can any of you direct me to a good layout?
Personally, I find this works:
Mouse left/right -> yaw
Mouse up/down -> pitch
Q/E -> Roll
Mousewheel -> Throttle increments up/down
Lateral thrust WASD for forward/left/back/right, R/F for up/down.
And forgive me but I'm not in game at moment, but there's a setting for something called .. like, 'relative mouse movement' that will make motion settle back to zero if you cease moving your mouse, and a setting to increase or decrease the size of the 'dead zone' for your mouse. You'll have to fiddle with that to find your comfort zone; it depends on how you want your ship to behave - always yawing or pitching at the slightest input, or a bit more deliberate.
Altogether these options are pretty much "FPS standard" and make it pretty intuitive for seasoned PC gamers. The mouse moves the ship in the direction you'd naturally expect, you're easily able to strafe and fine tune your velocity and position relative to an opponent with your left hand.
I could not deal with the mouse, so went to KB only. Works very well for me, plus I can play on my laptop sitting on the <insert seated position of your choice, including the toilet>
A/ - Fire Primary/Secondary
SX - Pitch
<> - Roll
L; - Yaw
Backspace - 0% Throttle
F5-F8 - 25% to 100% Throttle
W - Boost
J - FSD
Numeric Keypad - 486293 - Thrusters
K/Shift-K - Weapons Group
[] - Target Subsystems
G - Next Target
H - Next Hostile
C - Chaff
V - Shield Cells
E - Heat Sink
F11/F12 - System and Galaxy Map
Shift-H - Silent Running (wont be hit by accident!)
I am a perfectly capable PvE pilot. I am probably missing out on using thrusters while in combat, but it has never hindered me
Unbind the Jettison All Cargo button!
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one going for the classic KB + mouse.