positioning of guns is a lot less relevant when you can just point the ship in whatever direction you want and still keep going the same direction you were before, space physics in warfare is actually a really interesting topic and if you are interested in a really awesome "hard" sci fi book which theoretically realistic space combat check out Through Struggle, The stars. It's in my top 5 all time bet sci fi list
https://www.amazon.com/Through-Struggle-Stars-Human-Reach-ebook/dp/B005FGNLDM
I used a program called JoyToKey where I manually set joystick button to act as keyboard keys. It's free and you can find it here https://joytokey.net/en/
There are better ways to do this, however. One limitation JTK has is you have to set a joystick axis as a button so forward on the stick is the W key. This means you don't have speed control since it's acting like a digital input instead of analog.
A way to overcome this limitation is to use the Xbox 360 Controller Emulator found here https://www.x360ce.com/
I was unable to get this to work and just settled for the lighter, easier way.