[CheekyKhan]

Hello people.

I am a latecomer to Blue Planet, but I'm loving what I've been able to play so far. Recently finished Age of Aquarius and now started on War in Heaven. It's a wonderful piece of work and I appreciate the many hours everyone poured into making.

I am experiencing some issues with the additional controls Blue Planet requires. In the mission 'Post Meridian', the player is tasked with targeting some hercs by pressing f12 and then 'call fire'. For me, it says press [none] to Call Fire. I cannot find this option in the keybinds. I was able to complete the mission regardless by just tasking wings by destroying my target the usual way, and by killing the hercs myself.

In the following mission titled 'For the Wrong Reasons' the player is asked with 'choosing a tactic' to stall the enemy. It lists 3, all with no assigned keybinds. I looked up a video playthrough and it seems it should be bound to the number buttons 1 to 3 respectively. I have these numbers assigned to specific targeting options, but unbinding them and restarting the mission does not fix anything.

Can anyone point me in the right direction towards solving this issue? I may have missed a FAQ entry somewhere, if so I apologize, but I spent some time scouring this forum and googling and could not find any keybind related problems. I can't even find the location for a keybind ini if there even is such a thing.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Colonol Dekker]

Don't mind that winter King beam...

Press F2 in mission / or go to options from the main in game title screen and it should list keybinds under an obvious icon.

Try resetting the game keybinds to default or rebind as needed.

Best regards from your friendly Orestes Tactical Officer

Let us know how it goes.

[CheekyKhan]

Thanks for the speedy reply!

Perhaps I should clarify, I have no trouble finding the keybinds menu, but I cannot find the listings for 'Call Fire', the 'choose your own adventure' options like in 'For the Wrong Reasons' or any of the actions only present in Blue Planet.

[Mito [PL]]

Now, the way I think it works is that keys 1-4 are assigned by default to multiplayer chat options, and since multiplayer is very very unused in FSO for a long time now (hopefully that will change... soon), many mod makers opted to use the keys for special abilities, selecting stuff in mission and things like that. And the builtin script that detects the key press, looks for the keys on their function basis, not the physical key itself. And since your (Multiplayer) Message keys are not bound, it can't find them.

So my suggestion, just bind the 4 multiplayer chat options to 1-4, but use [Alt], [Shift] or [Alt]+[Shift] with these. That should clear any conflicts and let you use the keys.

[CheekyKhan]

I will try that out right now! It's hard to know which keys to rebind if you don't know which to use, and since I cleared all before setting my own many sit empty. I will do as you say and see if it works.
Thanks!

Edit: It worked like a charm, the mp chat controls were indeed the assigned functions. Thanks for your help!

[Renegade Paladin]

In a similar vein, some ships in BP are noted to have reverse thrust and reverse afterburners.  I use a HOTAS rig.  Is there a way to use this?  My throttle doesn't go into the negatives. 

[SaltyWaffles]

In a similar vein, some ships in BP are noted to have reverse thrust and reverse afterburners.  I use a HOTAS rig.  Is there a way to use this?  My throttle doesn't go into the negatives.

I believe it's it's based on the forward/backward inputs rather than thrust--in other words, if you firewall the throttle while pushing backward, you will get full reverse thrust. Same with afterburner--if you're holding "backward" and hit the afterburner, you get reverse afterburner. Since you can also configure most buttons as toggle instead of press/hold, if you can bind one accessable key to a toggled "backward" (you can specify if a key is a toggle by hitting one of the buttons in the bottom left of the keybind/controls screen), you essentially have a workaround. If that accessible key is something you can get away with for holding whenever you want reverse thrust/afterburner, then just leave it as a press-and-hold button.

[Renegade Paladin]

I can try it.  I use an X52, and I'm pretty sure "D" on the throttle doesn't do anything in Freespace even though it's right under my thumb.  Been meaning to bind the second POV hat to shield settings anyway, might as well do it all at once.