How do you play POTCO?

[Sven Niscadae]

Since I played a lot of FPS (first person shooter) games way back when, I use #2. Left Hand for WASD movement, number keys and Function keys. Right hand on the mouse, using right button mouse looking all of the time. Most times I use left mouse button to attack but sometimes hit the left CTRL key with my left pinky if I don't feel like hearing the click of the mouse. WASD, IMO, is just easier to reach all of the necessary keys quickly, especially the Space bar to jump (not that it's needed too much in game). Plus I can hit my Enter key with my right hand while it's on its way to type a message.

As far as I know, my better half still uses the arrow keys, clicks on the weapon buttons to do special abilities, and doesn't use the right-click mouse look at all. She actually does sail looking at the rear end of the ship all of the time. Not sure how she does it, but I know it'd drive me bonkers.

[Dr. Zeppers]

Originally Posted by Sven Niscadae

Since I played a lot of FPS (first person shooter) games way back when

For the above quoted reason, I use my mouse for almost everything just like I do in my FPS games. Faster to move and aim with fluidic motion.

Movement/actions (have button set to "R" and one to "Shift"), change weapons (scroll wheel, supplemented with Function keys).

I very seldom use the keyboard for anything except hitting "T" for tonic, "Spacebar" for jumping, and of course for chatting.

This is why my pirate often says "AFK" even after playing for hours non-stop.

[Edward Edgemenace]

Originally Posted by Sven Niscadae

As far as I know, my better half still uses the arrow keys, clicks on the weapon buttons to do special abilities, and doesn't use the right-click mouse look at all. She actually does sail looking at the rear end of the ship all of the time. Not sure how she does it, but I know it'd drive me bonkers.

Your better half, may be on to something you can learn from. I truly hate the mouse, as a human/computer interface. So, I avoided it as long as possible...the first time I actually needed to pan the view while sailing, was in the boss battle (to see when the first three bridges fire.) All other sailing in the game (including SvS) can be done using the compass only. Better, in fact, since the compass is the only thing that accurately reflects what the game server sees. But the compass view only works, if the "standard" view is set to the "aft view" of the ship. If you pan the camera, the compass gets thwacked with the view, so you no longer know if you can hit, nor can you estimate if your gunners still have a shot. The down-side in SvS, is that you can sometimes miss when your opponent starts their open fire or take cover. For the relatively few opponents where that matters, I have sometimes panned the camera...always pressing the up arrow as soon as I can, to re-orient the compass and the main view. When the view is normalized, I can very accurately tell what enemies on compass are in range, for broadsides, as well as my gunners. (Different for each ship type, of course, but only slightly.)