Problem with Gamepad setup

Hello Folks,

I've played EoC for quite a while before, using Joystick and Keyboard, and got along fine.
Now, however, I got a new computer, which doesn't have a Gameport anymore so I can't use my old joystick. I wanted to start the game over, anyway.
So I got me a Logitech Rumblepad II, but now I have trouble setting it up.

Basically what I want to do is the following:
"cross" for HUD control -- no problem, works fine
Left Joystick for Pitch and Yaw, also works (but a bit slow)
Right Joystick for lateral and vertical thrusters -- nothing doing.

I've tried assigning the bindings to "Joystick2" - nothing happens.
I've tried "Joystick1 JoyRXaxis" - nope.
And I've tried using the Logitech software to assign "A" and "D" to the right joystick's X Axis. Works in the Logitech setup program, but not in the game.

Currently the game uses the right joystick's X axis as throttle. The weird thing here is that I don't have any joystick bindings for throttle in the default.ini!

Please help me. Are there any recommended setups for the Rumblepad II? How do I assign the lateral thrusters to the right Joystick's X axis?
I absolutely cannot play without lateral thrusters. They kill me dead.

Thanks for your help.

You don't tell your pilots to be careful. You tell them Good Hunting!

If I remember correctly, most gamepads don't assign the right joystick the designation of 'Joystick2'. They will usually give left and right the joystick1 rotation axis (or something like that) and up and down will be assigned to the throttle axis. I'm probably not much help because I don't remember the specifics of any of this, but maybe you'll figure it out.

Okay, I played around with the config file some more. You were at least partly right. Left and right is the Z axis. So I assigned lateral thrusters to this. But up and down are still without function. I tried to assign vertical thrusters to this, but it didn't work.

At this place I'd like to ask around how you folks configured the bindings. I now use the following:
<font face="Courier New">
_7 5.......6 8
_/===_____==
/....9..10..4.\
|.+........1 3.|
_\..........2./
__\.O11..O12./
___=========
</font id="Courier New">

I hope this pattern is recognizable. The "O" are the sticks (which can also be pressed as button).

Left stick: pitch and yaw
right stick: lateral thrusters
cross "+": HUD

7: forward thrusters (speed)
5: rear thrusters (brake)
8: fire weapon
6: change weapon

9: toggle flight assist on/off
1 and 12: suppress flight assist
4: toggle roll/yaw [this is not the best position for the function]
2 and 3: target nearest enemy / cycle enemy

10 is without function because it's difficult to reach.
11 as a button aquires the nearest target in view.

I feel that this still isn't quite the optimum, but works pretty well all in all.
For testing I always fly the Instant Action with the Storm Petrel.
With the default setup, I don`t even get to 1000 points.
With the abobe setup bt without lateral thrusters, I constantly got killed at maybe 1300 points
With the complete setup as above, my current record is 5000 or 6000 points. As you know, after about 3000 points a Cruiser jumps in and the Storm Petrel simply cannot take out its shields.

With Joystick and keyboard, my record was way over 10000 points. But I'm not sure now whether I killed those cruisers off with the cheat or managed it by real flying. I suspect the former is the case.

You don't tell your pilots to be careful. You tell them Good Hunting!

Addendum:

I was experimenting with the Roll function a bit. Difficult to incorporate in the gamepad if you want to use lateral thrusters as well (which is an absolute must imho).

So I tried to bind "Roll" so that the ship would roll by teh Joy1 X axis if the Joy1 Button (11) is pressed. However, I made a mistake when editing dafault.ini, and the result was that the ship now always simultaneously rolls and yaws when moving the x axis.

This felt very awkward when I tried it, and at first was destroyed at 1000 instant action points. However, I tried again, and what can I say? Though weird at first, this is the best setup I have played so far!
With the Storm Petrel, I destroyed even the first cruiser, and everything up to 10000 points. However, the second cruiser got me when I had down to 50% hull.

With yaw+roll + forward thruster + lateral thruster, you can perfectly circle capital ships at about 3km range. Give off short controlled bursts, and after several minutes of hard work, the cruiser is down.

You don't tell your pilots to be careful. You tell them Good Hunting!