My uncle gave me his old X52, and it's a great stick- better than anything I ever would have got otherwise. But I want to be able to use the missile fire button to... Well, fire missiles. This is button 2, and since DOS was designed to only recognize two buttons, the controls are kind of wonky in how missiles fire. I want to use the actual stick inputs, but I don't want the Wing Commander games to see button 2- and wouldn't mind making them ignore all buttons so I can just map them with Joy 2 Key. Is there any way to tell DOSBox to ignore the button(s), but still let it get the actual stick position reads?

Usually if you use an external mapper like joy2key it overrides any pre-assigned mapping in the games and in DoxBox (DosBox recognizes 4 buttons in my experience), button 2 fires missiles only when pressed toghther with button 1 in the old WC games, unfortunately it's also necessary if you want to roll your craft (keep pressed), only in WC4 there are keys for rolling your craft so I suggest you keep the first two buttons as they are and map a separate "launch missiles" button to another button (I mapped it on the topmost key on my CH Combatstick) and leave button 2 as is.

Yes.

Roll is "," and ".", which I have bound to the Z axis. I had no trouble rolling this way in WC1.

WC3 has more complexities though, and I fear I may need the extra buttons. Especially since I currently have speed set to a hat switch (since DOS doesn't support throttle controllers, I find it easier than using the actual throttle and trying to keep it in the middle when I don't want to change speed). So having a dedicated missile button that doesn't make me roll would be preferable.

In similar complaints, I wish that X-Wing either had Z-Axis support, or simply allowed me to map rolling each way to buttons- the delay in rolling in that game is making it very annoying... Thank you, I'll try this.