I admit that the controls are not intuitive for somebody who has never played the game.
I do enjoy the controls and find that they make the game very challenging but I do understand that it will drive away many potential players.
I think that the "why" will eventually be that there will be a lot more content. My long term visual is to grow the game into more than a simple shooter. I eventually plan to have larger ships with more components to control.
I hope that as the game progresses the content will justify more of a learning curve. For example, many people have taken the time to learn Dwarf Fortress because it is an awesome game with tons of content.
But I'm a long, long way from that.
So, to your point, I may need to make the controls more intuitive until the content justifies a larger learning curve.
Thanks for the feedback,
Dave
But if you ask me to apply even a fraction of the effort spent learning vim or stick shift to learning a lo-fi space shooter, my question is "why" and my answer is "no thanks." It's not that it's impossible, it's that the juice is not worth the squeeze, at least for me.