Keeping it Simple?

Ok, there's a lot of info here for the control scheme, but I think it's too complex. Here's my ideas for the cannon and carriage control scheme and some examples on how they would work using some ideas from existing games. I'm going to try to express my ideas here as clearly as I possibly can:

Cannon Controls

I think it would be most satisfying to control the cannon with the mouse alone kind of like a turret.(Anyone remember that old platformer Abuse? This is what I'm thinking of.) Hold mouse 1 to suck stuff up. Depending on what is sucked up one of 2 things should happen:

--If it's a powerup or something, it stays in the Necrocarriage and the vacuum keeps sucking up stuff.
--Body parts, rocks, etc are too big and "get stuck" in the chamber, so you'd see an icon or other representation in the chamber until the button is released and it goes flying. Velocity of the projectile is related to how long it was "charged up". This would work sort of like the "Kirby's Dreamland" games.

So, in short, here's a little scenario:
1-->You run across a powerup and a big rock or something.
2-->You direct the cannon with the mouse and hold Mouse 1 to start the vacuum.
3-->The powerup gets sucked into the Necrocarriage first as it is lighter and smaller. It stays with your collectibles. Still holding Mouse 1.
4-->The rock gets sucked into the Necrocarriage second as it is heavier and larger. Still holding Mouse 1.
5-->You see the icon/representation of the rock in the chamber. Still holding Mouse 1, the power level of your cannon is charging up.
6-->You aim the cannon at something and release Mouse 1. The object goes flying out of the cannon and crashes into stuff.

I think this would be TOTALLY FUN. Also, there's the added advantage of being able to control the carriage and cannon at the same time. Plus, it's a pretty natural and intuitive movement.

Now, how to control the other stuff?

I say we use a toggle instead of mapping the cannon to keys and everything else to mouse cursor. It doesn't seem like using the mouse cursor to shuffle stuff around would be an efficient way to control things in the heat of combat. So how about something like this:

A and D: move carriage left and right

W: Jump the carriage (once you can do that)

Tab: Leave the carriage (I think S would get in the way too much from all the FPS and stuff I play, haha)

Q: Swap part (switch between plow, propeller mount, w/e)

E: Toggle between cannon control and spotlight control (swaps mouse function)-- I think this would be a way to streamline the controls, also you could position the light in a different direction than the cannon in order to use the light to provide some covering fire from your crew while you ready up a cannon shot.

Maybe if you wanted to still use the cursor we could have Space be the cursor toggle? I don't have a good idea as to how much is going to be stacked on the carriage, so it's hard for me to say.

As for the commander dude, I think we should go with the standardWSAD style controls with Mouse 1 to shoot and Mouse 2 to interact, just for the sake of familiarity. I think commander should be able to jump a small height or maybe climb over stuff with W, as the zombie corpses may get in the way of his movement. S can be a crouch kind of movement for him to pick stuff up.