I played Descent & Descent 2 with an X36 HOTAS, and used the rocker switch on the throttle for lateral movement. For that type of game I think I would want to have yaw and pitch on the right stick with twist for roll, left/right and up/down movement on the left stick, and forward/back thrust on rudder pedals.
Elite is different in that roll is important, so compared to the example above players swap the roll and yaw controls, putting yaw on the twist action. But I’ve also watched videos with people using the left x-axis for yaw control instead. I don’t know what they do for translational movement.
In any case I have two right-handed sticks and no rudder pedals. That may be enough to dink around with a HOSAS setup, but if I got serious about it then I’d probably have to buy additional hardware at some point.
My throttle doesn’t have an analog ministick unfortunately. My joystick does, and it works well enough for takeoffs and landings, but not in combat when I’m waggling the stick around.