I've got Darkstar One, Freespace 2 and Independence War sitting on my Gog list, so here's my question to the rest of you, should I Drop a bit of cash and get myself a flight stick, or will it not affect me that much?

I'm really looking forward to space but I'm seriously not sure whether my enjoyment will increase with a flight stick, or whether those kind of games are near impossible to play without one.

Yes, get a stick. I can't speak to Darkstar One, but Freespace 2 and Independence War are both improved by joystick control. People do play Freespace 2 with just mouse and keyboard and you can play Independence War 1 with just mouse and keyboard (I think), but in general you will have much more fun with a joystick. The Logitech Extreme 3D pro joystick is the one I have and it is a good stick for fairly cheap if you can find it in the UK - (it is around or less than $30 in the US).

Absolutely. I couldn't personally imagine enjoying those sort of games without one.

Well, you may actually want to play the games first, before you go investing in a pricey stick (and perhaps throttle). If you enjoy the games a lot, and can see yourself playing them and other spacefaring, or mech piloting, games, then by all means buy a decent flight system. But if not, that joystick is going to end up collecting dust in your closet. None of those games absolutely require one.

Thanks guys, I think i'm gonna look into it. I can be quite awkward with a mouse, that much was evident playing the Space battles in Star Wars:Battlefront 2.

I've got several flight and space sims, so for me it makes sense, but I understand where you are coming from. That said you may enjoy playing Freespace 1&2 (don't forget to get the open source engine for it!) so much with a joystick, that you pick up more such games. ;)

1) The Logitech Extreme 3D pro joystick does indeed work in Win 7 (I have 32-bit, but I am pretty sure it works w/ 64-bit too).

2) Web surfing ... hmmm ... I've never tried to be honest. I'm not sure what that would be like - best case, it would probably take some getting used to, but I'm not sure that would be very practical. I strongly suspect you'd have to download specialized software to allow the joystick to create relative mouse movements in a way that would feel natural for controlling things in the OS.