if i have to choose between SL with joystick and FL with mouse i will take SL for sure

its much more fun ... much more action

I myself prefer Freelancer with a trackball mouse. With FL, I find it much easier to control and fine tune your aim.

I use my flight stick with flight sims (Lockon) all the time as that is much easier.

It is all a personal preferance.

I play Starlancer with joystick and Freelancer with the mouse.The controls that microsoft implemented in Freelancer are amaizing.It's so easy to play it with the mouse.I saw the same type of controls in Space Interceptor and it was great

"Human mind is like a parachute.It only works when opened"

^^ sure the movement is nice with mouse but imagine a US jet ... lets take a F18... imagine how the pilot is using a mouse to control that

its impossible... and the same way it would be impossible to use a mouse in SL because you have much more possibilities of movement in SL

if you would have seen how 2 top SL players are playing then you would understand

imo i can beat anybody-w/joystick using mouse/keyboard controls-barring flight sims. the difference thats important in flight sims is that you _must_ control elevation, unless its just a POC with no realism, and since mice have no return-to-center function thats pretty much impossible for them to do. rolling is a distraction when its accomplished via keyboard,unlike on joystick where its an intuitive thing....

the debate of joystick vs mouse can go on forever, but i think everyone can agree that mice are more convenient for interfacing and therefore the logical choice for most PC games.

p.s. starlancer sucks

grrrr
dont forget that without SL you wouldnt have a FL now

seriously ... ive been playing SL for about 3 years till FL came out (and from time to time i still play it)
if i would get the chance to play it again more often with others then i would leave FL

in FL pvp is always the same... same movements... same tactics... everything the same
you attack... turn... attack ... turn and somewhen there is boom and one of the players won

in SL there was much more variation
but its not only SL... also other games like FS or other old flight sims
3 years ago, short time after FLs release I heard something I can only agree
"FL is no real space sim, FL is just camperstrike in space... and i dont like camperstrike"

well i wont say anything bad about FL but as soon a new "real" space sim (with joystick support and real flight physics) is going to be released i will stop playing FL

too late- you already said something bad about FL. i don't see why you mod for a bunch of people you just called campers.

no flame intended, but it seems there are always lots of haters who just keep getting their butts handed to them on silver platters in PVP and never figure out that maybe "turn and comeback" isn't a valid analysis of what their opponents are doing that always beats them - ex. you can strafe, reverse, cruise n'slide, and use the most appropriate equipment for your style.

the only thing that irks me is the instant stop maneuver/reverse in vanilla. sure its annoying that roll is disabled & when its enabled it only works outside of mouseflight, but its not going to make turning & shooting more interesting

be sure that i know how to fight and that im pretty good

and what i said about camperstrike was not insulting or something like that... it was just a comparison

I have found that in most games that just keyboard works fine, this includes freespace2 and SL.

I don't know if anyone else has figured this out, but I gotmy joystick to work with Freelancer.

I used a Saitek X52 flight controller set up so that the throttle was my speed (full forward was cruise; quite neat, and I thought quite clever of me : P), and the joystick itself was the mouse (I don't know if you can do that with every joystick). The problem was then getting reverse pitch (that is, pull back to go up, forward to go down). After a few hours of searching and testing, I found the Joymouse 2.1 program, which has an option to reverse axes; just flipping the y axis was enough for me. (Joymouse 2.1 here : http://www.download.com/Phatsoft-JoyMou ... ag=lst-0-7 )

I do feel, however, that it is still much easier to control the game with a mouse; recentering with a joystick is a pain, and after a few hours of trying to fly a light fighter with my flight controller, I hooked up my shiny new Ebay-bought trackball, and had a lot better of a time.

Maybe with a different setup, or a slower-moving fighter (eg: not a Startracker : P), it would be more fun, but I'll stick with a mouse. Still, I felt itwas important to point out this way of using a joystivk in Freelancer. Cheers!

Hey Swat, remove the feature of "engine kill" in Freelancer, and bingo - it's practically identical to starlancer in every way
The only differences are the regens for shields, compared to juggling your power supplies in Starlancer.

I always prefered mouse/kb. Back when I was little, I played battle of britian, privateer, tie fighter, x-wing and recently Jumpgate all with mouse/kb. Even if it was pretty tough turning by sliding the mouse-pick it up and move it over-slide-repeat several times over the campaign of the game(s). I could line up a target far better so I could shoot better and survive longer.

I say no to joystick.

That being said, a HOTAS joystick is really needed for a complex manouvering game like Mechwarrior.

Freelancer takes places 900 years into the future. People then don't use joysticks anymore. They have been outlawed as sexist.