I agree with a lot of what's already been said here. I was new to Hotas gameplay when I started and was complete and utter rubbish. While I'm still far from the best, I've been able to improve drastically from where I was.  <br />  Some things that helped me: <br /> <ul> <li>Racing. Play around on old Vanderval while you learn your ship. Don't even worry much about your time at first; just familiarize yourself with how your ship handles. The race track helps a lot more with spacial awareness in comparison to free flight.</li> <li>Target practice. Once you can fly, try to quickly acquire non-moving targets. I'm not sure if this is something that helped others, but I found shooting drills on asteroids helped me to learn when I was over-shooting my target.</li> <li>Go slow. If you have one, start with a hornet. They are slow which helped me a lot with getting a feel for aiming. When I was starting out, the Super Hornet helped immensely compared to the 350R. Gradually move on to a faster ship that is a bit more "twitchy" once you feel comfortable.</li> <li>Practice. I logged hours and hours of learning to fly... and then re-learning the correct way to do it. Don't make the same mistake. Make sure your controls are set up properly, and start to learn the right way to engage targets.</li> <li>Persist. I can't count the number of times when I had to suppress a rage quit. Learning to use a new control scheme is an exercise in humility. You are going to suck... a lot. Don't compare yourself to others. Instead, set your own goals and mark your self improvement.</li></ul>  <br />  You may find these sources pretty helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-La1sWURDAU <br /> http://imperialnews.network/lis/