BMS doesn’t support using ctrl/alt/shift modifiers for joystick buttons. Although it’s not impossible to achieve, using a tool like Joy2Key… then just map everything to keybd bindings instead of joystick buttons (and map the joystick buttons to SimDoNothing within BMS).

Recently someone posted about that. If all you have is a 8-way hat and a couple of buttons, it might be the way to go!

My advice: don’t prioritize things that you only use once or twice in a flight (like landing gear or speed brakes). And don’t prioritize things that aren’t on the hotas in RL … again, like landing gear or flaps settings. In RL you have to take your hand off the throttle or stick to touch these switches and knobs.

I currently fly with a T.16000M which is only trigger, 3 buttons, and 8-way hat.

My top priorities for the hat:

FCR/TGP cursor slew TMS

If I had more than 2 shift-layers…
3) DMS
4) CMS
5) Comms switch

My top priorities for on-stick buttons:
0) SimHotasPinkyShift or SimHotasShift – just to double the number of available button/hat functions

Pickle (can be keybd but you have to press-and-hold this while flying, for dropping bombs) Uncage (very important for deploying sidewinders, in the heat of a dogfight) Slap-switch (countermeasure program #5 … esp. important if you don’t have CMS bound to stick) MSL Step (can be keybd but it’s used for so many things… NWS, AAR etc) Cursor-enable – this one is often overlooked, and it takes a lot of practice, but super useful with HMCS and sidewinders, in a dogfight

What else? I like to have a few other things handy that don’t have RL switches…

FOVToggle (look-closer)
FOVDefault, or look-forward (or recenter-TrackIR)