I’ve been fiddling about with my m/k controls a bit more, as I was having difficulty with that Crimson Bastard sidewinder training mission (Sidewinder Face-off- the previous two were easy).
My feeling that Roll should be on the A/D keys and Yaw on the mouse x-axis is right, I think.
The key thing about Roll on A/D is that since Roll is the fastest of all the movement types out of the box, it doesn’t really require much in the way of analogue control from the mouse (i.e. doesn’t get any special benefit from it), since you only need to tap the keys as much as you need to roll. And having the full analogue movement from the mouse on Pitch (joystick emulation style) is better anyway (and set on on Absolute rather than Relative). Yaw on x-axis (no roll) remains great for “fine tuning” aim, and still takes advantage of all those years of muscle memory (as opposed to having the weird Roll on the x-axis). Also, for some reason, Roll on A/D is just really, really smooth and easy, the two hands easily work together for it.
But I realized that while W/S for pitch was fun and intuitive enough (as an old Descent thing), and got me over the hump of getting into the control system, it’s actually a waste of keys, since my mouse could be doing all the pitching I need, plus the mouse analogue control is better for that anyway (since Pitch can be either full-on or part of the “fine tuning” on combination with Yaw).
So I tried what I’ve seen mentioned a few times: W and S for Thrust up/down (with Q/E for Thrust L/R). THIS IS THE GAME CHANGER. I thought I was being quite cute to have LCTRL for down thrust and SPACE for up thrust, as it takes advantage of the muscle memory for crouch and jump. But the problem is, with a turn system based on Roll->Pitch, the equivalent of A/D for ground avatar circle strafing IS the up/down thrust, and for that you need the keys instantly accessible, and having the thrust down in particular (the most used, if things go over your head) tied to S, and right next to the Roll keys, is absolutely golden.
It basically allows you to do really easily what amounts to the same as the FAOFF trick you see so often, except you don’t need to have FAOFF (although of course you can, for added goodness, and I’ll be practicing that for sure, but it requires more finesse to lower thrust quickly to counteract some of the acceleration). Basically you just hit down (S) enough to give you the strafing effect, so you have the bottom of the enemy under your guns as soon as you release it and he gets into your sights as you pitch up. It makes that basic maneouvre easy peasy, and makes it much easier to maneouvre to stay behind the enemy in general too.
Thrust forward/back is now CTRL and SPACE, which have a visceral feel of jamming your pinky to “pull back” and banging the spacebar with your thumb to “pump forward” - meaning, again, more ease, because you don’t really need to monitor the throttle all that much. You just need it set to 50% and it defaults to that sweet spot no matter what you do.
Result: Sidewinder face-off beaten really easily, whereas before I was finding it really hard.