First, I'm going to go with the usual 'Thank you so much for bringing this game back to me' message, and say just that. I've been dying to play the first Independence War again since I was forced into a Vista x64 PC.

Now this is a game I'd really rather play with a joystick. I use an X-52 standard. It took me ages but I found the test version of PPJoy that would actually install on my 64-bit system and found PPJoyJoy to get rid of the sliders and rotaries, but now I can't seem to get I-War to ignore the throttle (using it even with nothing else activated activates the lateral thrusters and that just won't do) and recognize the rudder axis instead. Anyone know the right combination of PPJoy(Joy) settings to do this?

When I play I-war with my x52, i just set the slider, rotaries and throttle to their midpoints, and only use the stick. Not sure what you mean about the rudder axis, the twist works fine for roll with mine. Are you sure you haven't accidentally disabled the twist axis with ppjoy?

I've tried the Z axis, rudder axis, Rx axis... nothing seems to work.

Admittedly I haven't. Does the SST software actually help? Games like to ignore programming.

Never in my experience. I've used the SST software to make profiles for I-War 1+2, Freespace 1+2, X-Wing Alliance, Falcon 4.0 Allied Force, DCS Black Shark and Mechwarrior 3, and it's always worked fine. I haven't tried using it to disable the axes on the throttle simply because I never felt the need for it, so I'm not 100% positive it will work, but I am reasonably certain.

Well, you were right, it worked, though changing the throttle didn't. easily fixable though, just gotta keep it dead center.