I've got Darkstar One, Freespace 2 and Independence War sitting on my Gog list, so here's my question to the rest of you, should I Drop a bit of cash and get myself a flight stick, or will it not affect me that much?

I'm really looking forward to space but I'm seriously not sure whether my enjoyment will increase with a flight stick, or whether those kind of games are near impossible to play without one.

Yes, get a stick. I can't speak to Darkstar One, but Freespace 2 and Independence War are both improved by joystick control. People do play Freespace 2 with just mouse and keyboard and you can play Independence War 1 with just mouse and keyboard (I think), but in general you will have much more fun with a joystick. The Logitech Extreme 3D pro joystick is the one I have and it is a good stick for fairly cheap if you can find it in the UK - (it is around or less than $30 in the US).

Absolutely. I couldn't personally imagine enjoying those sort of games without one.

Well, you may actually want to play the games first, before you go investing in a pricey stick (and perhaps throttle). If you enjoy the games a lot, and can see yourself playing them and other spacefaring, or mech piloting, games, then by all means buy a decent flight system. But if not, that joystick is going to end up collecting dust in your closet. None of those games absolutely require one.

Thanks guys, I think i'm gonna look into it. I can be quite awkward with a mouse, that much was evident playing the Space battles in Star Wars:Battlefront 2.

I'm in the same boat. I've seen the logitech 3d one around here for 30 bucks as well and felt tempted to buy it except... I'd be spending thirty dollars to play a 10 dollar game! It's kind of counterproductive in a way... but I have both freespace's collecting dust because of my not having a joystick.

Two questions that could sway me over:

1) Can you use that joystick on windows 7? I'm still on XP but thinking of moving up.

2) Can you use a joystick to replace the mouse while browsing the web and such? I'm trying to keep carpal tunnel syndrome away and trying not to use the mouse as much if I don't have to. I figure a pen tablet is better for browsing stuff (would help me for work as well) but it's also way more expensive.

I've got several flight and space sims, so for me it makes sense, but I understand where you are coming from. That said you may enjoy playing Freespace 1&2 (don't forget to get the open source engine for it!) so much with a joystick, that you pick up more such games. ;)

1) The Logitech Extreme 3D pro joystick does indeed work in Win 7 (I have 32-bit, but I am pretty sure it works w/ 64-bit too).

2) Web surfing ... hmmm ... I've never tried to be honest. I'm not sure what that would be like - best case, it would probably take some getting used to, but I'm not sure that would be very practical. I strongly suspect you'd have to download specialized software to allow the joystick to create relative mouse movements in a way that would feel natural for controlling things in the OS.