Merged the two threads.
I'm not opposed to adding dedicated strafe left/right buttons in principle, but it is adding more complexity to the controls. Both for configuring them, and for where they go on the keyboard in the default layout. (Before you suggest Q and E, they're being saved for active ship systems, later on.) I feel like anything that impacts the learning curve needs to be considered very carefully. Yeah, this is just one thing - but there are a potentially a *lot* of those, and the controls are already fairly involved.
I'd love to hear from more people here. Personally, I've only felt like I wanted to do that very few times - but then, I tend to set anything turreted on autofire, and it's usually easy enough to move the mouse to where it needs to be for strafe to move where you want it to.
I only set PD weapons on autofire, and when I'm busy firing fixed-weapons or missiles, I turn autofire on for turrets temporarily. I use ESDF configuration, but that is another thing - I moved A and D (turn left/right) to Q and E, and set A and D to strafe left/right; strafe is a high priority for me. It allows me to make sharp turns, or set a fixed weapon on auto-fire, and while "orbiting" the target, use my mouse to shoot other stuff down - which is impossible with this auto-turn thing when strafing.
And as I tend to use strafe a lot, most of the time I lose my target; since my ship starts turning towards the pointer, the target gets out of my firing arc. This gets a worse problem when I am commanding capital ships; most of the time my ships turning in the wrong direction, and due to that I cannot dodge the anti-capital torpedoes, I get myself more exposed and I usually end up hugging all of the salvo.
And about that ESDF configuration, since I have access to more buttons on left side, anything you add to Q and E can directly go to that side for me