On Controls

You make a good point. Both the starship and rover steering in the game require only three keys, not four. The "down arrow" key has no use for directional control, and as such is a waste of a central location for a thumb.

There are two ways of making use of that observation. The first is to essentially stick the "up arrow" key unless the "down arrow" key is pressed. This is what i've termed "Handbrake mode", and i will see about adding it, when i have time, as a separate option for both the lander (the most obvious change, since you almost always want to be going full-tilt planetside) and for the ship (less useful because not using thrust is a more common case).

The other would be to map "Up"" to the "down arrow" key, which would be a problem for menus. There's nothing to stop you from doing it yourself using some other keys besides the arrows, though. For example, j, k, and l as left, forward, and right, respectively.

I have tried using the accelerometer for controlling the ship, and it was not a very pleasant experience. I'm not saying it won't become an option, but i'm not expecting it to solve any control issues.

Other news

I have added a high resolution starmap image to the first post. It is a user-designed replica of the poster that was included in the box of Star Control 2, so it's not a spoiler: If you load it into Maemo Browser, you can zoom in with the circle gesture and it's actually a very useful tool to find things more easily than using the in-game starmap. While i'd like to make the in-game starmap as slick and user-friendly as Maemo Browser, it's a longer-term goal.