Originally posted by Stealth
i never figured out what to use the "hat" stick for... in FS1 and FS2... ther'esnot really anything you need
Yeah, ususally I run out of controls in a game before I run out of controls on the stick.
Freespace has some truly wonderful targetting and wingman command options that few people know about though. I once had a hat triple mapped for Freespace comms and my my target-friend and target-foe hats double mapped. I found I didn't use too terribly many, but they were there if I needed them. Target Target's Target, Target Target's Attacker, and Target Escort were particularly useful in escort missions--especially when you set up a key that was, essentially, "Target Escorted Ship, Target Targets Attacker". You could extend that theme to "Target Escorted, Alpha Wing Defend My Target, Target Target's Attacker" and so on.
One of the guys on the INA-IWar2 forums rebound his keys so that Trigger2 (second trigger position) set his weapons to max power, then fired as long as he held the trigger, then set the power back to normal when he released the trigger. That's suicide in my opinion, but it worked for him. I always set Trigger1 to "fire burst" and trigger2 to "auto fire".

Venom: I said I'd give them the chance and I will. That's what demos are for. The problem, though, is that when moving from keyboard only to keyboard/mouse for First Person games you're going from a poor control setup to a good control setup. Freelancer, with mouse, will be going from a good setup (stick/throttle) and moving to a poor setup (mouse).
Stealth: The whole lefthanded vs righthanded stick design thing is stupid at best. Nintendo screwed the righties of the world by bucking the Atari tradition of "stick on right, buttons on left" when they put out the Famicom/NES controller. Every console that has followed since, and many arcade games, have followed that trend. We righties don't have a problem with that. Further, in real vehicles, they don't make special accomodation for lefties or righties. As I recall most aircraft have the stick centered, but the throttle is still to one side (usually wherever its convenient).