DL'd and played through the tut last night, the controls on a qwerty are awkward - at least with the default layout. Kept thinking that the game really needed a spinner. You only need the joy (far as I can tell) to move about the ship - which seems like poor design since everything else is rotational based. Probably a rotary joy instead of a spinner would be the way to go. Need to play with the settings and see what's feasible but, while the game is gorgeous, my initial reaction is that they missed the boat on some simple game play mechanics that could have reduced the learning curve and made the game more initially accessible.
My initial though was, "this is just silly, why can I move my space pet around the ship faster and more better than I can move myself?" I'm not playing to climb ladders and ---That which is odiferous and causeth plants to grow---, I'm playing to kill aliens, so rather than press "B" to back out of a station why not press "B" to select station, use the spinner to chose, send your little guy off, same way as you do the pet with "N" and call it a day. Boom, eliminated the joystick and really simplified the controls in my opinion.