I'm trying to decide on a joystick.

I've seen a few threads and read through them, but I have a couple of questions.

I'm going fairly cheap since I'm not really a gamer. I'm probably going to get Logitech Extreme Pro or Thrustmaster T-16000M. Although, I also liked the look of the Thrustmaster T-Flight Stick X. I would love to hear from anyone with any of these products.

My biggest question is whether any of these will work with a powered USB hub.

Second, I've heard that Logitech has a centering problem. For those that use it, have you had trouble with it?

How big a deal is throttle control? I want to play this because I loved playing my brother's in '98, but all we used was the stick and it's buttons.

Get yourself the Logitech Extreme 3d pro. It's cheap and does everything you need. The buttons on the base aren't as responsive as something that's $100 more, but it'll do just fine, especially with games like the X-Wing series.

Throttle control, IMO, is paramount. Just one more thing you don't have to worry about on the keyboard. This doesn't mean you need a separate dedicated stick for it. Something like the Extreme Pro does just fine. Save your money for more important things.

The T.16000M is the best joystick for under $50,- and because its got Hal sensors you don't have the problem of the pots wearing out, the only disadvantage is that moving the joystick requires quite a bit of force.
For the DOS versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter don't have analog throttle control but for the later version it's convenient though not required, there is something to say about keyboard throttle control as you can keep one hand on keyboard at all times since even HOTAS joysticks rarely have enough buttons anyway.

The Extreme 3D Pro isn't a bad choice though but it does require a big deadzone because the forces are very light and it's hard to make out the center. I don't really know anything about the HOTAS X, haven't tried it.

If your USB hub doesn't have any problems with other standard USB devices the joysticks shouldn't have a problem with it, though I have experienced cases that a USB hub was incompatible with certain configurations, the problem was the USB hub, not the devices attached to it.

Thanks Strijkbout for the reply, because I wouldn't have been able to hand the force required for the T.16000.

I'm using T1600m atm just starting Tie Fighter. Throttle doesn't work, nor does rotation. Otherwise it's fine. Need to research setting buttons etc, bit frustrating it doesn't work off the bat but I guess them's the breaks....

50$? I can't afford that just for one game.
The game won't even launch without a joystick, are there any I could get for around 10$?

Thrustmaster Flight Control System Mark I FCS, is that any good?
Is it compatible with the game? I can't find a list

Depends, if you want to play other spacesims like Wing Commander, Freespace or Elite: Dangerous it's an investment worth it IMO. If it's just for one game, wel lthen I guess not, but playing X-Wing pretty much sucks without it. I think so, but unless your PC has a gameport you need a gameport adapter to make it work.

So do modern ones work with old games or do I need two different joysticks?

Yes, Dosbox takes care of that, though it might need some editing with the .conf file to get the most out of it.

That's great! Is there something like that for that period between dos and windows XP?
All my joystick only games seem to be from 1998

You mean something like Dosbox? I'm afraid not, the only things that come close are virtual machines.
XP shouldn't have trouble picking up a modern USB joystick, at least my T.16000M works on XP and all my previous ones also, it's more that the games themselves can sometimes be a bit picky, like X-BtF which didn't detect the throttle, but someone made a fix for that already.

Careful. There are 3 versions of the game. Only one of them (the 1998 version) will not launch without a joystick. The older DOS versions can be played with a mouse, but I don't recommend it as it's way harder to control.

If you have a gamepad you could consider trying to set it up to control with one of the analog sticks. You'd still need the keyboard for lots of commands so it would probably be really awkward, and I'm guessing precise aiming would be very hard, but you could try it.

The best thing to do is get a joystick, even if it's a very cheap one.

The issue isn't compatibility with the game but compatibility with windows, gameport joysticks often aren't recognized even if you happen to have a gameport on your PC like me and adapters often don't work well.

There are countless of games on GOG.com that work very well with a joystick, while I wouldn't advice a novice to spend € 110,00 like I did on a CH Combatstick, the $ 50,00 (or even less, in CAN and US the prices on Amazon for this stuff often are ridicoulously low compared to Europe) for a Thrustmaster T-16000 are the bare minimum as anything under that tends to be very unreliable (as in: break-after-a-month unreliable), also the T-16000 has the optional mapping software TARGET that can let you map keyboard buttons to unused buttons in those games that don't allow/recognize more than a few of the buttons on the stick.

Also there are countless great games that use a joystick, a lot of them are on GOG (and I could play some for the first time thanks to them).

Most games from the windows era allow to map the buttons on your joystick and use directinput so any USB joystick should work and be mappable in-game, if you find the rare game that recognizes only a few buttons there is an offical thrustmaster software called TARGET that allows to map the joystick buttons to keyboard commands and is compatible with the T-16000 (not with the HOTAS X though).

Go to the game folder and see if you can find the config file for DosBOX, open it with notepad and under the group "joystick" change the "Timed" setting to false, also for the buttons try to change the type of joystick under the same group to see which works better, usually it whould recognize no more than four buttons.

However for the buttons, it is possible that another button is recognized as button 2 rather than the "official" one, usually the toggle cockpit button is button 4.

Also, use TARGET (the thrustmaster software I mentioned above), I know additional software can look like a hassle but since I started using the software of my joystick (I have a CH Products but the Thrustmaster software should do more or less the same things) I can't see myself going back to barebones plug & play mode for DOS games.