Everspace 2 is a good game until you change a bunch of settings, then it becomes a great game. Flying around in Everspace 2 feels great and the game offers a level of fine-tuning and precision control that isn’t often seen in other space shooters. Unfortunately, you won’t get a great sense of how well Everspace 2 plays if you only use the default settings and controls. If you haven’t started the game, or if you have and you feel like you’re fighting against your controller at every turn, try some or all of these adjustments. I guarantee they will help you get more out of the game.
Remap The Controls
Everspace 2 supports mouse and keyboard, gamepad, and flight stick inputs. If you’ve got a flight stick, it goes without saying that that’s the best way to play. I would encourage a dual-stick setup as opposed to HOTAS, simply because strafing and flying backwards are both hugely important and can be difficult to set up on a throttle, especially if you aren’t used to controlling a flightcraft in that way.
If you’re using a m+kb combo, you’re probably going to change all the key bindings anyway. Overall, the default keyboard controls aren’t too bad, but everyone has their own personal preferences.
The real issue is the controller mapping. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to put boost on L3 and roll on R3, but it’s incredibly uncomfortable to try to hold in a stick and steer it. The problem is, once you change those two inputs you have to change practically everything.
The controller configuration page in the settings lets you adjust a lot, but not everything. You can set up button combo inputs, but you can’t combine a button and stick input. For example, you can’t set “hover up” to LT + right stick up. I decided to move Hover Up and Hover Down to the L3 and R3, move boost to LT, and move roll to LB and RB (roll left and roll right). This makes it a little harder to roll left while you’re boosting, but otherwise, this is a far more comfortable way to pilot your ship both during high-speed dog fights and when navigating narrow passages. Here’s my full controller layout if you’d like to save yourself some time:
- Pitch axis – Right Stick Y
- Yaw axis – Right Stick X
- Roll left – Left Shoulder
- Roll right – Right Shoulder
- Thrust axis – Left Stick Y
- Strafe axis – Left Stick X
- Hover up – L3
- Hover down – R3
- Boost [HOLD] – Left Trigger
- Cruise drive [HOLD] – Left Trigger + A
- Supralight drive [HOLD] – Left Trigger + Y
- Fire primary weapon – Right Trigger
- Next primary weapon – DPad Left
- Fire secondary weapon – Y
- Next secondary weapon – DPad Right
- Use device – X
- Use consumables – B
- Use ULT – DPad Up
- Lock target – DPad Down
- Interact – A
- Fling objects – A
- Switch camera mode – DPad Down + X
Gameplay Options
I messed with the FOV for both 3rd and 1st person a bit, but ultimately I think the defaults are fine and this should be just a matter of preference. Widening your FOV does allow you to see more of the world around you, but it can make it much harder to aim, so that trade-off is completely up to you.
The only options I would change here are the Gamepad Icon Style (change it to the controller you’re using) and Show HUD In Cockpit. There are a lot of controls to learn and a lot to keep track of when you start Everspace 2. Hiding the HUD will give you a more immersive feeling, but until you’re comfortable flying and you understand all of the Cockpit readouts, you should definitely turn the Cockpit HUD on.
Gamepad Settings
Here comes the only “hot take” in this guide: turn your Auto Aiming Strength all the way up. I know you have your pride and you need to prove you’re a good gamer, but I promise you this game is so much more fun when you can hit your targets. Auto Aiming is a bit of a misnomer here; it’s actually bullet magnetism. This can cause some problems when you’re trying to target the guns on a big cruiser, but for the most part, increasing the strength will just help you hit the things you’re aiming at easier. This is a single-player game, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. This is for your own good, I promise.
You should also turn off Input Smoothing. I found any amount of input smoothing made me feel less reactive. I think it’s good to get used to playing without it, because it ultimately gives you more control.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure the Aiming Sensitivity slider does absolutely nothing. This might be a bug.
Finally, turn off Automatic Rolling. This setting will automatically rotate your ship so that you’re always level with “the ground,” which doesn’t really make a lot of sense when you’re flying around in space. It always feels weird when your ship moves for no reason, so it’s best to just turn this off.
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Eric Switzer is the Livestream News Editor for TheGamer as well as the lead for VR and Tech. He has written about comics and film for Bloody Disgusting and VFXwire. He is a graduate of University of Missouri – Columbia and Vancouver Film School. Eric loves board games, fan conventions, new technology, and his sweet sweet kitties Bruce and Babs. Favorite games include Destiny 2, Kingdom Hearts, Super Metroid, and Prey…but mostly Prey. His favorite Pokémon is Umbreon.
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