just started playing galactic star fighter and i realized how hard it is to get used to the aim and turn at the same time. I tried plugging in a controller since there is only a couple of usable buttons for galactic star fighter. but you have to download mods to do so. they should just add controller mapping in the preferences key binding.

This won't happen. It's a keyboard / mouse game. They would have to add controller settings and a lot of test and software to all of SWTOR to be able to support a joystick in GSF.

 

Please use google to search, this thread has come up a lot and many of us have given more detailed answers in the past.

 

Proper joystick support would be a full redesign. Mapping the mouse cursor to a joystick is far weaker than using a mouse, and while you are free to do it, it will give you a worse control than using a mouse.

So, no joystick compatibility I see. I was hoping to eventually try GSF with a joystick + keyboard setup, invoking the fun times I had with Imperial and Rebel campaigns on 'X-wing vs TIE fighter' from back in the day... only versus player-controlled fighters. Edited December 30, 2014 by AztecSoul

It's still a fun time with keyboard mouse, but it would be really cool if it had been designed to use a good HOTAS setup.

well they at least need to figure out how to prevent my cursor from leaving the circle. the return time takes too long and theres no reason to mouse past the aim circle cause you cant click on anything anyway.

well they at least need to figure out how to prevent my cursor from leaving the circle. the return time takes too long and theres no reason to mouse past the aim circle cause you cant click on anything anyway.

 

Max turning speed is actually outside the circle, the circle is different based on what weapon you are using. Max turning speed is not.

This game is designed for keyboard+mouse. A dual-analog controller would make the game a bit more interesting, but to make anything but keyboard-and-mouse good for this game would require redesign.

 

Max turning speed is well outside the circle, but i'm pretty sure you can still fire your blasters while trying to maneuver outside the circle. I was doing it as a total noob and failing to hit anything, but because of tracking penalties + everyone loving evasion stacking, it's not a very good tactic.

 

Joystick: Joystick controls direction. Instead of your aiming, you'd have an aimbot firing for you. Range and tracking penalty would reduce the strength of your lock and impact damage and/or chance to hit based on what weapon you had and maybe copilot skills.

Dual analog: One controls direction, one controls your guns, and buttons for your abilities+boost. The ability to use one of these like this would mean a significant buff to sustained-fire weapons (you can maneuver and aim at the same time). Most of us have a game console + at least one wired controller, and wired console controllers are pretty cheap. The kind of precision you'd want with analog sticks is difficult on a good controller, which most of us don't have. Chatting would be difficult to impossible, cause you'd have to set the controller down in order to use your keyboard, or have someone type for you, or the game would need to interface with some kind of speech recognition engine.

Proper GSF controls would, for instance, allow me DIRECT, instant, and analog control of the ship's pitch, yaw, and roll. Right now the roll rate is max or null, and stick right/left (or twist, or rudder, depending on how perverse you roll) would give better controls. Meanwhile, pitch and yaw are both analog, but also control weapon gimbal. That would be something that could be locked or unlocked with a button, plus you'd be able to control the gimbal manually with another joystick (for instance, one of the analog hats on my X-55). This would allow you to be yawing upwards while firing with no deflection penalty at center, or even while firing downward.

 

This would be substantially better controls than the mouse-keyboard. Some weapons might need to be rebalanced. The roll rate of ships could likely be changed- because it was clearly designed with digitial in mind, the roll rate is probably a bit slower than it could be.

 

Throttle controls- right now these are null, small, 3/4, and full. With actual mapping to my physical throttle, I could choose any point on the throttle to function at. The fact is, however, when your speed is below a certain point, your turning suddenly suffers. This might need to be redesigned to be a bit more analog than it currently is, and tested around the fact that I could meaningfully be at 5% throttle and you at 7% throttle and which one makes a tighter turn that way? Right now the toggling between null and min, done digitally, can get you the tightest turn, as long as you don't let your speed dip below the minimum. With an analog throttle, I could set it directly at that value, which would be very funky. So they'd probably need to add to that too.

 

So that's what it would take. Dual analog controls or other "fighter" controllers, or Nintendo derived gamepads would all be mappable to that in various degrees of appropriateness, but if you really did GSF correct, you would logically do best with a nice HOTAS, because that's the best method of controlling stuff. Keyboard/mouse can't really compete.

 

 

 

Now, how many of you have an X-55? How many of the people coming around and claiming GSF would have just so many more players have a solid joystick, ready to go, and presumably some friends who would also hop on full time? How many would be angry that I can turn tighter than you with my analog throttle and HOTAS superiority because you have a mere eighty dollar joystick?

 

 

 

 

I'm just so sick of these threads. It would be amazing to get GSF controls done right. It would be up there with cross server in terms of boosting my own personal enjoyment. But it's massively expensive to test all the hardware, set everything up, be compatible, write all that code, all for a game where apparently repair drones still can't give back ammo and sab probe is still broken. You expect them to drop serious hardware capital, room in their test lab, twenty more pages of test procedures for every new build to be run through to be sure that the changes didn't break joysticks, a bunch of code to run that, balance fixes where needed for all the weapons, retuning several base assumptions about how the ships fly around their new capabilities... all so you can farm noobs harder? We farm them so very hard already, goodness. They already come in and complain about the largely meaningless gear difference (I had a 65k damage game with 0 deaths on a stock flashfire yesterday, solo queue), they already come in and do anything rather than confront their utter lack of understanding of three space games, and you want to add "I can't afford a joystick" to their list of random QQ?

I too hate these endless threads, but verain's post has me thinking about "ideal" controller setups. Of course a lot of this is down to personal preference, but the weapon gimballing in gsf (which isn't all that common in flight games), raises some interesting questions.

 

Obviously the most precise control of flight goes to a proper joystick setup, but lethality is really determined mostly by the ability to aim weapons. If the weapons were all fixed axis, then a joystick gives the most intuitive control of everything. But given that weapon aim is partially dissociated from flight control, and a mouse is a far more precise and rapid way of controlling the firing reticle than a joystick (or, god forbid, a thumb joystick hat), I think the best option may actually be joystick in offhand for pitch/yaw flight control (analog input, replacing wasd), and a mouse in dominant hand to control the gimballed weapons, with the throttle controlled by the scroll wheel and all other functions mapped to hotkeys on both controllers. Strafe would be difficult though...

Interesting and possible. Personally, I'd take the joystick+hat on my right hand and the throttle+buttons on my left hand, but left hand joystick + right hand mouse is certainly interesting.

Well, gave it a shot last night, and I must say, it does take some getting used to. Definitely a difference in control from the good old joystick + keyboard setup I was used to from way back when. That had a scroll on the side of the stick to control throttle, while the keyboard was handy for power management and shield direction control. The crosshairs were always centered, so it was simplified in that regard. The mouse + keyboard seems more chaotic to overall control, but since this is really the only way to play GSF, I figure we're all in the same boat, relatively speaking. So in the midst of the chaos, there is that common denominator to all.

 

First match (capture the satellite type game), I was barely hit (0 deaths), but no kills, only assists (5). Not proud of those stats, but considering I was pure stock scout, I know those assists could have been kills if I had an upgraded ship. Plus, there were a number of fellow novices also flying around like panicked flies, so there was time to learn how to manage engine power for hit-and-run tactics, and ways to maneuver through asteroid fields. Overall decent mode that does okay with the mouse, just have to put in the time needed to upgrade the ship.

Edited January 7, 2015 by AztecSoul

god i wish i could use my controller for GSF. it would make it way easier to fly and fight and would be more fun in my opinion. i hope they do add analog support for GSF since it would improve the experience greatly for me. hey Bioware if your seeing this could you consider it? it would make it way more fun!

This is why not:

 

1: Supporting all this extra hardware for a minigame is going to get expensive. We don't currently have enough active players to even think about such a thing.

2: The game is designed specifically for keyboard+mouse. It plays pretty well with keyboard and mouse once you get used to it. They would have to change the gunnery mechanics significantly for it to play very well with a joystick.

3: A joystick game gives a big advantage to joystick users. When I plugged in my new proper joystick (I'd been using an Xbox gamepad) and played X-wing with it, TIE Advanced went from being very difficult to kill with an X-wing to being a lot easier, and the trench run would have been an absolute nightmare without this thing. People will complain about being at a serious disadvantage because they don't have a joystick, and they will be correct-if the game is designed for joysticks. If the game isn't designed for joysticks, there just isn't much point to adding support.

god i wish i could use my controller for GSF. it would make it way easier to fly and fight and would be more fun in my opinion. i hope they do add analog support for GSF since it would improve the experience greatly for me. hey Bioware if your seeing this could you consider it? it would make it way more fun!

 

It would make it easier, but a properly done controller input would almost become mandatory. The game already has a pretty big skill bump to be played properly, would you really want to gate on controls as well?

 

The other points about supporting a zillion hardwarez are also relevant, but I think that's the one that should be more relevent to you Seiffer- it would add another Thing Noobs Need.