That's not a bug... it's just you not being quick enough on the keyboard Also, the game has 40 directions, but it also stores your 'real' direction... like if you hit the right arrow for a VERY short time, you might do like a half rotation tick (each of the 40 positions are 9 degrees apart, so maybe you do 6.7 degrees or something); so the next time you hit the arrow, it will take less time to 'reach the tick' , and if you hold it slightly longer you'll be in the next tick already. Maybe if your FPS (frames per second; hit esc-F to see) is pretty low, it might be skipping a bit more. DSB ships have a rather quick rotation rate, which is the only reason why it happens more there for you edit: And with a joystick, there seems to be 2 speeds of rotation. If you move the joystick slightly, you'll rotate at half-speed or so. Also, as a reference, a ship like DSB's terrier probably has a rotation speed of 300-350. A speed of 400 means it takes exactly 1 second for the ship to make a full 360 degrees rotation. So at 300, it takes 1,333 seconds to do a full rotation... meaning if you want to rotate only of 1 position (9 degrees), you'd have to hold down the arrow for 1/30th of a second. Anything more than that could make you rotate twice. Sooo... if your FPS is lower than 30 frames per second, there is a good change it skips sometimes