Realistically playing with only controller?

[Pubba Bear]

I have always been eyeballing this game but I find myself in a situation where my pc is far away from my couch so I only have access to a controller. My question is would I realistically be able to play the game or will I run into some frustration without a mouse & keyboard? I saw a few other posts with people expressing challenges with the controller.

[PeaceMaker]

It is doable by quite a few people, but not perfect. But it's not really intended to be played from the couch unless you have a wireless keyboard and mouse there.

[Priest]

Depends strongly on how you want to play
Playing a Pilot, probably
Playing a Industrial, i dont think so

[Pubba Bear]

Thank you for the feedback. If I give in and finnaly get a wireless M&K I could fly around and do the bulk of gameplay with controller then do certain tasks with M&K and switch back? Or is it in my best interest to wait till I have a full setup without the controller?

[thebugmancometh]

Originally posted by Pubba Bear:

Thank you for the feedback. If I give in and finnaly get a wireless M&K I could fly around and do the bulk of gameplay with controller then do certain tasks with M&K and switch back? Or is it in my best interest to wait till I have a full setup without the controller?

Play around (in another game, perhaps) with Steam's controller overlay. I've put together profiles for a number of games that don't have controller support, like Shadowrun and Neverwinter Nights, and a few others.

Generally you'll have one of the joysticks control the mouse cursor. You can make toggleable profiles to switch between modes, as well, like one for flight and one for navigating menus.

[Pubba Bear]

That sounds interesting! I have never tried anything like that before!

[simeon]

From my personal experience, yes it is possible:

I‘m playing on a macintosh laptop via NVIDIA GeForceNow and an old Xbox controller connected via usb-adapter.
🥴

Now I have a bug by NVIDIA as I can’t see the mouse cursor when I try to control it via the controllers thumb stick in this game - but this is a NVIDIA issue and I have to switch to the laptops trackpad to control the mouse & see where the cursor is.

But if you do not have to use HAAS (hardware as a service) the mouse control in menus/mapscreen should work as intended with the thumb stick so you would not need to switch to keyboard/mouse as often as me.

In general there are some menus where you can’t use the controller cross-buttons to navigate trough (f.e. the research screen, ship comparisons menu, etc.)
But you should be able to navigate these with the thumbstick as the mouse cursor.

Since update 7.0 it is not needed to add setting with steams controller layout api, as the devs added native configurable radial menus to the game (like in many other games). Now one can easily bind many more inputs simple in the games input settings.

The devs standard mapping is decent, but you can adjust it at gusto.
F.e. I remapped the target buttons to be able to manage (sub)targets during flight more comfortable.

So mainly the menu & map navigation will be a little more complex with controller in comparison to -let’s say a standard 3rd person adventure - but this is more a temporary issue till you adapt over time.

[tR02020]

Personally I play on steam deck without issue. I think they optimized it recently because when I got my steam deck almost 6 months ago and tried to play X4 it felt unplayable but I noticed recently its verified on deck so I reinstalled it and it feels real nice to play, bit fiddly for certain things but you get a hang of it real quick. I often play on TV with an Xbox controller and its fantastic. They have quick menus for your A and X key (on Xbox controller) that allows quick access to a lot of essential options.

[Pubba Bear]

That sounds promising as well!

[Killzad]

If u get used to play with the controller and have wireless mouse. the only use left of the keyboard is if you want to rename ships. You don't actually need the keyboard to play.