These are the games I'm interested in:

Independence War Deluxe

Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos

Freespace

Freespace 2

I am a huge sci-fi geek, and there's nothing cooler about space than getting to have your own spaceship to blow the crap out of stuff.

But all I have is my crappy laptop without a joystick. 8C

But I want these games. Badly.

You can see my dilemma. I'd be willing to play with awkward arrow keys or even the mouse if I had to, but the question is: would I be able to?

Master of Orion is not a space sim , aside from that as far as I know you wont have any problem with a mouse+keyboard tho personally I can't stand playing any sort of flight/space sim with a mouse just feels wrong...

Well, Master of Orion 1+2 (and 3 for that matter) is no space flight sim. It's an turn-based strategy game set in space. GREAT game by the way.

While I can't speak about Independe War and Freespace 1, Freespace 2 is perfectly playable with the mouse and keyboard. Sure, some people prefer the joystick, but I have never played with one and had a blast with that game.

As said, MoO and MoO2 do not need one (they are turn based strategy games). I found Mechwarrior 4 and most flight sims much better with a joystick, make sure to pick one up that has a good Z-axis, you'll miss it if you don't.

I have absolutely no idea why I put Masters of Orion 1+2 on there...

I've played Freespace 1 and 2 with just the keyboard, mainly because the mouse just felt awkward for me. Freespace 1's okay, the only thing is that movement can get twitchy if you're trying to make precise movements. Freespace 2, though, actually handled better with the keyboard only. Try it yourself and see what you think.

Though I often wondered what would happen if you could do flight sim stuff in a 4x game. Yeah, I know, far fetched thinking. ^_^'

I'm playing Freespace 2 with my playstation 3 controller, but I have tried it on a couple of missions using just the keyboard and it seemed perfectly playable. As a previous poster said the game seems to play better without the mouse.

I've played and completed all my flight sims from X-Wing onwards using a gamepad controller.