Only use a joystick with a helo if you have a good one, have it calibrated, and you are willing to invest some time getting a feel for flying with it. It will take 3-7 days to get comfortable with a joystick, whereas a mouse and keyboard gets you up much faster which is why everyone defaults to it. Plus joysticks cost money, especially good ones.
Once you get used to a joystick it is a much more stable platform for doing complex maneuvers in quick sucession. You can really get into and out of sticky (omg teh punz) situations with a joystick, especially where a mouse will not keep pace. I have yet to see anyone practiced enough with a joystick though - this game has some kind of stigmata about joysticks users. I have seen many mouse users - all of whom consider themselves awesome with it kind of like cs players lol, so don't always take their words at face value. I have only seen one or two do anything out of the ordinary (e.g. other then circling and spawn raping which everyone can do) and nothing that cannot be done with a good joystick. Most helicopters attribute their skill to
how many kills they can rack up, and whether or not their tv gunner can aim well.
The reality is, good pilots stay alive longer, and know when to fight and when to run. They know when to rearm, repair, where all the important assets such as AA, Jeeps, Rocket toting hos, and when the enemy helicopter should be back up, and where about it will be without communication. Good pilots know where their gunner is looking and what he is thinking, so that when your gunner is half baked, you can utilize aircraft movement to say, hey get this guy right here. There is a continuity between a good gunner and pilot, especially when you have voice comm (it helps a lot), but if you don't have it, you can utilize common movements to say look at this, or there is a guy here - e.g. I'm not here for no reason and I didnt fire a single rocket right there to see the pretty fireworks.
Most importantly, good pilots have a bag of excellent maneuvers for ugly situations, and good pilots know how to evade constant jet raping, and enemy helicopter fire. It takes a lot of knowledge to be a good pilot, but just a little flying skill in BF2, so you can see why a mouse and keyboard will still work well, but you will have to spend a lot more practice developing any kind of tricks to get away safely and take less fire when you are using a mouse and keyboard. You need a big deskspace, and a good arm, and a lot of time, because when a helicopter gets in a near unrecoverable maneuver, e.g. a dive, or a roll over, it is much much harder to recover from with the mouse then it is with a joystick.
For the majority of you, you may as well just use mouse and keyboard, it gets the job done the fast and easy way which is what everyone wants. If you are more interested in flying and the feel you get for flying with a stick, you really get a sense of what your vehicle is wanting to do when you're on the stick and how to counter its antisocial behavior Regardless, have fun, the AA will take you out anyway rofl. Flying isn't what it used to be - all the heli's now spawn rape where they know they are safe from AA and its kinda ruined half the fun of flying a heli when everyone is too scared to venture forth.
Once you get used to a joystick it is a much more stable platform for doing complex maneuvers in quick sucession. You can really get into and out of sticky (omg teh punz) situations with a joystick, especially where a mouse will not keep pace. I have yet to see anyone practiced enough with a joystick though - this game has some kind of stigmata about joysticks users. I have seen many mouse users - all of whom consider themselves awesome with it kind of like cs players lol, so don't always take their words at face value. I have only seen one or two do anything out of the ordinary (e.g. other then circling and spawn raping which everyone can do) and nothing that cannot be done with a good joystick. Most helicopters attribute their skill to
how many kills they can rack up, and whether or not their tv gunner can aim well.
The reality is, good pilots stay alive longer, and know when to fight and when to run. They know when to rearm, repair, where all the important assets such as AA, Jeeps, Rocket toting hos, and when the enemy helicopter should be back up, and where about it will be without communication. Good pilots know where their gunner is looking and what he is thinking, so that when your gunner is half baked, you can utilize aircraft movement to say, hey get this guy right here. There is a continuity between a good gunner and pilot, especially when you have voice comm (it helps a lot), but if you don't have it, you can utilize common movements to say look at this, or there is a guy here - e.g. I'm not here for no reason and I didnt fire a single rocket right there to see the pretty fireworks.
Most importantly, good pilots have a bag of excellent maneuvers for ugly situations, and good pilots know how to evade constant jet raping, and enemy helicopter fire. It takes a lot of knowledge to be a good pilot, but just a little flying skill in BF2, so you can see why a mouse and keyboard will still work well, but you will have to spend a lot more practice developing any kind of tricks to get away safely and take less fire when you are using a mouse and keyboard. You need a big deskspace, and a good arm, and a lot of time, because when a helicopter gets in a near unrecoverable maneuver, e.g. a dive, or a roll over, it is much much harder to recover from with the mouse then it is with a joystick.
For the majority of you, you may as well just use mouse and keyboard, it gets the job done the fast and easy way which is what everyone wants. If you are more interested in flying and the feel you get for flying with a stick, you really get a sense of what your vehicle is wanting to do when you're on the stick and how to counter its antisocial behavior Regardless, have fun, the AA will take you out anyway rofl. Flying isn't what it used to be - all the heli's now spawn rape where they know they are safe from AA and its kinda ruined half the fun of flying a heli when everyone is too scared to venture forth.