Are forced wheel autostruts temporary?

[allmhuran]

I'm sure I'm not the only player who uses parts in "creative" ways. That's one of the main things that gives KSP such depth and lifespan... once you're done doing all the stuff you're expected to do, you can spend far longer doing really crazy stuff.

But forced wheel autostruts are really blockading that creativity for me right now. So I'm curious... is there a better solution planned? Are forced wheel struts a temporary fix? Is there any chance we could disable them *even before* that fix comes about?

I found a reference to a modulemanager patch that put the line "autoStrut = false" into the wheel base module, but this no longer seems to work.

Tangentially, has it always been the case that the runway and runway edges (the steep slopes on each side) are much more "slippery" than the surrounding terrain? I'm finding that craft with the SAS power to rotate by sliding on the runway simply get "bogged down" and are unable to rotate under their own SAS power on the grass (even with massively overpowered edited SAS... like yawTorque = 180). Of course, wheels would probably allow rotation under SAS power even on grass, but... see above

Edited January 25, 2017 by allmhuran

[Azimech]

I would like to see this as a toggle as well.

[KerikBalm]

I hope they stick around at least as an option. It's the only thing that makes it viable to use the mk3 cargo bay and cargo ramp for deploying and retrieving rovers.

Otherwise, as soon as the docking port connects, the river clips through the bottom, and the craft will explode when disconnected

 

[allmhuran]

I doubt that the current implementation of autostruts is the only possible solution to that problem. 

[Shadowmage]

On Wednesday, January 25, 2017 at 0:01 PM, allmhuran said:

Tangentially, has it always been the case that the runway and runway edges (the steep slopes on each side) are much more "slippery" than the surrounding terrain? I'm finding that craft with the SAS power to rotate by sliding on the runway simply get "bogged down" and are unable to rotate under their own SAS power on the grass (even with massively overpowered edited SAS... like yawTorque = 180). Of course, wheels would probably allow rotation under SAS power even on grass, but... see above

I actually found the cause of this recently during some debugging on KSPWheels stuff -- the runway (and slopes) have no physic-material assigned, it uses default values.  The rest of the regular terrain (non-statics/prefabs) all have a physic-material assigned with non-default values.  It is these physic-materials that determine how they respond to collisions, how bouncy and how much friction they impart.

The net-effect?  The runway/pad/non-terrain stuff around KSC has different friction properties than the rest.

[allmhuran]

Interesting. I recall you also mentioned that the grass around the runway seemed to be continuously calling collide events. Is that a direct result of having a physic material assigned?

[swjr-swis]

On 1/25/2017 at 8:01 PM, allmhuran said:

Are forced wheel struts a temporary fix? Is there any chance we could disable them *even before* that fix comes about?

Autostruts serve their purpose, so I don't want them gone. And I don't mind if they leave it on by default in wheels and legs if that is considered the echnically best choice for the main use cases.

But I would like the ability to change the setting, like with every other part. There are circumstances that warrant other choices than 'Heaviest Part', or even to turn it off completely. It should be our choice.

[allmhuran]

For sure, it would be silly to remove the feature entirely unless a better solution for common use cases is developed. Forcing it to be on (even for some subset of parts) is the issue.

[Shadowmage]

15 minutes ago, allmhuran said:

Interesting. I recall you also mentioned that the grass around the runway seemed to be continuously calling collide events. Is that a direct result of having a physic material assigned?

Pretty much yea; its not so much that is calling collision events more than the runway, its the friction and bounce values that are assigned to the physics-materials on the colliders are different on the runway compared to the rest of the terrain.

I'll likely have more information on this in a few days/week or so as this is what I'm working on this week with KSPWheels.

[HafCoJoe]

I want to voice up as well and say that me and a good number of other advanced builders would die to turn off auto struts on wheels like they where before. Things like these are no longer usable because of the restraints put on wheels.

Edited January 31, 2017 by Avera9eJoe

[Shadowmage]

I haven't investigated yet, but I would think it should be possible to overwrite the auto-struts value on stock wheels with a very simple plugin/part-module.

Has anyone poked around to see where precisely they are 'hard-coded' at?  Is it at the config level, or is there actual special handling code in a module or part that kicks in when it detects ModuleWheelBase is present (possibly even in ModuleWheelBase itself)?

90% certain that it could be solved with a 'two-line' part module.... (two lines of functional code anyway)

public void OnStart(StartState state)
{
	part.autoStrutMode = Part.AutoStrutMode.None;
	part.UpdateAutoStrut();
}

If this was in a PartModule that was added to the part in a later index than the ModuleWheelBase, it should overwrite the forced auto-strut (by forcing it to 'None').

Disclaimer:  I have done zero testing on it, there might be a few more fields in the part that need to be toggled to re-enable user-selectable auto-strutting and/or to keep the ModuleWheelBase from clobbering the settings every time the part is reloaded.

[whale_2]

15 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

I haven't investigated yet, but I would think it should be possible to overwrite the auto-struts value on stock wheels with a very simple plugin/part-module.

 

I tried something similar, but seems like autostruts are gone only if reset on every FixedUpdate(). Wheels start behaving funny, like if they were attached by a long soft spring.