Spoiler
What is the point of having a dual stick setup if you aren't going to have dual stick flying? It's not an easy thing to manage of course. There's FOUR independent directions to deal with: Velocity, ship direction, weapon direction and omni shield direction. Each direction is important and 2 sticks is hardly enough to manage them.
Omni Shields and Weapon Arcs follow the cursor, the diference of both is speed, which the weapons are bettter and turret arcs, both of those are acounted for on the Right stick, only being changed by player proficiency.
Ship Direction is acounted for twice: one for Broadside ships, like Conquest, using the D-pad sides, and one for the normal ships, using the Turn to cursor, which them makes that a problem of the Right Stick.
Velocity Direction of acelleration is also acounted, WASD and D-pad function basically the same way, and that's important, because the D-pad will aways be on your side, while the Left stick will apply full trust on a direction you might not want to just because you missed a small tolerance window
It's All Acounted for.
We may as well continue refining the interface down to a science.
With 4 cardinal directions to deal with, it can be grouped into 2. Velocity and Ship Direction can be handled with the way of the toggle method: The movement stick handles forward, back, and strafe, but strafe can be toggled to turn so the weapon and shield can orient independent of the ship.
The strafe and turn means of movement have been around since the old days of video games, so it may take time to get the spatial perception to know how to helm a ship in turn mode (I had my fair share of playing Asteroids and few I'd rather not mention when it comes to such control schemes), while strafe mode is more intuitive.
The "camera" stick determines weapon and shield orientation, and while in strafe mode, auto-orient the ship to face the same direction. There needs a control option to not select any weapon group and just focus on shield orientation.
Of course, things get interesting when it comes to the diverse nature of controllers for PCs. I have a Xbox 360 wired controller and a Steam Link compatible smartphone, though screen size leaves much to be desired when I opted for durability that makes an Onslaught jealous (but not a Nokia), not some high tech flagship a Tri-Trachyon employee would fancy having the credits to buy.
Do you still need to lock on? Otherwise you can still pause for locking on, not optimal, but it works right?
Locking on is more important for auto-fire weapon target prioritization (when in range) and fighter wing targeting. Fighter Strike tactical orders are good when saturating attacks to a single ship or specifically designate which carrier sends wings to which target, but forget about being economical with command points when using builds not geared to address it.
Pausing is one thing, but to use a controller to point a cursor at a ship and lock on, that has its own hurdles when the cursor comes with the shield and weapon orientation. Unfortunately Steam Link controllers are phased out in favor of smartphones, which can be inconvenience when the screen size could screw someone over in terms of controls, even with a third party gamepad connected.