Asimo posted:

It's spaceships. You can't just (easily) have W be "go forward" because there's three dimensional movement involved... not just changing your Z positioning, but also the angle at which your pointing to aim your weapons. The turning is definitely an issue at low levels (as you get more skills/gear it's drastically improved... unless you're flying a carrier or something), but it's part of the metagame of shield facings and firing arcs and such too. Which also explains why your weapons may not have been firing; torpedoes (for example) have a 90-degree firing arc, so if you have one mounted in a forward arc and an enemy's behind you or to your side you won't be able to fire it on them.

That said... yeah, Cryptic's tutorials are kinda lovely. I forget if there's any drastic configuration options like there are for ground, but you can change the keys around easily enough. I also recommend flying around outside earth spacedock a while to get a feel for it; you can hold down both mouse buttons to turn along with the camera, it might help get the idea across more.