right hand is probably the best you can get.
Give me a button so I can switch between custom bindings on the fly and we are golden.
Also. MAKE ALL AXIS, ALL 6, ANALOG ASSIGNABLE.
That’s probably what I’m going to do. Plus a button that transfers rotational controll to the SpaceMouse and gives the Normal Mouse FreeLook.
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They can surely design the controls so that one does not take precedence over the other.
It might mean not giving mouse the twitch precision it is capable of for balancing reasons but im expecting most people dont want this ending up a twitch shooter. I sure hope im not wrong on that.
You want them to nerf my mouse?
I want them to make sure this spaceflight game can be played with a joystick.
Some people think there is some magical way to make controllers “balanced” but quite frankly they havent thought about the problem long enough, its not possible in any skill based complex game. Input options arent just fuzzy things that dont affect anything and can be vaguely translated into equality. They have tangible tradeoffs and specialties, the only real solution to controller balance is a turn based game where input time doesn’t matter, and thats not an option.
What you can do is give them all a fair shake within the pre-existing game mechanics, though, make sure they’re all supported with lots of input options. The best controls will win out. Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome.
By the way, there will be purists who insist on artificially gimping whatever other control scheme they arent using in favor of their own. Ignore at all costs. They’ve overrun certain other space game’s forums. Like this guy, god, they’re already here:
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I hope they don’t use restrictive methods to make sure all controllers are equally balanced. Even in Star Citizen it already feels awkward and restrictive using a mouse. I wonder if they made it feel more natural for the hotas users.
Thank you for telling people to ignore me at all costs. Tells me a great deal about you.
What your saying is basically that any work spent on implementing joystick control is wasted.
In that case, id much prefer Inovae to be open and honest with the fact that joysticks will be unusable in I:B.
Implying that letting the mouse function as it normally does makes a game a “twitch shooter” means yeah, you should probably be ignored. Not as a rule, just in this aspect.
If you think just letting controllers work to their own advantages is “making joysticks unusable”, then you are silly and are reinforcing my previous assertion.
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I think what he meant is more that controlling a spaceship like a fps (crosshair moves immediatly and without a maximum turn rate, ship can spin 180° in a fraction of a second) would be too big of an advantage to even consider using a stick.
Please correct me if my interpretation is wrong.
But I agree, artificially gimping mouse controls to balance sticks is probably not the way to go.
Twitch shooter is probably an accurate description of Battlescape, as performance in it is going to be at least somewhat related to your ability to accurately and efficiently control your ship.
That said, if done properly there can be little effective difference between joystick and mouse controls. Particularly limited joysticks (such as certain gamepads) might be hampered due to limited capabilities, but it shouldn’t be intentionally gimped.
Some significant cap to turning rate can help for someone ambushing a target, and I’d expect one to exist for balance purposes, as it can make gameplay more interesting, especially where large ships are concerned.
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The current cap for turnrate in the prototype is pretty well balanced. Its responsive and accurate, doesn’t feel sluggish and enables stick users certain slight advantages to counter mouse precision. Mouse is probably still better, but IMO probably not gamebreaking for hotas users.
We’ll see how it balances when the first dev build supports sticks. 
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Im implying that if you let the mouse work in its full potential then you are effectively killing all other means of control. In this case, any work spent on hotas controls is wasted and it would have been better to announce that mouse/kb is the only controlscheme available.
Or you can try and make all controls work under the same restrictions for sake of balancing and gameplay. The build, as it looks now, caps turnrates fairly low which is a great way of equalizing mouse and joystick, as opposed to letting the ships turn at the blink of an eye where the mouse gets its full potential but no other control will stand a chance.
The build, that is now, is used on corvette class ship. Interseptors will for shure be more agile and sharp.
Maybe it is not ment for joysticks to go to the real space 
Talking about lore: IF the ship’s acceleration dampeners can negate hundreds of G, why should ships rotation should be limited?
In three words? Moment of Inertia. “Because Physics” also works if you only want two.
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Large ships and small ships are likely to be out of sync on controller balance for the same reason, typically sticks are better at the larger slower turning stuff while an interceptor will be better with a mouse. Theres a lot of issues like this that prevents perfect balance, but your right that you can get them fairly close especially if you slow down turn rates… however, it’s only possible if you kind of happen upon the right set of mechanics, and designing around controller balance from the ground floor might not lead to the best gameplay for battlescape.
When i think of twitch shooter im thinking of unreal tournament where you spin around and blast someone in the head with a sniper rifle before wall dodging across a room. Stuff where you can really only react in muscle twitches. Tracking is a different skill and thats what we usually see in space games, you need to hold your sights over the guy for some time, you predict movement and react.
Im not suggesting to tailor the game to the mouse’s advantages. I want the game mechanics to develop as they will without having to make sacrifices for any particular control scheme.
Imposing severe caps on the turn rate is what Elite and SC do and apart from being non-Newtonian, that’s simply not the flight mechanics that Battlescape has been advertised as having.
Joysticks will be usable and people will probably have plenty of fun playing with them. What we’re saying is that joysticks simply aren’t as good as mice for translating the required control inputs from a player’s hand into the game.
There is no way in physics that thrusters that can counteract the pull of the gravity of an Earth sized moon on a 30m long ship would not be able to counteract the moment of inertia of that same ship by several orders of magnitude with ease.
It’s not about counteracting it. It’s the physical properties of an objects rotation. I’m not saying that it won’t be fast, in fact I’m completely agnostic about this whole argument. There will be always be a non instant rotation simply because there is mass to be rotated. I was answering why rotation had to be limited. It’s limited at some level by the physical properties of the ship.
I really don’t care if joystick or mouse is better…I’ll just use what I have the most fun flying. What I felt and flew with in the prototype seemed fine with me and I have no issues with current mechanics.
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Yes of course it’s non-instant, but it would be very very fast.
Anyway, I think most of us are agreed.
Sure they can. Rotation within a field can be very difficult, despite being able to impart linear motion to that field. That ‘field’ is the whatever-it-is that allows these ships to accelerate to ludicrous speed with ludicrous accelerations that should crush everyone and everything on a ship - but don’t.
It’s important to realize that these ships aren’t rockets, despite INS’s choice to make them look like rockets - which I have always considered to be absurd.
Oh, and as for controllers, the only thing I’ll offer is to reinforce the idea that systems should not be designed for a specific controller. Being able to instantly turn a ship simply because a controller can do that is silly. In contrast, being able to look around quickly does make sense. So a player relying entirely on a joystick can turn a ship naturally, but look around slowly. A player relying entirely on a mouse may find ship control a bit cumbersome, but looking around is very natural.
When VR comes along or pogo stick controllers or water-based controllers or whatever else, the control schemes will have to be redesigned, and it is the gameplay that will remain constant - so that’s where the focus should be placed.
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