MechForce & UAE (Debian) problems

Hi all,

After many years, I finally succummed to the lure of MechForce again on the Amiga, after lots and lots of time spent playing it back in College. Now I'm trying to run it on a Debian UAE (0.8.22-1) setup, with Kickstart 1.3 and Workbench 1.3 from Amiga Forever.

I don't have a joystick on the system at all, so it's been a bit of a pain. Unfortunately, while I can sorta play the game, it tends to lockup quickly once combat starts. Does anyone have any setting suggestions for making this work better? Or should I download and compile 0.8.23 and see if that works better?

Any .uaerc files that are known to work would be great.

Or should I try kickstart 3.1 and Workbench 3.1 as well?

Thanks,
John