Your gamepad takes the helm
A gamepad has always flown the planes. Aboard a tank or a warship, though, it could lay the gun and fire and nothing else — the hull sat where it spawned, turret swinging, going nowhere. Not any more: plug in a controller and the right stick is your helm.
The right stick is the helm
Crew a Paladin on the Brick Steppe or a destroyer on the Brick Sea with a gamepad and your hands now work the whole hull. The left stick lays the gun, exactly as before. The right stick is the helm: push it left or right to steer, push it forward to open the throttle, pull it back to ease off. The bumpers do what they do in the cockpit — RB rings the throttle up, LB rings it down — and they walk it exactly as fast as W and S do on a keyboard. A or the right trigger fires; B puts torpedoes in the water from a warship that carries them, and sends the wire-guided missile from a hull that carries one.
A hard turn won’t touch your throttle. The rudder and the throttle share one stick, and a thumb hauling it over to the stop always wanders a little up or down — so the throttle only answers a deliberate push past halfway. Swing that battleship broadside as hard as you like; she holds the speed you rang for.
The d-pad is W/A/S/D
Prefer the feel of keys? The d-pad is a digital helm: up and down work the throttle like W and S, left and right steer like A and D. Tankers, the bottom quarter of the throttle is still reverse — hold LB or the d-pad down and your tank backs out of the treeline the way S would. That’s the hull-down dance on a controller: creep up the crest, fire, reverse down.
Flight sticks crew hulls too
A HOTAS comes along for the ride: aboard a hull its stick lays the gun, its twist (or the pedals you’ve mapped there) is the rudder, and its throttle lever sets your speed.
The helm comes with you across the whole war — the steppe, the sea, and every tank and warship in combined arms. The brief when you board spells it out, and so does HOW TO PLAY on the land and naval join screens. Plug a controller in mid-fight and the game tells you where everything went.