Control setup , mouse button as fire key?

[ragemaster9999]

Game would make more sense to me using the WSAD keys to make my ship move and use mouse to target and fire weapons, apparently I cant do this though? I hate having to use only my keyboard. Any suggestions?

[Sinsling]

You can manually change the button config in preferences.

You can also try playing with a controller if you would like.

[warp_core]

You can't remap the fire key to your mouse buttons but you can use left click to select a ship (targeting it) and there are also some fleet command features that the mouse buttons provide.
As said above, you can remap keyboard buttons from the preferences, from the main menu.

[dr_hallii]

I have a programmable 12 button smart mouse. Everything is mapped to it.
Otherwise, keyboard commando is probably your best (only) option.

[ragemaster9999]

Originally posted by dr_hallii:

I have a programmable 12 button smart mouse. Everything is mapped to it.
Otherwise, keyboard commando is probably your best (only) option.

how? when i try and map a mouse key it wont work

[Sinsling]

Note he said 12 button smart mouse. Basically, those buttons are like keyboard buttons, not mouse clicks.

[dr_hallii]

I think it was 40 bucks at Wal Mart. Great investment for all types of gaming.

[Keegandalf]

I have a mouse with the extra side buttons and they also will not bind to the fire key, best bet is to steer with WASD and fire with Space

[jafdy]

You could bind those keys as a macro to press the desired keyboard key when pressed, that would have the same effect.

[Ker]

Please check timestamps btw.

But yes, you can bind key macros to a several button mouse - that is generally how they work anyway. The mail reason why you can't point and click fire is because the game has build in RTS commands. You can also use your mouse to select targets, including target planets to hail or land on.

[Darklocq]

It's almost unbelievable that after this long we still can't assign mouse keys to firing (you know, like 99.99% of video games ever made). Someone maybe can figure out the key codes used in the game's keys.txt. They are not Direct Input Keyboard codes as used in most games. Most of them are short, like "9" or "105", but some of them are long like "1073741906" (in mine, these are for arrow and function keys). Not sure what these codes are; I don't recognize them, much less know which ones correspond to mouse buttons.

[Architect_Luke]

Originally posted by Darklocq:

It's almost unbelievable that after this long we still can't assign mouse keys to firing (you know, like 99.99% of video games ever made). Someone maybe can figure out the key codes used in the game's keys.txt. They are not Direct Input Keyboard codes as used in most games. Most of them are short, like "9" or "105", but some of them are long like "1073741906" (in mine, these are for arrow and function keys). Not sure what these codes are; I don't recognize them, much less know which ones correspond to mouse buttons.

As long as you're necro'ing a thread more than 2 years old, I'll participate.

Look, there are things the mouse can do which the keyboard can't. They are as important, or actually MORE important, than the fire buttons (which aren't aimed by the mouse). The three ordinary mouse keys (left, right, scroll) are taken by these things. A keyboard can't locate and select enemies, planets etc. and a mouse can. All that is needed to fire is to hit a button. If you like, Space and Tab both work great for this. Otherwise, you should get a gaming mouse. The mouse point-and-click functionality is needed for player-guided selections.

I suppose you could, in theory, code the functions used by left and right mouse buttons as more standard buttons, but it's not a great idea. You would basically have "select at pointer" remapped manually by the player, while the actual mouse keys are just more buttons to be freely mapped like spacebar. Sometimes features are not changeable because they would help players to disrupt or ruin their own game experience.

Who is ready to see people quit in frustration after mapping over their select-at-pointer keys into fire keys, and others constantly bombard the forum with "how do I select something manually?" All so... what? someone doesn't have to learn where their spacebar (or literally any key of their choice) is? It's not a shootemup bullethell game, and doesn't function in a way that the mouse is tied to aim nor shooting.

[Ker]

Look, its literally just the RTS commands that are getting in the way and the lack of will for anyone to work around those issues, or fix how keybinds work in ES. So my suggestion has always been, and will always remain, "use macros."

There are third party tools that will allow people to bind mouse keys and mouse buttons. It's extra steps for the same result, granted, but its not hard.

As for the reasons why, perhaps, maybe, someone should look into fixing keybinds are legion. Everything from controller support, to allowing people who are, say, one handed to play using a several-button mouse as a reasonable accommodation.

Anyway this thread is so old even I am getting notes on it. So I'm going to lock this as a necro, and suggest that a thread like this be created in feature requests.

Good luck and good hunting.