Space combat & WASD (or however you have it bound)

[OdnaZvezda]

I've completed all the space combat missions without using WASD or the arrow keys(mouse and 1-4 only). This isn't about space combat being too difficult, so much as it is about quality of life/convenience.

 

I am not a keyboard turner and have bound strafe to my A and D keys(they were Q and E by default). If I want to use movement keys in space combat, I either have to remap my turn left/right keys back to A/S or use my arrow keys. Not an ideal solution.

 

I have two suggestions. Make a set of space combat keybinds separate from planetary movement keybinds so one doesn't override the other, or link the strafe keys to left/right movement in space(retaining the turn left/right links)

[Kazmtyh]

 

I've completed all the space combat missions without using WASD or the arrow keys(mouse and 1-4 only).

 

:confused: Who hasn't?

 

I have never touched the WASD keys in any space mission. 99% of your controls, like movement and aim are controlled by the mouse. You move where you aim... Other than the Boost items you can get for the ship and the spacebar for rolls you never need to touch the keyboard.

 

So I don't understand your post... You 'want' to use the WASD for space? Why?

Edited January 25, 2012 by Kazmtyh

[Frigidman]

Basically... there needs to be a keybinding way to have WASD move the ship as normal, without screwing up character movement settings on WASD.

 

And I agree. It seems a whole heck of a lot of people change "A" and "D" to strafe left/right for character movement. Which effectively kills the ability to slide your starship left and right away from the target (cursor pointer). Since it kills the left/right movement of the starship, people feel forced to move over to the arrow keys for full ship movement keys. Unfortunately the side effect of that, is now the four hotkeys for ship specials are located on the other side of the keyboard.

 

Just because you don't fully use ship movement, doesn't mean everyone else isn't. The doubled up keybinding is silly.

 

Oh, and this topic has come up so many times now ... so the OP isn't alone.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Frigidman

[Foulwin]

I agree this is a must. I'm level 49 and had no idea you could move the ship with keys because I've rebound my move character keys to ESDF. Bioware please just add a 'space combat keybinding' section and everything would be fine.

[LethargicCurve]

Agreed. I've started to consider this a bug.

 

 

We are, after all, told that our ships can be moved in space combat with the WASD keys. However, this is not true; for me, only the W and S keys were working, and I had, for the longest time, believed that side-slipping had been nerfed out of the game..

 

 

Then I pressed the left arrow key, and was amazed that my ship was sliding to the side. Since then, I've realized; you can be much more maneuverable with control in all three directions! There's a lot of places in space combat where previously, my only options were to (1) pop my ECM pod, or (2) go full defense, forget about firing at a target, and fly all over with the mouse.

 

 

This is not ideal, and more egregiously, this would be simple to fix. Hard-binding space combat to WASD would work for most players, but would be very bad for those who use nonstandard keyboards like DVORAK. Another solution would be to reassign the default key bindings to the same as what I imagine 99% of players use, with A and D as Strafe Left and Right respectively, and re-map the space combat strafe keys to Strafe Left and Right.

 

The ideal solution, of course, is simply to make a "Space Combat" tab in key bindings and let you remap your space combat jink and strafe keys and the hotkeys that go with them, and quite frankly I am astounded this is not already in place.

 

Please fix this, BioWare. It wouldn't take too much time to fix, especially if you laze out and hard-bind them to WASD.

[Cirinia]

I'm using WASD in space combat all the time. I know it isn't necessary to complete missions but I like to eliminate as many targets as possible and take minimum damage in the process. Call it old space combat sims veteran habit:)

 

Anyway I agree space combat and character control key binds shouldn't interfere.

[imperator_sulla]

I've posted on this a couple of times always offering the same solutions: either have separate keybindings for space combat or allow us to have more than one keybinding profile so we can quickly switch between them( thus allowing a default set-up profile to use for space combat). I can't believe this hasn't been addressed especially when they put in perks to gain more experience through space combat showing that they are not abandoning it.

[Gniev]

Not to be pesky, but I've just started doing space missions and discovered that you CAN after all slide left and right - if only you didn't bind strafe keys to A and D. Once I announced that on the guild chat, everyone was stunned ^^.

 

I see the topic popped up a year ago, and there was zero response since, so let me bring that up once again .

 

Suggestion: make separate binds for space combat