Any tips on this?

I got up to Mission 3 but I get cut to pieces by the first squadron of 3 Kilrathi.

I don't know if it's the emulation, but these controls are horrible too - both too sensitive and jerky.

This helped - https://www.gog.com/forum/wing_commander_series/wc1_crappy_sound_and_sluggish_mouse/page1

Still not exactly brilliant though. Finished Mission 3 killing 1 enemy, my wingman killed 2. Not a good sign.

The problem is definitely the controls. I can't line up enemy craft with enough precision to consistently score hits.

It doesn't look like anyone's reading this but if you are, any help appreciated.

What controls are you using?
Keyboard, mouse, gamepad, joystick?

Keyboard/mouse.

I could lay my hands on a gamepad if that's better.

It should be enough while not optimal, perhaps you are not leading the targets properly?
These games tend to always have slow projectlies.

That's an issue, although I think lining the target up where I want it to go is a bigger one.

I switched to a gamepad (PS3) and got a copy of Joystick Mapper - that makes life easier again, although the left stick is incredibly sensitive. I keep overshooting where I'm trying to aim.

Any ideas how to adjust gamepad sensitivity? I'm using a Mac.

Did you map the left stick to keyboard commands or mouse?
If so, can't you make it figure as the main joystick (X and Y axis)? This way you will have analog controls.
The keyboard commands are for fast turns in complement with a mouse.
Other than that I cannot advice you on Macs, I did consider getting one a few years ago but making games work on the thing is too much of a hassle.

That's helped - with analogue controllers I've got through to Dakota mission 2, so I don't think I can blame the controls anymore!

Or at least, not blame them too much. Temperamental, even with a joypad! I suppose it was designed with a joystick in mind.

Thanks for your help

Hey Det_Bullock thought I'd let you know that I wound up buying a joystick.

Suddenly it became a completely different game - finished the main campaign and SM1, on to SM2.

Yeah, these games were made with joysticks in mind, at the time everybody had one.

Therey were still incredibly common, as ubiquitous as gamepads today if not more, even the arse end of nowhere (like where I live) if there was a computer shop it kept at least a joystick or two in stock.

Regardless of what you claim, certainly when this game came out, not everyone had a joystick.

The world was (and is) not only first world nations. In fact, most people lived in Third World nations (and the same is true today). And most people couldn't afford a computer, and even of those who could, not everyone had money to spare for additional things, like joysticks.

Joysticks weren't the costly things regarding PCs at the time, there were plenty of cheap ones (they weren't a niche luxury item like today and flight simulators were very popular, for every CH or Thrustmatser there were 100 Quickshot), the expensive stuff were soundblaster cards (I only ever had a cheap "compatible" that wasn't compatible at all), RAM memory banks and other costly hardware expansions that I could never afford.

Hell, my DOS PC was very cheap by necessity and crashed with anything that was more CPU-intensive than Wolfenstein 3D or some old Apogee sidescrollers, I had to skip all the cutscenes to be able to get to the end of any mission in X-wing and many couldn't be completed anyway because it crashed after 15 minutes by clockwork (and of course had no sound).