Made a list for myself of some features of X-W T-F games, will add and improve it while I'll remember more things.

>Homeworld remake

Very noice taste. I still haven't beaten HW2 campaign because fucking bug stuck me on eighth level and finally I said fuck it and gave up for years. This was after hours and hours and hours on one level like you wouldn't believe because I stupidly started with max fleet cap and it was damn near impossible not to die. I put so much effort into finally beating that fucking level and some stupid bug prevented me from boarding the station. Needless to say I was pissed and obviously still get butthurt thinking about it. I probably poured 12 hours minimum into that level.

Is the Logitech X56 series of HOTAS controllers actually very good? I'm tempted to push this one through today or tomorrow just because I found a much cheaper one as compared the up to $400+ listings everywhere else. Also because I literally can just push it through a credit card right now and not have to worry about such a large lump sum purchase on something kinda retarded imho being basically just a controller toy for the literally one game and thus costing five times as much as the only game for which I want it. My brain is still saying "this is a stupid purchase for something you do not need when you could be scheming ways to make money instead" but still...it's a nice looking HOTASI do not know what makes something a nice HOTAS or not

Should I just go ahead and buy it so I stop being annoyed by keyboard and mouse while playing Elite Dangerous? This kinda is what I was savoring buying with Bidenbux to begin with and I still haven't done shit about it.

Ahhh shit well you know what just fuck it
https://www.sportys.com/logitech-x56-hotas-rgb-throttle-and-stick.html
Because I absolutely cannot possibly find something anywhere near this nice at this "cheap" when considering the fact it's selling $350 fucking dollars on ebay used which means that fuck that I might as well just wait a month and order now. It seems we're having some kind of a HOTAS shortage now or something? The fuck is going on? Everywhere I look it's either expensive as all shit, or some mortar and brick store is selling a cheap ass thing for 80 bucks. I've seen literally the exact same model of HOTAS going for anywhere from $80 to $200+. Apparently it also seems that it's not just newegg; things are pricey as shit on Amazon. I thought Amazon was supposedly cheaper? eBay is the same problem more often than I'd thought, such as even more absurd GPU and HOTAS prices, but everything else being cheaper. I think they killed my old account. Oh well. Might as well start anew.

I seemed to have developed a knack for hitting shitters at range with huge calibre high explosive rounds, setting them on fire, they burn to death and then get salty with me after the battle about how I'm a cheater and they're gonna get me banned

tanks can honestly be great fun with friends, myself and some buddies are playing it lately together and even though one of the guys is in NZ with like 350 ping we still have good fun

>>53727
I wish more people played Crossout tbh but I guess it's just harder with getting other people because there's such a high variation in power levels you're never gonna get all your friends into the same tier.

It seems to me a lot of people are just playing FtP games these days. Is this just because they're broke or it's easiest to get everyone playing the same thing or what? I remember it was just like CS 1.6 or whatever or DoD, Starcraft Broodwars, and like a handfull of other games which I guess meant we could all play together. It's so sad because I see games like Grey Goo which were clearly made with multiplayer in mind but they never took off because by then everybody had like 50 games in their backlog and fucked off to different shit. It's even more annoying because I actually bought Helldivers specifically to play with a friend who recommended it to me, and while it's great fun on its own I've not once played with that guy. Such cases.

Oh speaking of which yeah Helldivers is pretty great, mainly because the friendly fire and explosions is always on so it literally requires being not a salty Turk. It's super difficult at high tiers and requires great teamwork and skill while at the first like 3 planet levels beating it is a piece of cake. This is probably another reason why I play singleplayer only games, partly because I'm often on Slavic timescales and not using almost decade old hardware is still a wonderful new experience trying actual recent games instead of things I never played in 2010, partly because even newer games multiplayer is often dead.

There's like exactly three MP games I play, Helldivers, Governor of Poker 3, and Crossout, and a shitty phonegame where the Ukrainian developers absolutely fucked me in the few years since I stopped playing where I haven't got the new shit because I'm high level enough basically I need to pay them $100+ to get my base workable or start from scratch so fuck that fuck them. I downloaded WoT but idk if I'll get around to playing it. There's a few other FtP I saw including a spaceship game but idk if I'll try it. I played all of *Secret
World Legends* as a singleplayer RPG. I'll do the same to SWTOR at some point too, at least until the servers go offlineI fucking HATE the idea that while I can still play 25 year old games off CD no problem all this new YOBA shit is literally not going to exit or be playable in five years when the servers go down although I don't know why we don't try and play XCOM2 here. I mean other than it being basically a 2 player game. I'd think everyone on EC has at least tried it. Maybe that's the other problem which is lower barrier to entry because a lot of MP requires either lots of skill or lots of grinding to play with friends.

>>53723
It's what I use. It's fine, though frankly a bit overkill for something like Elite Dangerous, I haven't seen anything there that warrants that many hats. It's not that kind of simulation. Build quality is alright, one of my cables got damaged when I moved but it still works fine. Ergonomically, it's chonky in all ways. If your hands are on the smaller side, it will be a bit uncomfortable, and the bases aren't economic for desk space. When I set up, I've got to move my keyboard up towards the screen and the mouse down in front, but I've got a smallish desk, so if you've got lots of desk real estate it's a non-issue.

I'd recommend that t-16000m one instead if you're stuck on a HOTAS. That said, I'm pretty sure you'd get a decent enough experience off of a 3d pro stick since it's cheap, comfy, and has plenty of buttons: 5 on the stick, along with a trigger and 8-way hat, plus a throttle axis and 6 more buttons on the base. Hell, I played Falcon BMS for years on a 3d pro, and that's a study sim.

>>53727
Wow, what a nerd.

>>53736
Too late I already pushed it through. I saw it going for $400 and $350 everywhere else and finally just said fuck it because I also remembered you saying something about them getting worn out over time and didn't want to pick up some cheap crappy one that will break on me or a used one that's still exorbitantly expensive.

I also am beginning to get salty about a GPU I sold around the holidays. Man no fucking wonder that guy was so happy he gave me an extra ten dollars. I was afraid it would be hard to sell so I took a loss on what I paid for it as I also thought AMD overpriced it. I mean I guess I hadn't much choice at that point because I needed money for the holidays and was in a real financial pinch but damn, I see people selling those for 500, 600 dollars right now.

I also am just astounded what is being charged. Fucking $1200 for my present GPU. I see people doing starting bids at $975 for what cost me $400. GPU pricing and availability will never recover without crashing completely because somehow these things are selling and it would be stupid to not snap up anything near MSRP and flip it even if the card is like 6 years old. I tried bidding on hours old listings for 1050tis and within a few hours more it already surged past $170, and will be way over $300 closer to auction day. Even RX 550, the shittiest of cards, is selling for decent money. Meanwhile the Chinese plague is all over the site scamming people as usual. I have no idea why ebay tolerates this. There is no such thing as an honest chinaman. They'll do things like sell GTS 450 as a cheap 1050ti or GTX 970.

>>53758
The wearing out thing is not a massive issue. They don't just break, but rather the springs wear out over long periods of extensive use, and just require you to adjust the deadzone to account for any wobbliness.

Realistically though you'll barely notice it unless you have a really shitty stick, or one that's beat to hell, so don't fret about it. I only ever pointed that factor out because it is a minor advantage of the magnet sensor which makes it a slightly better purchase than some other sticks in the same price range.

>>53768
Well regardless I already pushed through the order, partly because I saw it was so much cheaper on that website than anywhere else including ebay used somehow, which it was on backorder. Who knows, maybe after GPUs and arse wipes the great HOTAS shortage of 2021 is next lel. Really it's just been that one big thing I'd been wishing to buy myself for months on end now which even after getting my tax returns and everything else I still hadn't done and finally just said you know what fuck it I can afford to pay for this right now I'm just being cheap and financially responsible.

The interesting thing about Elite: Dangerous is the fact that it's the first time I have ever played any game where it just feels like I need to play with a flightstick. Granted I haven't played a ton of flight sim or similar games but everything else like that I played with 3D combat felt fine with a keyboard and mouse going all the way back to Chuck Yeager's Air Combat which is like a 1994 game or something like that but for once I can physically feel it's wrong to be using the two.

Also you said something about hats and excessive controls. I never played with or programmed inputs with such a thing before however I can tell you straight up there is an absolutely ridiculous number of controls on E:D all of which are independently keyed for some absurd reason which makes it damn near impossible for me to do simple shit like scroll different menus in game without looking at my keyboard. It's not like some shooter where I can just blithely ignore half the hotkeys. I literally need to use most of them just to play the game. Really thinking on it, I can see how programming all the different hats can feel more intuitively right and easier to use. Like it just feels wrong and bizarre to me to have effectively three separate keys for basically "go faster" meanwhile I have to use all these other keys to physically move. Just controlling the spaceship with a joystick would be a relief and I'm hoping to get it shipped to me in time for Odyssey.

>>53769
Whatever works for you.

Regarding HOTAS as a concept (in the real world), though, what you describe is pretty much not the point. That's probably where the confusion between your statements and my reading comprehension comes in. We're talking about different things. Best way I can present it is visually. Pic related is a cheat sheet for the main switches in A-10C, the breadth of actions is actually very low, but instead it's set up to allow an efficient combat workflow that maintains situational awareness. The HOTAS is a process as much as it is an object. So when someone asks for my recommendation on what's a good HOTAS for X, then I'm not thinking about menus and things of that nature since that just doesn't compute with what I hear when someone uses the acronym. I'm thinking "how much systems management needs to be hands on?".

>>53772
And an example from there to show what I mean by efficient workflow.

Let's say that I am using my targeting pod to spot targets before running in. I have a wingman, and we want to hit different targets of the same type. Instead of talking him on manually, or typing out coordinates, I can simply:

TMS UP LONG
TMS RIGHT LONG

and send exactly what I'm looking at to my wingman, who can then

COOLIE LEFT LONG (assuming TAD is left MFCD and not SOI)
CURSOR SCROLL
TMS UP
TMS UP LONG

and have sights aimed at that same target.

That whole process can happen in under 10 seconds, with 6 finger movements. The reason it's on the HOTAS? Because I want to be heads down and hands off as little as possible once I'm fenced in. Dunno if the example helps demonstrate what I mean by reading HOTAS as a process, but worth a shot.

Interesting project, of still unnamed but very promising indie game. Guy developing a helicopter simulator in the style of old retro late 80s simulators with EGA flat-shaded 3d graphics
https://twitter.com/i/status/1378094190266056705
https://twitter.com/i/status/1378759382352203778