Rovers are totally unusable

[ruiluth]

I have tried to build dozens of rovers since 1.1, and every time they have failed so catastrophically that I've given up and not used them. I have a list of problems I have found with them:

1. Sometimes they clip into the ground and stop working, usually when transitioning from one slope to another, such as when going down the ramp up to the launchpad. They show wheel blocked = true and don't work at all.
2. They suck at traction. They slide sideways and spin too easily. Drive wheels can't grip the ground to accelerate and steering wheels can't steer very well. You can turn up the friction setting, but that leads to flipping and wheel clipping and blocking.
3. The suspension is very weak and has much trouble holding up even the lightest crafts
4. Others that I'm forgetting, I know there are more

Am I the only one for whom wheels are totally useless now? How do you all overcome the deficiencies? I've looked all over the forum for solutions and nothing is helping much.

Barring rovers, what are some other methods for roving across the surface of a moon to find the perfect place for a mining base?

For future reference, here are some things I have fond to help:

1. MechJeb's stability assist feature, coupled with suitably strong reaction wheels
2. Having lots of wheels
3. Having landing legs for self-righting and getting out of the ground

Edited July 30, 2016 by ruiluth

[Papa_Joe]

21 minutes ago, ruiluth said:

I have tried to build dozens of rovers since 1.1, and every time they have failed so catastrophically that I've given up and not used them. I have a list of problems I have found with them:

1. Sometimes they clip into the ground and stop working, usually when transitioning from one slope to another, such as when going down the ramp up to the launchpad. They show wheel blocked = true and don't work at all.
2. They suck at traction. They slide sideways and spin too easily. Drive wheels can't grip the ground to accelerate and steering wheels can't steer very well. You can turn up the friction setting, but that leads to flipping and wheel clipping and blocking.
3. The suspension is very weak and has much trouble holding up even the lightest crafts
4. Others that I'm forgetting, I know there are more

Am I the only one for whom wheels are totally useless now? How do you all overcome the deficiencies? I've looked all over the forum for solutions and nothing is helping much.

Barring rovers, what are some other methods for roving across the surface of a moon to find the perfect place for a mining base?

For future reference, here are some things I have fond to help:

1. MechJeb's stability assist feature, coupled with suitably strong reaction wheels
2. Having lots of wheels
3. Having landing legs for self-righting and getting out of the ground

It is fairly well known that wheels are broken in ksp 1.1.  This is a problem related to unity.  Ksp 1.2 is in debug right now using unity 5.4.  This new version of unity has a fix for wheels.

 I recommend waiting for ksp 1.2 to resume your rover adventures.

[Zamolxes77]

Mount your rover on top of a nuke engine and add liquid fuel to it. Its quite easy to make a "roaming vessel" with 6,000 dV on it or more. Sadly I don't have a picture handy of my Ground Surveyor, but it kinda looks like this:

Instead of rapier engine sink a nuke in there, remove the wings, replace intake with a docking port and add a true capsule, the mk2 inline cockpit and you're done. You can probably even roam on the ground, using the aircraft wheels, but you will spend liquid fuel, much preferable to fly low, around 4,000 m and scan for ores I guess.

[AmenRa]

Wheel are still broken as of 1.1.3.