I really think both multiplayer and single player combat would be more fun if you had more control over your ships movement. I think controlling your ship with the "WASD" keys would work well if you set it up right.
My idea is that your ship should turn to face whatever direction your mouse is pointed in, and the WASD keys will move your ship either up, down, left, or right in relation to wherever your mouse is.
As an example lets say that your mouse is positioned in the middle of the top of your screen. Pressing 'W' would move your ship forward, 'S' would move it back, and 'A' and 'D' would move it left and right. If you want your ship to turn around just swing your mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen bellow your craft.
Of course this control method would require the camera to be locked onto/fallow your ship basically at all times.
Firing weapons would probably be done in 2 different ways. Either you right click on your mouse to target an enemy component and your weapons fire at it automatically whenever they are in range/sight, or your weapons will always face/target wherever your mouse is and you manually fire by left clicking. Maybe both options should be available? Since option 2 might make broad-siders and other designs harder to use.
Some other cool possibilities with this control method would be using keys like "caps lock" to engage boosters or blink drives (when they are added) fluidly within combat.
For Multiplayer balance you should probably have an option in the match settings that determines what kind of controls are going to be used in the match. These two options could be "classic" for the normal controls, and "arcade" for the new controls I'm proposing.
Joystick controls are less of a priority for me but they would work similarly to the 'WASD' controls. One joystick would control the direction that the ship is pointing, and the other would control the movement. I know that a controller isn't suited for ship building, but flying my ship around in combat with joysticks would probably feel incredibly satisfying.
Of course this new method of controlling ships wouldn't work well for fleet combat, you'd have to control the majority of the fleet with "classic" controls (or use A.I) and main one ship with "arcade" controls. But maybe this would work fine? So is anyone else interested in this kind of control method? Any other ideas concerning controls like this are also appreciated.
