xycrone

you can get all 6 directions in space by adding space engines in all six directions. 
ALT A or D strafes left / right. 
Scroll mouse for forwards / reverse. 
space will strafe you up
C will strafe you down
 
IF you have engines pointing in the correct directions. Keep them as close to facing the XYZ directions as possible rather than diagonals and stuff.  
 

Now you’re just being silly… LOL
 
you CAN reassign the keys using LUA or you can just any of your favourite keyboard reassignment / macro software / joystick gremlin.  
 
 
Japan sinking? I think you’re mixing us up with Tuvalu. 

If they gave us thrusters that were more effective than the ones we have now, that were intended for lateral thrust, everyone would just use them for forward thrust too.
 
You can add space engines facing in any direction on you ship though.  But each one you add is more weight.  When you're moving at a decent speed in space, the more thrust to weight you have, the faster you'll be able to change your momentum.  So no matter how many engines you decide to add, you'll have a more maneuverable ship if you focus all that thrust in one direction, and then use the adjusters to point it where you need it.
 
 

Only thing you can do for less warm-up is using smaller military (or better) engines and level up talents.
For engine directionality you can either taking full engine control using LUA, or try experimenting with the engine tags.
 
Edit: Another trick when using LUA is to never throttle the engines completely off, this will prevent the warm-up at the expense of some fuel consumption.
 
And I am also still waiting for proper analog joystick support in this game.... .. .

I have been advocating proper RCS mechanics for space for years actually. 
 
In principle we have the elements for it with adjustors, but they can't be controlled individually. If that option would be available it would be fairly easy to have plane changes and lateral movement close to "real life" space manoeuvring.

Funny bit is that if you check out some of the latest Falcon9 launches where the booster returns to the launch site, the manoeuvres using the RCS cold gas thrusters give a good idea of that. The tracking from the ground gives a really good impression of how that works and it's not entirely unlike what we see in DU.
 
 

People seem to be ignoring this response. Let me say that adjustors are intended to produce TORQUE without producing linear FORCE (thrust). This makes it much easier to to build ships that can point in any direction without inducing drift. I personally like the fact that DU uses physical laws instead of video game physics when possible.

Every game that has flight in it attempts to create a good balance between realism, fun and difficulty.  Too difficult or realistic and most people won't enjoy it.  Too easy and it's like No Mans Sky, where flight is basically a pretty cutscene where you get to steer a little.
 
But NQ has to consider balancing building too.  They gave us overpowered, light weight adjusters, that don't consume any fuel, to make the game a little less complicated, and more fun.  But if they produced thrust, they would be too overpowered.
 
The one unfortunate side effect is that we can't use the Adjusters to nudge a ship to the side, when we're parking.
 
 
 
I think the keybindings for strafe left and right are, ALT+A and ALT+D.  If you put an engine facing in that direction, and then run the autoconfigure, it will tag them automatically, so they should fire when you hit the key.  No LUA needed.  And engines facing up or down will fire with Spacebar and C.
 
A ship with rocket boosters facing in all directions would be interesting to fly.
 
But i think it's always going to be more efficient to point all your thrust in one direction, and use Adjusters and Brakes to do everything else, because they are so overpowered, and don't cost any fuel. 
 
 
 
 
 

I've played around with that was able to get work somewhat the ship felt more like a drone there's some advantages the side engines help balance the ship and make a more stable ride but I always end up scraping it because the fuel consumption is high and the extra weight due to the extra engines made it not practical but it was fun to tinker with. I might try to play with that again on small scale using mostly small engines and a couple/ few medium engines or xs engines with small engines for rear thrust that would more fuel efficient but I wouldnt try to haul a lot like that it's not efficient.

I know there are ways to adjust the way the engines fire / behave in LUA but I haven't really went down that rabbit hole yet just dipped my toes in it. If there is a way to make stmos engines synch with or behave like the ground engines that would probably do the trick but Im just throwing that out there I don't even know if that's possible. I was going off default engine / cockpit config I was more impressed with left right and down thrust than the ones facing towards the ground to be honest it feels like your hovering floating and it smooth hard to explain but it was interesting.

Am I missing something obvious in this conversation?
 
All of my ships that are not focused on out and out max speed, have sideways and front facing engines a rank (sometimes two) smaller than the main rear facing engines.
 
If you make those engines advanced manoeuvre engines or rare manoeuvre engines, then there is pretty much no warmup time. They react immediately. Default key is alt plus A or D for lateral motion. or scroll wheel back for reverse. 
 
This makes parking super simple. Although of course a heavy freighter means relatively low acceleration.
 
If said ship is also space capable then I add top and bottom facing space engines too, to allow full three axis motion. Vertical space engines can behave weirdly on re-entry into planet’s atmosphere, though.
 
I created a number of small transporters for ferrying gear to and fro on the base. These craft are omnidirectional and have identical thrust backwards left and right and quadruple forward thrust for a bit more speed in regular flight. 
 
Using LUA I remapped the forward reverse left right strafe keys to the regular WASD keys. Now I have a platform that can travel in all four directions very precisely without banking. Space and C key control vertical offset.

the Vertex Precision Tool is amazing hats off to the team for making it possible, its made DU the most creative game every made and cant wait to see what other people and myself do with it