Finally got around to giving this game a try again (OK, the last time I tried it, Microprose was still in business and I had a 2-button joystick on a gameport...)

Set the controller to joystick, and it immediately became uncontrollable. The cursor went to the bottom-right corner of the screen, I could get it to move up and down with the stick (mouse no longer controlled it,) but left/right was, at best, massively jumpy. A slight touch of the stick to the left, the cursor shot all the way across the screen, return to center and it went all the way to the right edge.

Some notes:
Joystick is a VKB Gunfighter Mk III Modern Combat Edition
No special profile set up in the VKB configurator / programming software
Stick works fine in other games (X-Wing, Wing Commander)

Help, please!

Some findings ( also from other threads here ) :

Try adding this to your Dosbox config file :

[joystick]
timed=false

If you enabled joystick, and it has not been calibrated ingame yet, then you probably can't click anything because it moves the cursor to the edge of the screen.

In this case, delete or rename the "sw.cfg" in the game's folder, and restart the game.
It should let you calibrate the joystick on startup then, it did for me.
The game will re-create the sw.cfg itself.

Also, if you find that the game uses the wrong axis on your joystick for the throttle, add this line in the [joystick] section of the Dosbox config :

swap34=true

And re-calibrate afterwards. The little button in the game options next to the Joystick control choice is the calibration button.

Hope that helps.

I'm adding this as information for anyone else having trouble (as I did) getting their joystick to work.

My issue was that the game was recognizing a joystick at startup, but not responding to it at all. It would either jerk around uncontrollably or settle in one corner.

At startup, there is a configuration/options screen where you can select the language and DOS settings. If you choose DOS settings, there should be an option for 'Control Method' at which you can select 'Joystick'.

Then you may also need to re-map the joystick within DOSbox. To do this, press Ctrl-F1 at any time while the game is running (you can also do this at the initial config prompt after selecting Control Method). This brings up the DOSbox keymapper.

The keymapper will show an area with 'Joystick 1' with boxes marked X+, X-, Y-, Y+. If you click on those and it does not indicate your joystick, you need to manually re-map it. For each axis, select it on the keymapper and then click the ADD box at the bottom of the screen. Then move the joystick in the corresponding direction. You may also need to map the joystick buttons (on the keymapper they are marked 0 and 1 in the same area as the axes). Even if you don't want to use those buttons in the game, you'll still need at least one mapped to 'fire' (Button 0) for the calibration.

Be sure to SAVE the keymap so that it will be used in the future, and then you can EXIT to return to the game.

It's likely necessary to also set the 'timed=false' in the DOSbox config file if it responds but drifts.