Can't seem to get laser and shield recharge level adjustment controls F9 and F10 to work at all. I have tried to reassign these functions to various buttons on my joystick, but somehow they then take over the trigger for weapons. Pretty frustrating. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Are you playing from a laptop?
If so, does it by any chance have F9 and F10 binded to multimedia buttons, like some do by default?

If that is the case, you need to change that in your BIOS so that the multimedia commands revert to fn+F9 and fn+F10 and F9 and F10 are back to be normal keyboard controls

How do I do that
I tried going into control panel and assign f10 as a menu key but it isn't an option

My laptop links the F9 and F10 buttons to volume control of the computer. I need to hold down an FN key in order to access F9 and F10 as F9 and F 10