[Coli]

Hey there. Recently, I've felt a craving for a space combat sim, and was told to grab Freespace 2 as it's the best one around. Sure enough, it is - I've been having a lot of fun playing the campaign so far, and the game has aged surprisingly well (well, FSOpen helped a lot, clearly).  Before I try my hand at multiplayer, though, I do have a query about controls...

The default controls feel very un-intuitive to me. What configurations do you recommend for Keyboard+Mouse? I'm currently using a 5-button mouse and have assigned to it weapon firing (mouse1 and 2), targeting hostiles (mouse3), and banking left and right (4 and 5). That basically leaves the keyboard with control of the thrusters/afterburner, more targeting, weapon loadout, and countermeasures - all of which I've currently left as the default.

I find myself scrambling over the keyboard way too often in search for the right keys, and I'm not married to my mouse controls either, in any case, so... any advice is welcome!

[Nohiki]

The only change i made on keyboard was rebinding shield quadrant controls to arrows and ETS to insert/home/pgup etc. If you don't have a joystick, then you'll have to play the keyboard like a piano, sorry, FreeSpace just has far too many important keys

[pecenipicek]

The only change i made on keyboard was rebinding shield quadrant controls to arrows and ETS to insert/home/pgup etc.

isnt that the default binding for those controls?

[Nohiki]

Is it?  I remember remapping it from numerical keyboard, probably did that in the first place. My bad The ETS Might have something to do with my keyboard, DELL for some reason played a prank on me and instead of classic 3*2 did them 2*3

[CommanderDJ]

Yeah I thought that was the default binding as well.

Oh, and Coli,

[pecenipicek]

Is it?  I remember remapping it from numerical keyboard, probably did that in the first place. My bad The ETS Might have something to do with my keyboard, DELL for some reason played a prank on me and instead of classic 3*2 did them 2*3

ah, yes, that is a problem then


but to OT a bit, i do love how the dell keyboards feel when typing

[Nohiki]

I dunno, i switched to low uplift because when i was typing that dell sounded like a machine gun

This brings a memory of the controls in retail. for some reason while playing retail and hitting alt-tab, the game crashed (i think i fixed it with running it in 98 compatibility), but before that i was forced to rebind the afterburner

[Destiny]

You should spend some time, get your muscle memory working to your controls. For me...

W - Forward thrust
A - Bank left
D - Bank right
S - Reverse thrust
Backspace - Cut engines
Alt-G - Glide
H - Hostile
K - Subsystem
L - Turret
X - Countermeasures
Tab - BOOSTO
...
...
...nah, not like it'll help. First and foremost, you should, should not leave banking to your mouse. Ideally you want to control it with precision, using your keyboard. Turning left and right can be done by moving your mouse left and right, while pressing the appropriate bank keys to level your ship.

Generally you don't have to use a lot of keys, the most major are equalize, BOOSTO afterburner and countermeasures.

My keyboard has a two key-wide and three-key long Home End Insert PgUp PgDn Delete for ETS management. You shouldn't have any problem with ETS management if you get used to it.

[pecenipicek]

I dunno, i switched to low uplift because when i was typing that dell sounded like a machine gun

I prefer tactile as well as sound feedback when typing. Since i can write with all ten fingers and dont need to look at the keyboard to know where my fingers are. If the keyboard lacks that audible feedback, it tends to **** up my auto-correcting of writing. (Yes, i know when i type something wrong and usually just backspace back to the place where i mistyped and go back to typing. Without looking at the screen.)

[General Battuta]

Default keyboard controls were always cool enough for me, use the numpad for flight and everything else falls in nicely.

[Snail]

Yeah I haven't changed any of the controls. Except for one, changed Alt-D to just D for reset ETS.

[Kolgena]

I use keyboard and mouse defaults, though I bound scroll wheel click to look backwards instead of next hostile. I pretty much never bother with banking. I've memorized most of the controls just through sheer play time.

[Coli]

How do you bind anything to the mousewheel? I wasn't able to do that when I tried.

[Destiny]

It does register when you press hard on the mouse wheel...unless you have the ancient un-clickable mousewheel types.

[Coli]

I misread Kolgena's post, he meant Mouse3 I thought he meant that he actually managed to bind the scrolling action itself.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I use mouse 3 for reverse thrust, it works ok.
But I can't think of a good binding for side thruster. I currently stick left-right to numpad 1-3, but it a bit far from the targeting keys. What do you guys use for side thrust ?

[Destiny]

I tend to use ! and $ because I first encountered side thrust in WoD, but had to change it because they were reserved for question-answer and quick-time events.

Why doesn't banking work with the mouse, I wonder. If it did I'd use A and D for side thrust.

[Marcov]

Out of curiosity, is your (Coli) name based on the alien race you have to fight in that minigame called "Redemptor"?

[Nohiki]

Out of curiosity, is your (Coli) name based on the alien race you have to fight in that minigame called "Redemptor"?

Isn't this why we have PMs?

[jr2]

You may want to set your sensitivity on your mouse all the way up... it's a pain at first, but if you can train yourself to use it that way, you'll get more from your limited desk space.  Or just find the mouse joy script + toggle button mod and install that.  EDIT: here.

As a side note, if you also turn up the mouse sensitivity in Windows, you can move much faster and get more done quickly when using your computer for normal things, after you adjust to it.

EDIT2: Almost forgot, check in my signature, hip63 posted his keybindings, you may find them useful.