Everspace 2 may be the latest spaceship shooter to enter the market, but that doesn’t necessarily mean HOTAS support was going to be available on day one. The good ole’ “hands of throttle and stick” joysticks are harder to find these days, and they don’t feel great to use in every space-sim out there. It would have been easy for ROCKFISH Games to push HOTAS support off until Everspace 2 was closer to launch, but they instead opted to implement native support for them right out of the Early Access gate.
Everspace 2 has full HOTAS support, but ROCKFISH recommends you use a different control method.
ROCKFISH Games has baked full HOTAS support into Everspace 2, but they don’t recommend using one to play their game. This has to do with how flight in Everspace 2 works: it’s less a traditional space-sim and more an arcadey six-degrees of freedom (6DoF) shooter. For us older nerds out there think of Descent and you’ll have the right idea. Since players can pilot their ships nimbly across every axis a HOTAS setup isn’t considered optimal.
But, if you want to play Everspace 2 with a HOTAS joystick you can. As of the Early Access launch, Everspace 2 supports 10 popular stick and throttle combinations with a custom preset for each. Players can manually create or alter the joystick keybindings within the game if they either don’t have a supported HOTAS or want to make tweaks to their specific preset, and these keybindings are divorced from the gamepad and mouse/keyboard inputs. The HOTAS devices with official presets are:
- Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS X
- Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS One
- Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS 4
- Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog
- Thrustmaster T16000M (Single)
- Thrustmaster T16000M (Dual Config)
- Logitech Extreme 3D Pro
- Logitech/Saitek X56
- Logitech/Saitek X52 Professional
- Logitech/Saitek X52 (by virtue of the X52 Pro support)
For those who don’t believe me when I say Everspace 2 is best played on anything other than a HOTAS configuration, here’s what Rockfish Games had to say on the matter over on Steam: “While this should be solid enough for Early Access (but not the final product!), joystick pilots should bear in mind that piloting a starfighter in EVERSPACE 2 is more like flying an agile assault chopper than a supersonic jet fighter. To defeat ES2-baddies in space, combat is more about 360° two-axis precision aiming and dodging enemy fire by swift two-axis strafing as well as quick-boosting to get out of the fire zone and then turning on a dime to counter-attack. Much different than pulling off barrel rolls, corkscrew loops, or an Immelmann, like in old-school in-atmosphere dogfighting.”
So, feel free to play with a HOTAS you crazy diamonds, but don’t be afraid to try out the other control methods if you find yourself having a rough time with your stick and throttle.
