Sorry to hijack this thread.

I asked this in the Wing Commander forum 3 days ago and didn't get a reply. I always thought Freespace 1/2 was a definite Keyboard/Mouse game but games like X-Wing and well all SW flight games demanded my game pad. When I joined up and asked about WC everyone said get a flight stick but I already have a really nice Logitech Rumble Pad and I can't imagine there would be that big of a difference. I don't want to pay $60 for a good stick that I'm only going to use for WC when I already have a $60 pad that I use for everything else.

ps: I already have Thrustmaster on DVD. Good movie! Peter North and Jenna Jameson!

Well it is half that, only 30 bucks for a great flightstick and the feel of a stick is a lot different than a gamepad. Grasping a stick with your hand and being able to fire with your thumb and trigger finger easily is great and quite a bit different than operating with your thumb on a small stick on a gamepad.

I like both devices, depending on the game. Anything flight related, a real flight stick rocks.

Even though I got a fairly new Thrustmaster Flight Stick X, it doesn't even come close to the precision and feeling of the good old Microsoft SideWinder Precision Pro. The newer versions come with a USB converter and work perfectly on Windows XP/Vista and 7 (haven't tried 8).

And no, I can't imagine playing space combat sims without a decent joystick.

Joystick is (technically) mandatory for the brilliant X-Wings:Alliance. Game won't launch without it. It is also very good for Starlancer. These old space games assumed everyone had a joystick, because it was the blessed times where it was true. More modern games adapted their interfaces to mouse/keyboard piloting, but that's really not the same feel, when it comes to dogfights.

So, yeah, for most old games, I advocate using a joystick. And I think that turning towards mouse/keyboard gameplay, even if justified in our days of joystick-less houses, was a move that made such games lose a big element of immersion.

Interesting. I have Alliance and I've always had my gamepad hooked up for it and never had a problem. It plays GREAT with the pad BTW. Love that game!

EDIT: Maybe I should point out that my pad is almost identicle to a PS3 controller. Don't know if that makes any difference.

It doesn't distinguish between a joystick and a gamepad, it just counts the left thumbstick as the joystick itself, the D-pad is registered as a POV hat, the right thumbstick registers two extra axes, and if you have analog triggers as in the 360 controller it counts that as the throttle and of course the buttons are just buttons.

It depends on the game, X-wing was something I played with a joystick so it's mandatory for any kind of flight or space sim for me. But I played Descent with a 360 controller first then tried it with a joystick and thought that it felt much more natural to play with the two thumbsticks on that one.

I am a space game lover. I am searching in kickstarter to find out the game play option
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1760753044/star-quest-2-united-galaxies-space-sim-rts-racing