Tricky14

This is not a bug report but something I just find hard to judge. Do the new parts get... what do they call it... voxelized properly by the new FAR? Do I have to do that myself? They are completely fine as far as I can tell, then again if they weren't I don't think I'd be the person to notice.

Sure thing!

Thank you! I downloaded it from CKan, hasn't been updated yet. Will that take long?

What's the word on the CKAN version?

I really love the different biome related science messages you get in Crowd Sourced Science. Give the game flavour. Is there a way to make that work with this mod?

I have the same problem with 1.1.2. Fresh KSP install, no other mod. Only difference is that I've got the game installed over GOG rather than Steam now.

So since the thread is pretty much on hold until FAR is resurrected from the dead, I deemed it appropriate to just make a big old party boat and all the serious rover business be damned for the time being. Mentally add your favourite White Stripes song.

So attaching wing parts through a cargo bay should work? I might as well try that. If I can get that 10 m/s back I'll call it even. Update: eh no, cargo bays did not solve the problem. Well you did write *in* a cargo bay... Maybe I just need to make a cargo bay as big as Kerbin.

Actually strike that. I tested a craft with the same frontal profile as my other rovers and the average speed dropped close to 10 m/s. Only if I build them thin like rockets do I not lose too much speed. I had just forgotten how vanilla works differently than FAR. A slidly wider profile in vanilla and the craft basically becomes a brick. It's really noticable too, none of the wing parts I use to extend the wheel base prevent the craft from becoming too brick-like. I don't remember a time when I played the game without it. The difference is night and day. Well that's not true, I did reinstall before starting this challenge and build a couple of rovers. Vanilla KSP I just never saw a rover go much faster than 46-48 m/s. 57 brings me to the edge of the perma-day zone on Kerbin. 46 isn't going to cut it.

I ran some test and the FAR-less loss of speed only ended up amounting to a couple m/s. Something pretty big has changed, that's for sure. Maybe less air resistance overall?

Ok, so IR seems quite out of date... What is happening?

I've recompiled Ferram Aerospace Research, but the air resistance is still off. Moreover, my center of lift seems bugged in the editor, any older rovers I made seem to require more power to SAS to prolong their gliding capabilities. It's uninstalled now and I'm not sure where to take this challenge next. There's nothing special about driving a regular rover to the North pole, so I'd have to think of something new. A different option might be replacing FAR with Infernal Robotics. There are some pretty neat tricks you can do with that to further increase stability of rovers. It's not going to make up for the average loss of 10 m/s, but it should make crossing the mountainous regions an afterthought. That's kinda nice I guess.

I'm a little hesitant to d/l dll's from anything but the source Github at this point. I know you're probably just doing your best, sorry for being cautious. I'll try to compile them myself.

FAR seems to act like there's a bit less air resistance since the most recent KSP update, so I'm holding off a bit until I figure out what's going on with that. I'm not sure if the challenge is possible without FAR. It would certainly be possible to have a rover not use aerodynamics to stabilize itself, but I think even with ways to adjust for that, I'm still looking at a 10 m/s on average loss. While I'd still have Tweakscale, I'd lose the ability to further tweak the material properties of the wing parts, which is highly needed at the smallest scales. I'll give it a week or two, considering the state FAR already is in. I'll decide what to do after that.

Bit of a busy weekend, so didn't have too much time to play or do another trial run. 9-ish prototypes onward, it's kinda dawning on me that the problem is accelleration, or maintaining a constant speed. I can't make a faster rover, but I figured I could try and make KERBIN SMALLER *coughs*. So here a larger rover with more wheelie parts: Actually accellerates about as fast as my lightest rovers do and reaches the fastest possible land speed on Kerbin with electric motors of about 57.2 m/s under FAR. I like how the wheels are spread to form sort of an imaginary circle around the center of mass, it must surely make it very stable to drive. It's something like twice as heavy as the lightest craft I can make and while my initial thought was 'well, I'm sure having the suspension doubled too will lessen the shock impact on the wheels, but ultimately there are too many situations at downhill speeds where only one or only two wheels make contact with the ground, causing damage. It's probably safe-ish to use on the longer, less hilly route north, but I'm not interested in longer right now. I need to think of something radically different to reduce mass, like an SAS unicycle or something. I'm not quite certain how I can make that easy to control or aerodynamically sound though. I will have to think more thoughts. By the way, I could just Tweakscale the wheels/engines to something suitable too, but it seems like too much of a cheat. I'm sure not everyone approves of my current use of tweakscaled and FAR rebalanced wing parts either, but the truth of the matter is that there's just not enough Tiny and Small counterparts of most wing parts (heck of most parts). If I were in charge of Squad, I would have made sure there are versions of all part types available in all standard sizes. As it stands, Tweakscale is the closest I get to this even being a fair challenge.

Once you start rotating parts it's kinda hard to make the lot of them fit together. So, a failed attempt. This bird is also super floppy and a bit on the slow side. Only the mass and general shape were on target. It got me thinking though, a car that's part boat is obviously an amphibian car. Is there a nice word for a car that's also actively a glider (not the folding-out type car-plane dealies)? I really wish there were rover wheels (of all existing types) you can place directly below a craft, sort of like a shopping cart wheels. That'd solve so many placement issues.

Early / updated concept drawing. I will get there.

So here is something interesting I don't quite yet know what to do with. If I invert the wheel base, I get two nice little platforms for solar panels at each side of the rover. Unfortunately it also makes the wheel base really quite rectangular and tips easily even with SAS enabled at 100%. Wider wing parts increase the profile of the craft significantly and reduce overall top speed. The solution seems to be to just make the rover shorter and shorter until the wheelbase somewhat resembles a square again. But now the wheelbase is so tiny it still offers little to no extra stability, even with the main body of the craft lowered to just above the ground. I'd love to solve this problem right now and take advantage of the extra side panels, but for now I have to leave you with a screenshot of this horrible, mangled creation. It exists only to suffer. "kill meeee"

I'm aware. It kinda takes away the challenge though. Too gimpy. I might, but I'm not quite sure if it needs more. Weighing only 0.8 tons, it needs very little to get going. I can presently accelerate for something like 40 seconds straight on a single full battery and the only time I really stand to lose a lot of velocity is during the mountainous parts of the middle section of the journey, during which sunlight is readily available. Then at the polar ice cap I can pretty much keep accelerating so long as there is *some* trickle of electricity. That only leaves the early parts of the race, the hills casting long shadows north of the KSC. A couple trial runs showed me it's possible to clear them without losing too much speed.

It seems that for now that the plane parts only bug out when they are connected to the root part. My current craft is almost half the weight of the last one, at 0.8 tons. The wings are really flimsy as a result, but they hold together fine because it literally is a leaf. Very little battery capacity, but it's light so it doesn't need much to get going (also it's nice to have an upper limit on how much I can coast by nightfall). Still climbs steep hills like a spider, without losing much speed. I think that will do a lot to make up for time. The weirdest thing yet is that I can actually fit a Kerbal in there, horizontallly. And it's so self-stablizing that I sometimes forget to turn on SAS during a gliding jump. High hopes for this one.

I'm not sure how much I can still improve on that. The FAR aerodynamics are already as optimal as they can be, so the only thing holding it back at this point is the frontal profile of the rover. I unsuccessfully tried fitting a kerbal in a Tweakscaled (Tiny) sized service bay before. It might fit in horizontally, but then I'm pretty sure the Valentina will just clip through the length of the craft. Before trying that though I need to figure out what is wrong with FAR / Tweakscale. Yesterday I noticed for the first time that I have been getting incorrect mass sums for the entire craft in the planner. My first run might have been entirely rigged. Edit: I think I may just circumvent that issue for now by manually calculating the craft weight to verify the parts I use aren't broken & switch to different parts if they are. It's not ideal, but I'm having a sick day and I need something to do.

Are there any known issues between Tweakscale and FAR's adjustable wing weight/structural stength? Some mass figures don't add up at all, they appear to be multiplied by an unrelated factor. Getting different mass readouts just from directly connecting a wing to a root part, for example.

Are there any known issues between FAR's adjustable wing weight/structural stength and Tweakscale? Some mass figures don't add up at all, they appear to be multiplied by an unrelated factor. Getting different mass readouts just from directly connecting a wing to a root part, for example.

Noticed some mass irregularities in wing parts that may indicate an issue with FAR or Tweakscale. Or both. Will have to ask around a bit before I continue this challenge. Similar craft with the same basic design end up weighing a almost ton extra without any reason.

My first attempt (straight North past the halway-point route) has failed, but I got close enough to entice me to try a few more times. At the 3:00:00 marker I still had light, as anticipated. Around 3:05:00 the shadows started becoming a problem, but I could still quite easily dodge them by staying on the left side of hills and such. By 3:15 the sun was still up *but* higher distant hills began blocking it. By my best estimate the sun actually set roughtly 10 minutes later. I coasted on my remaining battery charge for something like 30 minutes. The challenge was lost at that point, *but* to my own surprise I only ended up 42.7 km away from my second to final marker, the narrow 'glacial passage', a land bridge that connects the ice sheet with the main continent. At my average cruising speed of about 200 kph that would've only taken me about 15 minutes to drive. I got sooo close to the edge of it! Things I can still optimize: Route. I think -15 minutes is achievable here, but I'm in an optimistic mood and hoping for -20 Craft weight. An earlier, less aerodynamic rover weighed a full ton less than this current one does. @Pds314 suggestion to take a westward approach is something I can only take advantage of past the halfway point, due to the ocean. Even if it doesn't gain me time, it will help me avoid those early shadows of the taller hills in the middle of that continent. Possibly re-arrange the solar panels. I thought the vertical ones were well clear of the rover wheels, but I saw 'blocked by vehicle' maybe 15 minutes before I saw the 'blocked by celestial body' notification. Spin. With the airplane-like aerodyniamics the rover is really stable at higher speeds, but at lower speeds (below 40 m/s) I do sometimes end up in an unrecoverable spin. While I don't lose too much time getting back on track, near the end the electricity cost becomes a bit too high. Traction contol and further wheel balancing will need to be looked into. Is there a downside to having too much traction control?