[TimCraig]

I personally favor the second solution, the custom function, as it's simpler to understand exactly what is happening and controlling the ramping. Another way to limit the acceleration is to implement a moving average filter. This might be simpler to program.

Do you already have a transfer function between the joystick input and the PWM output to the motor to account for the nonlinearity in the Victor response? If not, this would reduce some of the operator heavy handedness but they could still jerk things around.

Depending on the performance you're looking for, the ramping is probably more important at low speeds than higher but would complicate the programming to implement.