I play Darkstar One with a Logitech Precision gamepad. Most of the time, it works perfectly (and suits me fine), but there's a problem with the game: it seems that if I set it to be played with a joystick (so that it recognizes my gamepad), the speed up/down keys cease to function, forcing me to fly always at 50% (or match the speed of other vessels). (And the mouse wheel doesn't work either, even though the tutorial said it changes the speed of the ship.)
By default, changing speed is set to +/- on the num pad, but they don't work. I've tried changing them to other keys, assigning gamepad buttons to them as secondary keys (as it is with every other function) and even overwriting +/- with said gamepad buttons, all to no avail. If I turn jostick usage off, +/- work fine.
What makes it strange is that most other functions (such as doing a hyperspace jump, opening the map, selecting targets etc.) work fine, so it's not that if I use a gamepad, it turns off keyboard recognition.

I know, it's not a game breaker, but it'd be better if I could adjust the speed of my ship.

doesn't work for me either... I haven't done a lot of testing though, but I had just assigned them to some controller buttons and was wondering why they weren't working.... guess I'll stop wondering and use those buttons for another action.

If it helps you there's an old post here, but it sounds like maybe you already tried those tricks?????
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/darkstar_one/tip_how_to_setup_darkstar_one_for_a_gamepad

I haven't tried this setup, but it might work for you???

The same happens to me when I use my Joystick (Logitech 3D pro). The keyboard speed controls and the mouse speed controls stop working - I have to actually use the one flap button of the Joystick that I normally never use in games which can be pushed forward for + and backwards for -.

I would guess that when you enable gamepad-control that you have to have some button or thing on that gamepad that then controls velocity.

I have it working fine with a ps5 controller. If you have something else (of course the only recent reply above does have something else) you may have to adjust it a bit differently.

Ship speed is by default bound to right stick's left and right use where you eg hold that stick to the side to increase speed to 100% or lower in the other direction.

It is also possible to bind certain things using eg ds4Windows > edit > key to whatever you want to bind that to on the controller. For instance I did this with the d-pad because the game wasn't seeing them. It works great.

The game also may have blank bindings that still work so that they are just blank after binding even though they may be assigned.

You can also try x360ce or even running through Steam for its own controller mapping software.

The in-game stuff really is meant for a console style controller and not really a flight stick.

The alternative:

Disable controller in game settings and use 3rd party software to bind everything manually to the keyboard keys. This also allows the foward thrust to be bound to anything on the controller with no problem.

Note: In eg ds4Windows can multi-bind buttons so that for instance one button for communication can invoke that with a tap (regular bind) and then hold that plus press another like d-pad up, left, down, and right (edit > special actions > make the combo and assign) can invoke numbers 1-4 for up to 4 choices so that the keyboard doesn't need to be used in many or possibly all situations.

The PS5 controller also has a mouse pad for the other things and can set that to toggle to make it easy when using that controller. Its probably the best alternative to the mouse/keyboard here. (For those that have it going in circles, have to have xbox controller show up and selected in settings (ds4Windows can do this) or disable controller via game settings and then use alternative binding.

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PS5 controller ds4Windows bindings for anyone who wants: https://pastebin.com/RvY9g5xN

Fully play the game without the keyboard and mouse (actually played it fully with the only time the keyboard is ever needed is pressing esc at the pause screen at the end). I set it up so its fairly easy to use.

Probably do need to adjust keyboard bindings in the game for at least one binding to get fully set up. I don't remember which it was.

Copy and save pastbin text as into newly created file named "darkstar one ps5 controller profile a ds4windows.xml" and then import that in ds4Windows. Can set as profile or auto set only when the game runs.

Change it at will if you think of something better.

Only good for fullscreen. Might be able to use a different application to lock the mouse to the game window if not in fullscreen but I'm not looking into that.

Examples of bindings:

Tap circle to communicate with a station then hold circle and tap d-pad up for 1, d-pad right for 2, etc.

Hold R1 then press d-pad left to rotate left or d-pad right to rotate right.

Hold L1 then press d-pad up to pick up containers or d-pad down to drop containers.

Two thumb press touchpad to hyperjump, single press (possibly multple times) to go into menu mode.

Left stick up to increase speed, down to decrease, click left stick and hold to go faster, x to match speed, hold x + d-pad down to reverse.

Hold triangle and press d-pad up to bring up the target list (max 10 seconds) and move using right stick, d-pad right for another thing.

Tap d-pad up to transfer rear shields to front, etc should you have those items enabled.

etc....
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