Hey mouse / keyboard friends, this reply by Brawndo0369 gets to an issue that goes beyond just leading cursor control:
"I find myself having trouble just flying around the fleets in the intros, much less drawing a bead on an opposing fighter."
This is a problem for ALL users of this game. The problem is "over-steering." The ship needs to go where we point it, whether we are using a mouse, controller, or flight stick. But instead, what happens is the ship keeps moving heading even after you get to where you want to point. It keeps drifting, so that you have to "counter steer" to straighten out. This did not happen in Xwing, Tie Fighter, XvT, or XWA, but is a new problem (feature??) with Squadrons. It makes simply steering your ship extra challenging, and it makes tight turns followed by good shots extremely hard to pull off. I believe this happens with all inputs, though I have only tried mouse and flight stick.
Anyway, just thought I would point out that there are steering issues with every controller in this game. It is just impossible to do a quick turn and come out of it exactly where you want it to go without somehow calculating/guessing how much you need to counter-steer first. Perhaps if that were fixed, everyone would have an easier time adjusting to other idiosyncrasies of the game.
Personally I am a flight stick user, old XvT / XWA player, but I used to play Wing Commander with a mouse back in the day, and Xwing sometimes. The method of mouse control used in Squadrons is actually traditional for both the Xwing and Wing Commander series. I have tried Squadrons with mouse and keyboard, and it feels fine, since I have experience with that. I do not see the disadvantage you all are talking about compared to flight stick, but I understand you are used to a different method from other games. I think it was Freelancer that started the trend of the guns shooting toward the cursor. The game *could* have been designed like that of course, but that is a completely different method of steering, shooting, and flight control. It could be implemented so that anyone (joystick, console controller, or mouse / keyboard) could move the cursor to where they want, and have guns follow immediately and heading follow eventually. However, that's not the way this game or its predecessors work. Instead you have to use your input method to basically "request" your ship to move in a certain direction, and then you have to calibrate your own inputs to come out of that turn when you are at the desired heading. I pointed out above how that is unusually hard in this game, whereas in others it has been easier. I would certainly vote for making the ship stop turning when you tell it to, no matter which input you are using. That might help everyone. But I don't know what that would take to implement now that the game is launched.