Interesting to note that you weren't flying FA-Off either.
I toggle FA as necessary, but 'as necessary' is often synonymous with 'almost never' on this control scheme. In a typical engagment, I'm FA on 95-98% of the time, but there are exceptions, such as when I'm fighting mine layers that I do feel it prudent to spend most of the time FA Off (getting caught by an Ion Disruptor with FA On is very dangerous).
My rail aim, given they have to be held on target or timed exactly, is horrible FA Off (PAs are actually much easier), and FA Off is often a detriment to evasive flying if one is fighting something that can keep pace with one's speed of orbit. FA On provides substantially quicker deceleration and rapid vector changes are half deceleration.
By this fight I'm also too tired to bother toggling it off even in the handful of situations I can identify where it would have been useful for me.
Were you switching shield boosters off/on to bring your shield up quicker?
The setup I'm using is based around active regen and has a large shield pool through the use of three HD boosters that all provide modest resistance penalties. As shields fall, I try to turn off these boosters, both to improve resistances, and so that by the time the shields fail, the total shield pool is small enough for the collapsed regen to happen in a usefully short amount of time. The collapsed regen rate of a reinforced class 5 bi-weave is rather poor, and if I left all the boosters powered, the ship could well be too damaged to continue by the time shields came back up, unless I did nothing but evade the whole time.
apart from that turret which is a scramble just for annoyance and to prevent synthing
While I essentially never synthesize in combat, that laser turret did cost me a fair bit of shield regen.
FWIW Ratkatcher, I don't use full time FA off either. A little more than Morbad, sure, but only situationally. Truth is, as a HOTAS user I find it very hard to aim railguns FA off, and I do love those railguns, so I'm using FA off for some maneuvers, but on again to shoot.
FA On while taking aim also considerably mitigates the effect of force shell, which I was using in the first fight.
I gathered exclusive FA-Off was harder with a HOTAS from comments made elsewhere, and a little from my own efforts
Not only is it more difficult, it's less beneficial when you have six or more (I personally have eight in use) analog axes, as opposed to the two most KBM users have.
It would have been as much fun had you posted alongside, at least seeing the 'story' unfold from both sides would interest me.
I'm also curious to see engagements from other perspectives. They can often reveal aspects that aren't at all apparent from only one's own.
I fly mouse and throttle now. Since my control scheme is a means and not and end, immersion is of no importance. It is criminal how easy it is to fly FA off and aim with rails using relative mouse. I kid you not. It's rather a travesty actually. However, the hours battling the joystick to do the same were not wasted. With the hotas, I now know how curvaceous a ship can fly. Trying to imitate that with mouse and throttle is really fun! And of course the glorious sound of 4 railguns firing up and connecting is almost better than the Vienna Philharmonic.
I dabbled with mouse and throttle (and I don't find anything more immersive than choosing the optimal control setup practical), and while it certainly improved my fine aim, especially with FA Off, I didn't find it to be an overall advantage, due the number of control inputs I lost on the mouse. Even the twenty button MMO mouse I tried still wasn't quite as useful as a decent stick.
Maybe if I cobble together some frankenmouse, that I can still grip correctly, with three hat switches I'll give it another go as primary controls.
