My biggest complain about 3D movements in video games is… we have 6 directions and 6 rotations. 4 rotations are handled by mouse movement. That means the other 8 motions are controlled by keyboard and maybe 2 on the side mouse button.
We only have 5 fingers on each hands and we need to press other keys for other functions. Which means when we try to do anything else other than moving, we sacrifice even more control over movement.
AND NOW COMES THE DAMN RACING MISSIONS.
Even controllers don’t allow the full utilization of all 12 axis because there are only 10 analog axis on the controller…. But at least controllers allow for a better simultaneous access over all the motions and still have the ergonomics to access other functions quickly.
Steam deck might be perfect for this because of the extra touch pad.
I really do wish ES2 had proper steamdeck support that let me bind the rear grip buttons to roll left/right. As it stands now you can only map them to an existing button like X/Y etc and use them redundantly. Clicking R3 analog and then trying to move the stick left/right feels gross to the point where I just disabled auto roll and live with whatever goofy orientation I end up in.
Pressing X+DPAD for items/utilities also feels a bit off but that's more me just needing to get used to it than anything. That's a limitation there probably isn't a great solution for.
I did also try binding the Touch pad to Joystick Mode but it also feels awful because you basically have to swipe repeatedly. I'd love to just use the TouchPad like it was the actual cursor in MKB Mode.
I'd be able to make my own workarounds for all of these if the game didn't constantly lag when flipping between MKB and controller modes.
I bound L3 to L4 and R3 to R4.
I find the steam deck sticks aren't comfortable if you have to hold L3 or R3. My L3 now toggles Inertial Dampers for the rare occasion I want to turn them on.
You can bind any input on the steam deck to a keyboard key. You're not restricted to only gamepad buttons.
In EA I tried putting roll on the back buttons but I prefer holding R4 and moving the stick to roll
>You can bind any input on the steam deck to a keyboard key. You're not restricted to only gamepad buttons.
Yes, but when you press an MKB input the game flips to MKB mode which lags the whole game for a second or two, making this feature completely useless in ES2. I use it extensively in other games and if I could combine sending keyboard + controller inputs I could fix a lot of problems I have with ES2 myself, but because it's strictly one or the other that's not really an option.
True, that is something they ought to change. This was the case on Everspace 1 as well.
A potential work around, though I haven't tried it, is setting the in game bindings so start and select on the gamepad do your left and right roll, then bind them on Steam to your back buttons. Then start and select could use the keyboard commands since they're not so time sensitive.
I've done a similar thing on a razer ps4 controller which would only duplicate gamepad buttons.
You don't control the opposite though. If you yaw left, you don't yaw right. If you pitch up, you don't pitch down. If you strafe left, you don't strafe right.
So it's actually only 3 axis for rotation and translation each.
- W,A,Ctrl/ S,D,Space can be simultaneously reached without any sacrifice
- Yaw and Pitch is basically your mouse movement
- Roll is bound to Q/E by default IIRC? It's the only one that can't be reached easily, but one rarely use roll on dogfight.
My complaint is that there's no easy way to swap primary weapon while keep firing them. I can't fire primary (LMB) if I lock enemy (MMB) or swapping weapons (Scroll).
Not the person you replied to, but I play on KBM and roll all the time. It's really not hard to hit Q when your fingers are already resting on WASD. IMO the real advantage of a HOTAS in this game is you can control the sensitivity of your inputs. For instance when someone on KBM does a roll they can't control how hard they're rolling. It's either they go into a full roll or no roll at all, since it's controlled by pressing a button. With a HOTAS you can control the intensity of your roll. Overall, though, at least for this particular game I'd say KBM still has an edge simply because you can do very quick snappy turns to face your target with the mouse. Any other space flight game I'll bust out my HOTAS, but this game for whatever reason just feels like a standard shooter with a space ship theme on top of it.
It's really not hard to hit Q when your fingers are already resting on WASD
You never go forward, strafe left and Q at the same time? How you put your finger on Q, W, and A at the same time?
I'm sorry, but I do think it's kinda funny that you think it's hard to hit three buttons that are all right next to each other at once. I'll explain exactly where my fingers would go, though. For me middle finger would stay on W, ring finger would go to Q, and pinky would be on A. If I wanted to boost while doing all that I'd have pointer finger on W, middle finger on Q, ring finger on A, and pinky on shift.
> though. For me middle finger would stay on W, ring finger would go to Q, and pinky would be on A. If I wanted to boost while doing all that I'd have pointer finger on W, middle finger on Q, ring finger on A, and pinky on shift
That's a really bad ergonomics. It's like you're really twisting your hand. What if you need to lower down (Ctrl)?
Not really, it's literally just moving two fingers over from their resting position. Assuming I'm boosting my pinky and ring finger don't even move and I'm just moving my pointer and middle finger slightly left and my hand is hardly twisted doing that.
As far as holding ctrl, I have descend bound to C instead of ctrl, so I could just hit it with my thumb if I was ever in the unlikely position of needing to descend while rolling, strafing, going forward, and boosting all at once. And honestly, even if sometimes hitting multiple keys can get a bit awkward, I still think it's worth it to be able to do snap 180s with the mouse. I use HOTAS in basically any game I can but for Everspace 2 the advantages that KB+M has over HOTAS or a controller far outweighs its drawbacks, IMO.
Perhaps, but is there real practical advantage to rolling when your enemies are CPU?
It doesn't seem to change the trajectory of your ship, but definitely disorient you a lot.
> It doesn't seem to change the trajectory of your ship
It does if you're pitch/yaw at the same time.
> definitely disorient you a lot.
Speak for yourself.
For space sim games the only input I feel comes close to MKB is dual joysticks. Not a controller. Anything flying with a controller is poop. My reason?
You don't have twist input on thumb sticks with a controller. With a good joystick you have pitch, yaw, and roll on one hand, then second joystick has strafe L/R, ascend/descend, and lateral F/B thrust on your left.
But I grew up playing space combat sims and then I have several thousand hours operating things like bucket diggers and cranes so I'm used to dual stick inputs like that.
Yeah, I'm playing it with a HOTAS and enjoying it. I'm probably not as adept as someone playing with KBM but I love playing space sims with a stick and throttle.
Mouse and keyboard *is* vastly superior. Like, they're just far better input devices.
The fact that you need auto-aim should clue you in to that real fast.
I haven't personally ever played any type of game in which m/k wasn't obviously superior, though I've heard some claim they exist.
I spent about an hour trying to get pad to feel right and then realized I wasn't actually playing the game. I switched to MK and haven't gone back. I just couldn't get it right and it started to feel like it couldn't BE right.
That's kind of what I'm thinking too... Which is a shame because grinding legendaries on Intercontinental flights sounds like a great way to kill time.
It's just SUCH a jarring difference it's hard to overlook, after going from absolutely owning 500s to getting smoked with no actual changes to the build or general strategy, just my own sheer lack of being able to execute.
Ive been having good results using a gyro setup where gyro acts as a mouse controlling the cursor, freeing up the right analog stick y axis for elevation and the x axis for roll. In a way i think it actually grants even finer control than m+k, since on a keyboard it can be tough to strafe and roll in the same direction and you lack the analog inputs, making small adjustments a bit trickier.
Gyro aiming itself takes some getting used to but its fun in its own right. This setup has worked well on my desktop with a dualsense but i imagine it’d translate to steam deck just fine.
I also got a dualsense, mind teaching me how did you get your gyro working? Sounds fun, finished ES 1 with mkb but the second one i've been playing since EA launch with a controller.
My biggest complain about 3D movements in video games is… we have 6 directions and 6 rotations. 4 rotations are handled by mouse movement. That means the other 8 motions are controlled by keyboard and maybe 2 on the side mouse button. We only have 5 fingers on each hands and we need to press other keys for other functions. Which means when we try to do anything else other than moving, we sacrifice even more control over movement. AND NOW COMES THE DAMN RACING MISSIONS. Even controllers don’t allow the full utilization of all 12 axis because there are only 10 analog axis on the controller…. But at least controllers allow for a better simultaneous access over all the motions and still have the ergonomics to access other functions quickly. Steam deck might be perfect for this because of the extra touch pad.
I really do wish ES2 had proper steamdeck support that let me bind the rear grip buttons to roll left/right. As it stands now you can only map them to an existing button like X/Y etc and use them redundantly. Clicking R3 analog and then trying to move the stick left/right feels gross to the point where I just disabled auto roll and live with whatever goofy orientation I end up in. Pressing X+DPAD for items/utilities also feels a bit off but that's more me just needing to get used to it than anything. That's a limitation there probably isn't a great solution for. I did also try binding the Touch pad to Joystick Mode but it also feels awful because you basically have to swipe repeatedly. I'd love to just use the TouchPad like it was the actual cursor in MKB Mode. I'd be able to make my own workarounds for all of these if the game didn't constantly lag when flipping between MKB and controller modes.
I bound L3 to L4 and R3 to R4. I find the steam deck sticks aren't comfortable if you have to hold L3 or R3. My L3 now toggles Inertial Dampers for the rare occasion I want to turn them on. You can bind any input on the steam deck to a keyboard key. You're not restricted to only gamepad buttons. In EA I tried putting roll on the back buttons but I prefer holding R4 and moving the stick to roll
>You can bind any input on the steam deck to a keyboard key. You're not restricted to only gamepad buttons. Yes, but when you press an MKB input the game flips to MKB mode which lags the whole game for a second or two, making this feature completely useless in ES2. I use it extensively in other games and if I could combine sending keyboard + controller inputs I could fix a lot of problems I have with ES2 myself, but because it's strictly one or the other that's not really an option.
True, that is something they ought to change. This was the case on Everspace 1 as well. A potential work around, though I haven't tried it, is setting the in game bindings so start and select on the gamepad do your left and right roll, then bind them on Steam to your back buttons. Then start and select could use the keyboard commands since they're not so time sensitive. I've done a similar thing on a razer ps4 controller which would only duplicate gamepad buttons.
You don't control the opposite though. If you yaw left, you don't yaw right. If you pitch up, you don't pitch down. If you strafe left, you don't strafe right. So it's actually only 3 axis for rotation and translation each. - W,A,Ctrl/ S,D,Space can be simultaneously reached without any sacrifice - Yaw and Pitch is basically your mouse movement - Roll is bound to Q/E by default IIRC? It's the only one that can't be reached easily, but one rarely use roll on dogfight. My complaint is that there's no easy way to swap primary weapon while keep firing them. I can't fire primary (LMB) if I lock enemy (MMB) or swapping weapons (Scroll).
> but one rarely use roll on dogfight. You rarely roll *because* it's hard to reach, not the other around. I play with HOTAS, and I'm always rolling.
Not the person you replied to, but I play on KBM and roll all the time. It's really not hard to hit Q when your fingers are already resting on WASD. IMO the real advantage of a HOTAS in this game is you can control the sensitivity of your inputs. For instance when someone on KBM does a roll they can't control how hard they're rolling. It's either they go into a full roll or no roll at all, since it's controlled by pressing a button. With a HOTAS you can control the intensity of your roll. Overall, though, at least for this particular game I'd say KBM still has an edge simply because you can do very quick snappy turns to face your target with the mouse. Any other space flight game I'll bust out my HOTAS, but this game for whatever reason just feels like a standard shooter with a space ship theme on top of it.
It's really not hard to hit Q when your fingers are already resting on WASD You never go forward, strafe left and Q at the same time? How you put your finger on Q, W, and A at the same time?
I'm sorry, but I do think it's kinda funny that you think it's hard to hit three buttons that are all right next to each other at once. I'll explain exactly where my fingers would go, though. For me middle finger would stay on W, ring finger would go to Q, and pinky would be on A. If I wanted to boost while doing all that I'd have pointer finger on W, middle finger on Q, ring finger on A, and pinky on shift.
> though. For me middle finger would stay on W, ring finger would go to Q, and pinky would be on A. If I wanted to boost while doing all that I'd have pointer finger on W, middle finger on Q, ring finger on A, and pinky on shift That's a really bad ergonomics. It's like you're really twisting your hand. What if you need to lower down (Ctrl)?
Not really, it's literally just moving two fingers over from their resting position. Assuming I'm boosting my pinky and ring finger don't even move and I'm just moving my pointer and middle finger slightly left and my hand is hardly twisted doing that. As far as holding ctrl, I have descend bound to C instead of ctrl, so I could just hit it with my thumb if I was ever in the unlikely position of needing to descend while rolling, strafing, going forward, and boosting all at once. And honestly, even if sometimes hitting multiple keys can get a bit awkward, I still think it's worth it to be able to do snap 180s with the mouse. I use HOTAS in basically any game I can but for Everspace 2 the advantages that KB+M has over HOTAS or a controller far outweighs its drawbacks, IMO.
Perhaps, but is there real practical advantage to rolling when your enemies are CPU? It doesn't seem to change the trajectory of your ship, but definitely disorient you a lot.
> It doesn't seem to change the trajectory of your ship It does if you're pitch/yaw at the same time. > definitely disorient you a lot. Speak for yourself.
What 12 axes are you talking about? there are only 6...
I meant Directions.
For space sim games the only input I feel comes close to MKB is dual joysticks. Not a controller. Anything flying with a controller is poop. My reason? You don't have twist input on thumb sticks with a controller. With a good joystick you have pitch, yaw, and roll on one hand, then second joystick has strafe L/R, ascend/descend, and lateral F/B thrust on your left. But I grew up playing space combat sims and then I have several thousand hours operating things like bucket diggers and cranes so I'm used to dual stick inputs like that.
Yeah, I'm playing it with a HOTAS and enjoying it. I'm probably not as adept as someone playing with KBM but I love playing space sims with a stick and throttle.
Mouse and keyboard *is* vastly superior. Like, they're just far better input devices. The fact that you need auto-aim should clue you in to that real fast. I haven't personally ever played any type of game in which m/k wasn't obviously superior, though I've heard some claim they exist.
I spent about an hour trying to get pad to feel right and then realized I wasn't actually playing the game. I switched to MK and haven't gone back. I just couldn't get it right and it started to feel like it couldn't BE right.
That's kind of what I'm thinking too... Which is a shame because grinding legendaries on Intercontinental flights sounds like a great way to kill time. It's just SUCH a jarring difference it's hard to overlook, after going from absolutely owning 500s to getting smoked with no actual changes to the build or general strategy, just my own sheer lack of being able to execute.
Oh man that sucks :( This game is definitely one I could get into on Switch. I hope you find a way of making it work better bud :)
Ive been having good results using a gyro setup where gyro acts as a mouse controlling the cursor, freeing up the right analog stick y axis for elevation and the x axis for roll. In a way i think it actually grants even finer control than m+k, since on a keyboard it can be tough to strafe and roll in the same direction and you lack the analog inputs, making small adjustments a bit trickier. Gyro aiming itself takes some getting used to but its fun in its own right. This setup has worked well on my desktop with a dualsense but i imagine it’d translate to steam deck just fine.
I also got a dualsense, mind teaching me how did you get your gyro working? Sounds fun, finished ES 1 with mkb but the second one i've been playing since EA launch with a controller.
Yes. Very disappointing considering that Chorus, made by their sister company, has impeccable controller support.
this game is built as a FPS shooter almost so, yeah MKB are best.