I have a 360 gamepad and my keyboard. I also have an old Thrustmaster, but I don't have a game-port any more, so... Yeah. I also don't know if it still works. It's over 15 years old now.

While calibrating the 360 gamepad worked, it turns out that the pad itself doesn't work inside the game. The B Button does give me afterburner if I press it twice and the A button fires the guns, but I can't control my ship. No yaw and pitch. No speed change or rolling with pressed B button and stick movement.

So I switched to keyboard, which was the way I played that game in 1995. But... It's so sluggish that I can't hit anything. I can steer left and right in a barely acceptable speed, but up and down are slow. Really, really slow. Enemy fighters spend the whole of the game behind me. It's frustrating.

If anybody can help with either of those problems OR tell me how I can set up Xpadder without going insane, I'd be highly appreciative.

[P.S.: I REALLY think that WC1+2, Privateer and 3 all should have their own support forums... Or at least one that's called "Wing Commander Series".]

Check this post. They're having trouble with a joystick, but it sounds similar to your problem (could fire, but couldn't control), so the solution might work for you too.

I had the exact same problem. Going to the inflight options menu by pressing Alt+O and changing the input from Keyboard to Joystick enabled me to use my USB gamepad without further ado.

There's also this program I use, its called JoyToKey that lets you map keyboard buttons to your controller so if all else fails you could try that

How do I get the missiles to fire? I could choose them and arm them but wouldn't fire. Do I need to have a target locked first?

Yep, little red hash marks will close in on your targeting box. You will here a beep once the hash marks lock onto the box. Then fire away. On a keyboard you fire missiles with the enter key or with whatever button works on your gamepad. I'm using a Logitech F310 and I have to depress the B and A buttons together to fire a missile.

Hope this helps.

As I said in the other thread:
Press ALT + O when you are in a mission: a menu pops up that let's you select your Joystick. You will need a tool such as Xpadder to setup more than 2 buttons though.

The Alt-O thing worked, but I've still got the problem that without XPadder the controls with the 360 pad are horrible because of the DeadZone issue and with XPadder... It's slow.

I really can't describe it better, but when I use the keyboard to control my craft and want to move up or down, it's half as slow as the movement to the left and right. And even the left/right movement is much slower than I remember it having been in the 90s when I played this game.

I can't hit anything because my ships simply turn too slowly and I die with all the enemies on my back.

I even tried the mouse but... Damn, that sucks even more, mostly because some keyboard commands get disabled when you play with the mouse.

Press CTRL+J while inflight to enable joystick mode. Maybe there's a way to force this every time but I've just been pressing CTRL+J at the beginning of each mission.

To fire missiles, hold joystick button 2 and then press joystick button 1 aka trigger. The game only supports 2 joystick buttons and you can find all the controls on the quick reference card.

Yep there is. Just hit alt+O during flight and select joystick there, hit Save and done.

I don't have a 360 pad and I've never used xpadder, so I may be way off with this, but if xpadder just emulates key-presses (i.e. when you move the stick left, it sends left arrow key to the game), then that would explain why you get a similar slow response with keyboard & 360 pad.

You're the man, ataribaby. Alt+O fixed me right up.

I was having this problem at first too. After I calibrated my joystick and all that it seemed that itd move incredibly slow until I learned to start being a little more sensitive with how far I tilted the stick. I found taht if I didnt tilt the stick all the way, instead just about halfway at first it was a lot more responsive.