I am working on a space game, and I was wondering how to make a starship playable and add controllability to it? I have minimal experience in JavaScript and Python, and I would really like to have a minimum of coding involved. I am also on a really tight budget, and cannot afford to get anything from the Asset Store that is more than free.
Look at the tutorials available by Unity, it details everything. They also include some premade controllers, you just have to import them. You will learn that in the tutorials.
What is the purpose of this project? If this is your first foray into unity, I would take this as an opportunity to learn more scripting, either UnityScript, C# or Boo. You wont make it far into making a real game without a decent knowledge of scripting. There is no real “easy way out” of scripting using unity, though there are other game engine alternatives with a more visual approach to coding.
To answer your question, you will be using the Input class to obtain user input either via keyboard, mouse or touch depending on your desired platform. Then you will either translate the starship’s gameobject or add force to the rigidbody attached to the gameobject to make use of the built in physics engine.