system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
(Gundam) How do pilots get such precise control over their mobile suits?

With the exception of I believe Mobile Fighter G Gundam, the cockpits of Mobile suits often seem quite plain and have basic controls. How do pilots control their suits with such precision?
gpt
They aren't controlled like a car or a plane. In fact, their controls were originally inspired by early 21st century video game animation, where pre-set animations would be blended together to produce realistic-looking movement.

There's actually a lot of software in the suits that makes them move automatically. These presets were originally developed from videos of martial artists and soldiers practicing. A suit can actually drive itself if you queue a list of commands.

But there's a good reason you don't let them drive themselves. The suits are pretty bad at avoiding obstacles, and they're also really bad at deciding whether an obstacle is solid or going to give way easily. A suit's navigation computer simply doesn't have the processing power tell the difference between a boulder and a tent, and it just isn't fast enough to relay that the to movement controls quickly enough to prevent the suit from making a misstep and damaging itself. That's where the pilot comes in. (You also can't run them remotely them because the risk of jamming is too great.)

The pilot (after a lot of training on the presets) directs the suit to perform various preset motions. Forward movement, backward movement, turning, etc, are all very simple presets which, by default, are bound to a single joystick, and other movements are bound to various triggers, buttons, etc. The genius of the suit design is that the pilot can override ANY preset movement, or just parts of the movement, to move how he desires. This is facilitated by having the pilot queue the desired preset, then use his console to select a joint or set of joints to move as he desires with a thumbstick or several thumbsticks. Pilots can also blend two movements together, averaging the impulse on each joint or sets of joints (similar to how video games will blend upper body and lower body animations to make walking while shooting look nice).

With training a pilot can queue up a customized movement in a quarter of a second, fast enough to step over an obstacle, duck under an overhang, or reposition a melee attack to land on an exact target. Obviously this requires a bit of planning too, in combat most pilots will keep several modified commands ready in queue at any time so that they can react with whichever is needed. Experienced pilots will even record themselves to create their own custom sets of movements to get finer control over their suits.