I've been playing ED with mouse + keyboard since the Beta and don't wanna invest into a HOTAS system any time soon. Unfortunately, there is a huge drawback for mouse players.
If you use the mouse without the 'relative' (=auto centering) settings, you have a comfortable control scheme in both flight modes. But the drawback is FA off being impossible to manage except for short FA off switching for hard turns. So you're pretty much forced to fly FA on most of the time. Constant FA off is nealy impossible to control with that setting.
If you use the mouse with the 'relative' settings, FA off instantly works like a charm as you can use short boosts into any direction which then precisely auto centers like a Joystick with springs. Combat obviously becomes much more enjoyable and fixed weapons now make sense all of a sudden. Sounds like 'relative' is a no brainer then, right? Wrong - because flying in Frame Shift Drive now becomes a nightmare. There is not FA off in FSD which means to fly a long curve, you now have to constantly move the mouse across the surface. So you either need a veeeeery large table, long arms and / or running shoes, or you constantly have to lift and reposition the mouse as long as you want to change the direction of your ship. Fighting an interception is nearly impossible that way. And even normal navigation through the systems becomes a real pain. The game simply is no fun that way. 'Relative' off is pretty much mandatory in FSD.
And that's the problem. For the same game experience a HOTAS player has by default (hold the stick in FSD for navigation, use short control bursts with 'perfect' auto centering due to the springs in free flight with FA off), you would have to enter the Options menu and activate / deactivate both 'relative' settings each time you switch between FSD and normal flight or between FA on and FA off.
Therefore, I dare to request a way to circumvent that problem:
If you use the mouse without the 'relative' (=auto centering) settings, you have a comfortable control scheme in both flight modes. But the drawback is FA off being impossible to manage except for short FA off switching for hard turns. So you're pretty much forced to fly FA on most of the time. Constant FA off is nealy impossible to control with that setting.
If you use the mouse with the 'relative' settings, FA off instantly works like a charm as you can use short boosts into any direction which then precisely auto centers like a Joystick with springs. Combat obviously becomes much more enjoyable and fixed weapons now make sense all of a sudden. Sounds like 'relative' is a no brainer then, right? Wrong - because flying in Frame Shift Drive now becomes a nightmare. There is not FA off in FSD which means to fly a long curve, you now have to constantly move the mouse across the surface. So you either need a veeeeery large table, long arms and / or running shoes, or you constantly have to lift and reposition the mouse as long as you want to change the direction of your ship. Fighting an interception is nearly impossible that way. And even normal navigation through the systems becomes a real pain. The game simply is no fun that way. 'Relative' off is pretty much mandatory in FSD.
And that's the problem. For the same game experience a HOTAS player has by default (hold the stick in FSD for navigation, use short control bursts with 'perfect' auto centering due to the springs in free flight with FA off), you would have to enter the Options menu and activate / deactivate both 'relative' settings each time you switch between FSD and normal flight or between FA on and FA off.
Therefore, I dare to request a way to circumvent that problem:
- One solution would be to have two separated sets of mouse settings in the control menu - one set for FSD mode and another set for normal flight. Or, even better, one set for FA on and another set for FA off.
- Another solution would be some kind of auto switch option(s) for the different flight modes like 'enable relative X/Y axis in normal flight', 'disable relative X/Y axis in FSD mode' or, even better, 'enable relative X/Y axis in FA off mode'.