As has already been posted, the choice of a HOTAS setup is very much a personal thing.
I love my CH gear. It's reliable and has a multitude of programming options.
I love my Cougar even more. Maybe I can't draw a perfect circle with it, but that's never been a problem for me. I don't draw alot of circles while flying. I'm consistantly able to put it where I need it. The heavy springs are WONDERFUL, in my opinion. That'd be the first upgrade I'd do to my CH Fighterstick if I thought that heavier springs wouldn't break the thing. As I just posted in the CH Hanger forums, I must have had a "peach" of a Cougar while others have been stuck with lemons. I have a very early serial number which I've owned since about a month after they were released. In constant heavy use in the years since then, I've never had a problem with my dogfight or speedbrake switches. There's not an undue amount of sticktion on the throttle. I've always been able to get pretty minute power changes out of it. No broken springs. No death of the throttle despite never unplugging it while flashing firmware or even plugging it in, as seems to be the Cougar communities suggestions. No unreasonable amount of center play in the stick. I just yesterday started seeing some pot spiking on the stick's X-axis. I've decided that this is an opportunity to go ahead and upgrade to Halls and maybe even a fancy gimbal system. Not because I feel that my Cougar really NEEDS it, but because it'll make an already great stick even better.
In the meantime, I'm transitioning back to my CH gear. The different button/rotary choices on the throttle & stick are no big deal. Both layouts have their pros & cons. It's just a matter of relearning the CH layouts I programmed years ago, and updating some of them since the CH programming software has made great strides forward since I've last used this gear regularly. I do sorely miss the strong stick springs as well as the detents and arc of the throttle though.
If I were on a budget I'd imagine that I could be happy with the Siatek gear as well. All reports of it have been fairly good. Seems to not be quite as capable of tricky programming like the Cougar & Ch stuff is, but I've found that I really don't mess with too much of that anyways. I prefer not to overwhelm myself with hundreds of commands on the stick, using the clickable cockpits for sims such as Falcon 4.0 AF & MSFS. Seems more realistic that way as well. Don't really care for the "space fighter" look of the Siatek gear, but looks are only skin deep, as they say.
The one main bonus of going with a full CH setup (stick, throttle & pedals) is that the software can combine all of them into one stick as far as the system is concerned. So if you're playing an older sim that only recognizes one controller, you'll be able to use them all. In fact, you can add the Throttle Quadrant and Yoke in as well if you like to fly bombers in AH or multiengine planes in GA sims. (Of course, if you're willing to do some hacking & soldering, you can hook your USB CH Pedals up to your Cougar.
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