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As an addition to my Mun base I attempted to design a fuel transportation and long range exploration rover. I tested all my designs with hacked gravity to simulate a Munar environment, and all of my designs, regardless of centre of mass or wheel base would flip over when they turned, I had no reaction wheels on board to prevent the WASD keys from changing the attitude. Was this a mistake? Should I have SAS enabled? Please send help

Hello, So I am pretty new to KSP, and I have watched a few tutorials on rovers which I am keen to start using. While learning KSP I have been alternating between building my own stuff and using some of the prebuilt rockets and aircraft. I've landed and returned from the Mun and Minmus and stranded a Kerbal on Moho, so now I am keen to explore more. But one thing I do not at all understand: how do you take a rover, whether built by me or one of the stock ones, and do anything with it? Once we get into multiple vehicles I am lost. 1. How do I attach it to a rocket? Do I need to make it a sub assembly? Do I always need some sort of decoupler? 2. Just to see what I could do, I was trying to get a stock Prospector rover into the cargo bay of the stock Mallard. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do this. I opened the Rover, saved it as a subassembly and then opened the Mallard. I could not place the Rover in the Mallard in any way that did involve fusing it to the plane. Can't you just roll the thing up the ramp and secure it like you would a real jeep in a C5A? I've pasted some pictures below. 3. Testing the same rover just on the Kerbal runway, I get a message that it has no remote control or manned command modules. But it has two seats for Kerbals, and yet I cannot fill these. What is required that I am missing? 4. I was also playing with the stock Rover and Skycrane. Once I detach the rover from the skycrane I no longer have any control over the skycrane. Is there any way to retain that? What if I want to safely land the skycrane or send it back up to a mother ship? 5. Totally unrelated to the posted topic, but is there anyway to toggle Kerbal Engineer off or just hide the window when you are not using it? It's an amazing mod, but occasionally I'd like to be able to turn it off. You can see in the pictures how it is kind of in the way at the moment. Thanks for helping out a newbie

So I’ve landed kerbals on the mun and I’ve decided that the best “next step” for my space program would be to send a rover to the muns poles or somewhere else but then I realised. What’s the point? Will it give me more science or money or what. Apart from being realistic what is the point of rovers on ksp if you arnt using them for base building/maintenance. Please tell me what you think rovers are good for. Also mods if if this isn’t in the right place,then please move it to the right forum.

Rovers are cool : they are complex to build, launch and land (and crash). But they are useless. Biomes are simply too big to be explored by rovers and biome-hopping is much easier anyway. Moving kerbals with a rover is pointless when they can simply fly with a jetpack. I have almot never used rovers in my games because I never found any use for them. I think there should be some reward for using rovers, something you couldn't do with a simple lander or a Kerbal. Why not using terrain scatters ? They have no use neither (and that's a bit sad too) - There could be some experiments that need to be done next to a rock, and maybe multiple rock types, each type yielding different science, like the biomes. - There could have ressources in it : using a drill on a rock could give much more ore, but il would deplete like asteroids, so you have to move to get more. These are just suggestions, but I think rovers need some love too. (Sorry if that was already suggested before, I did search and found nothing)

How do I navigate when on the ground, like when I'm driving a rover? Does it help to put the nav ball on surface? How do I know which way I'm going? I tried putting a node on a previous landing site and then setting that as a target, but when I use the autopilot to set it to target, it tends to pull the rover off it's wheels. It seemed happiest when I was driving away from the target even though I'd selected target. Mind you it wasn't 180 degree to the target that I was traveling. It was some other odd angle. I probably should mention I'm at the bottom of Minimus as best I can tell. The south pole. Not the center, but near it. I left my pilot in the rover after breaking off all the solar and running out of electricity and that thing kept picking up speed. It was going about 24 M/sec just before it had some kind of catastrophic problem. This is just on wheel idling power. How do they explain this in a simulator. You've got some kind magic force that propels you across an entire planet with no fuel being used. I dont think it was going downhill. I don't believe that any vehicle would handle as bad as a KSP vehicle on one of these planets. The main question - I landed near a previous landing site. I thought I'd visit the pilot and maybe switch with her and see her rover. I couldn't figure out how to get there. It was only about 5 km. I thought of some complicated, inaccurate ways involving the sun or my current trajectory, but it seems like there should be some simpler way of finding old space wrecks. The rovers behave oddly on the moons. What is the best way to tame this beast? Did I mention that the other day I landed a 100 meter tall rocket on Minimus and it slowly fell over but stayed intact? I then detached the rover and moved it out of the way and eventually got back in the huge rocket and took off from a horizontal position on the surface and made it back to Kerbin. I was close enough to walk to the space center in daylight. The big rocket scraped along and I ran out of gas and had to start up the next stage which gave me a little bit of angle to the ground. Of course on Minimus with a little speed you're going to be airborne for a long time so I got a little more perpendicular and gave it more thrust and pretty soon I was on my way home. I'm going to build a ball shaped cage rover with me and all the vitals on the inside. I'll put wheels all over the outside so that when it hits it'll be partly absorbed by the shocks and I won't have to concern myself with pitch and yaw anymore. If I put more wheels on a rover does it have more horsepower and go faster? Does it have better traction. So far I've been using 4 wheels.

getting no friction or grip with my wheels causing my rovers and space planes to either flip over or just slide around the place and drift... is this a bug with my modded install or 1.3.1 in general? I've put my ksp log up anyway if you need anything else just ask. KSP log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndmh4cacjt40v8a/output_log.txt?dl=0

So I came back, and I bring an idea from two years ago, but improved: Omnidirectional wheels. In addition of other two new: Continuous tracks and Screw drives Omnidirectional wheels: Omnidirectional wheels are wheels and systems that gives the ability of move omnidirectionally without spin to the land vehicle. My idea is basically add these three types of wheel (and variants by company or size, of course): - Omni wheel (little). - Mecanum wheel (small and medium). - Liddiard wheel (medium and big). Omni wheel: Omni wheels are basically primitive omnidirectional wheels. They are common wheels with added little wheels to the edge, in perpendicular to the main wheels. These wheels would be slightly hard to use, possibly would need the use of action groups. However, with this you can make functional omnidirectional vehicles with octagonal, triangular, etc shapes. Mecanum wheels: This type of wheel is a multi-wheel that contains small wheels aligned 45º over the extreme of multi-wheel, and aligned 45º degrees over de radius of multi-wheel. How it works? Small wheels deviate the multi-wheels when these multi-wheels spin each in different direction, this causes a lateral or spin movement of vehicle, much more useful. These wheels would be easier to use than omni wheels, using like controls AWSD, and also Q and E for move to left and right without spin. Basically, vehicles with this type of wheels would have a better maneuverability and bigger left-right speed than the other two types, but it would have a big lack of friction. Liddiard wheels: Liddiard wheels are basically toroidal wheels which inside has rollers and tires has an special rolling system. This type of wheel move like common wheels, but its toroidal tires can spin from inside to outside for move right or left. These wheels, like mecanum wheels, use AWSDQE controls. Basically, vehicles with this type of wheels would have a big friction and traction, however the left-right speed is the lowest of the three types of omnidirectional wheels. Continuous tracks: This is the drive system of tanks and several types of tractors. This drive type would have sizes from small to big. additionally, these could have an special modular building (ie, you can adjust the length of the continous track, longer will cost more expensive and shorter cheaper, obviously). Screw drive: This would have an extremelly big friction, plus the ability of move left and right without spin. Controls are, again, AWSDQE. The problem of the screw drive is its big size and mass. Screw drive in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afJ18eJeNgU What do you think?

I am trying to build a rover with the docking method, only i can't get these two to dock even though the docking ports are right on top of each other. Is this a bug or am i doing something wrong?

Everyone that has developed a rover in KSP knows that testing them is essential; unless you really like to discover you didn’t bring enough EC to transmit your science after you launch. What’s missing for this is a rover test range. What’s a rover test range? Well, in its most simple way it’s just a piece of land that has various hills etc to emulate the surface on other planets. This is especially helpful to test suspension. Like this Apollo-era rover testrange: Or this (rather small) ESA test range: Another example: Cool, what else? Hmm, well, suspension aside, things like “did I bring enough EC to transmit this stuff?” could be answered by testing at night. But that isn’t very handy, so a small garage/shed like building on the test range could help with this (park in the shade / out of the sun so solar panels don’t work). In order for this test range to be helpful you should be able to launch a vehicle from it (no point in having to drive to it). Any other ideas for this would be appreciated.

So, basically, I'm considering a Mun Buggy (pun attempted); and I'm thinking what the better choice of power source is. RTGs are excluded at the start, and I have great doubts about solar; if I can have enough gas to outlast my own patience, then why bother with infinite power?

Hi, I'm having a strange problem with the Payload aerodynamic cowling *Fairing) separation on my "Rover Payloader". Basically I'm trying to place a Science Gathering Rover at a location on opposite side of KSP spaceport, and using a rocket launcher to place a cargo pod into sub-orbital trajctory, so it re=enters, and through staging eventually lands my rover on parachutes. The problem is when I STAGE the Fairing, the shell itself detaches but not the support structure holding the rover, nor the base - so I am left with the base and this structure attached to my rover which is now quite overloaded both for the parachutes!, When it lands (hard) there is a small explosion which usually cripples the Rover. The few tmes when I got lucky I managed to get the lander down in one piece, but still with the payload flange and support structure attached, and the Rover was basically struck (payload fairing far to heavy!). What am I doing wrong? Do I need to use a stage separate inside the cargo bay (between the back of rover and the base) to force a clean separation? I tried using one of those small blue separators but this didn't get rid of the base plate or supports! Also, if it matters I'm running V1.2 in Career mode. Thanks in advance for any advice, Jonathan Stevenson

A while back I made a small 'mars yard' type static for Kerbtown. I never really updated it and to be honest kind of hoped somebody else would just run with the idea, but that didn't ever happen. Several versions later, I've decided to just go and do it myself. I have a few ideas of what to do, but suggestions and requests will help really complete things, I think. @SpannerMonkey(smce) was kind enough to convert the old model to work in 1.1 for me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21315217/roveryard.zip Now, it doesn't exactly look very good; being a model I threw together as quickly as I could at the time. The new version of Unity was not exactly kind to the normal maps but it's pretty much serviceable if you don't mind looking at it. What I'd like to do is rework the whole thing with actual planning first, I'd like some input from the forums first. I'd like to make the whole thing a hex shape to fit with the rest of the KSC facilities, does anybody know about how big the hexes for the research facility and other things are? Depending on how big it ends up, there could be a whole lot of free space to put stuff in. I've got a very basic idea mapped out here: Does anybody know how to use the existing KSP textures? If those could be used for everything it would decrease the memory footprint by a whole lot.

Here should be a thread for experimental and non-released parts. DOWNLOAD HERE Contents: Manned Rugged Rover (-> included in v0.9 release) Small deploying rover wheels (PURE STOCK mechanics and no plugins) COMRADE modular rover system (cockpit, deployable wheels, crew cabin, laboratory, service bay, etc.) P.S. Since UMBRA (Universal Mobile Base Rover Assembly) name is seized by Umbra Space Industries, I named my modular rover system "COMRADE" (Compact Omnipurpose Modular Rover Assembly, Disassembly, Etc.) It will stay so, until you suggest something better.

This racing series, the KSCRC, is held over 10 races (2 of them are non-points races), and 5 cars are involved. The races are based solely on time. The races are held over a certain number of laps. The time is on the TOTAL time to complete the number of laps (not the fastest lap). The race cars must have 4 wheels, and no cheats are allowed. A maximum of 12 RCS ports are allowed, but they must be the one-way ports that are powered by monopropellant (None of the OX and LF mix). DRS is allowed, and some cars like the AS-1A can have Double DRS (where the front and the rear wing slide down.), to increase speed. This can only be used on the Super-cup and All-star cars. Any setup is allowed (in fact encouraged), but Please share your design tweaks with me to let me know what is up (I'm going up against my friends and I could use the help). Make sure to follow the racing line! Any corner cutting or track extension could make you time disqualified! Make sure to state which type of car it is! That way you can get onto the leaderboard. Here's the cars: Endurance: These cars are meant for ANY type of race (Day, night, whatever), and are used for the first and last race of the season. However, they are MASSIVE and slower than a hippo. Rally: These cars, which look more like a dune buggy than a race car, have a wide wheelbase and great cornering, allowing them to take jumps and corners well. Sports car: These cars are somewhat large, but are good for most everything. The rear is prone to roll, though, and so make sure to be careful on the turns. Supercup: OHMYGODTHISISSOFAST!!!!!!!!! Basically imagine the child of an Indycar, F1, and a hummingbird. And last, but MOST CERTAINLY not least, All-Star: Oh my goodness this beauty... I made this with 2 ideas in mind: Unbelievable speed, and god-like cornering grip. With a maximum (tested) speed of 52 m/s (I was just halfway down the straight with RCS Blazing as well,) this thing has incredible speed and more. Note: YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN CARS!!! Just make sure to include what class it is, and setup info. I'll have pics up soon. Pre-season Testing (AS-1A)/ 1 Lap, Day: Race 1 (Endurance) 2 Laps, Night or Day: Race 2 (Rally) 2 Laps, Day: Race 3 (Sports car) 2 Laps, Day: Race 4 (Supercup) 5 Laps, Day: Race 5 (Supercup) 4 Laps, Day: Race 6 (Sports car) 2 Laps, Day: Race 7 (Rally) 2 Laps, Day: Race 8 (Endurance) 2 Laps, Night or Day: All-Star Race (AS-1A) 1 Lap, Day: LEADERBOARD AS-1A 1. DarkOwl57 using the KSCRC AS-1A (Time: 10:21.68) 2. 3. 4. 5. Endurance 1. DarkOwl57 using the KSCRC Endurance Car (Time: 13:11.91)* 2. 3. 4. 5. Rally 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Sports car 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Supercup 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. *-Flat tire on Lap 2 Good luck!

The new wheels are giving me some trouble fixing the rover on a slope. The slope is not all that big (5-10 degree at most) but my heavy rover slides down even on brakes. Even when the wheels are perpendicular to the direction of slope... even when landing legs are lowered. The slide always happens as if the rover is standing on ice. (this all happens on Eve). I tried playing with wheels set up, but no amount of tweaking the traction or friction, etc could not prevent the slide. Is it by design? Basically all I want is to make sure that when I enable the brakes the rover would remain still. Is it impossible on the slope now?

I tested each part of my rover and they all worked fine until I had them all connected, It consists of 5 parts 1 inner module with 2 identical rovers at each end and a pair of running boards or connectors holding them together. The main issue being that the whole thing flopped and bounced about until all the wheels were busted bar the inner mining module which was fine and didn't bounce about at all. The whole vehicle was launched as one vessel but it just went crazy flopping like a fish until all the tires were popped. This is my rover for the sake of so you can see what I mean and how it's built in case that helps any. any help or advice would be helpful. The wheels are from Buffalo and the inner module is EPL. The wheels are mounted to IR parts but I haven't had trouble with the wheels being mounted on them until I launched the vessel with module and the Rear cab attached. Any advice would be appreciated. Edit : The instant I docked the cab to the smelters All the tires popped at once. And the two cabs connected by the two running boards could drive just fine but then would suddenly have the tires all take their turn to pop within 2 seconds. I was watching the wheel stress and it showed no sign of high stress though the bounced like they wre running over something despite being stationary. I will note the two smelters are using the same wheels and they haven't popped.

MPSR-v1.05 still in development, need a robotic arm to finished . Featuers 1-science all stock science equipments on board including science storage unit chemcam . 2-Power 2x4k battaries = total charge 8600 aprox 4 thermal generators 5 fuel cells (1 large, 4 small) 5 solar panels (4 small, 1 large) . 3-Fuel builtin mining and refining facility 6 oscar-B fuel tanks = 132 oxidizer , 108 LF 8 small xeon gas tanks = 3200 xeon gas 2 monopopelent tanks = 150 mp 2 small holding tanks for storing ore . 4-Engines 2 ion thrust engines 5 rcs 2.0 thrusters . 5-scanners 1 narrow band scanner 1 surface scanner . 6-communication 1 mid size RA-2 Relay dish . 7-Speed max speed 30m/s avg speed 22m/s . 8-weight 15.5t aprox . 9-parts 125 part count . 10-cams navigation & night vision cams for night operations . 11-operations can be operated remotely and by maned . 12-others connecting port storage container advance reaction wheels 2 winches with hooks, (on front and back each) crew hatch external crew seat . 13-drawback slow acceleration due to heavy weight but it can be overcome by using rcs thrusters . 14-future updates mechjeb (as soon as mod will available for 1.2.1) robotic arm (as soon as mod will available for 1.2.1) docking port grabbing unit advance remote guiding unit

How difficult would it be to add particles to rover wheels that could simulate the dust being kicked up on a sandy/dusty celestial body? Could it be applied by biome like CollisionFX does it?

(I'm using 1.1.3 as I'm finishing off a campaign and I'm waiting for 1.2.1 because my KSP is reasonably stable right now and I don't trust dot releases) I know this topic keeps coming up time and time again, it's even referenced in http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Rover#Navigation but I have yet to find a satisfactory answer. When I build a simple 4 wheel rover with the RoveMate (e.g. just some wheels and a battery), the navball points straight up. In fact it even drives the wrong direction, I'm forced to either invert the steering or the drive direction. This is inconvenient when designing the rover, but it makes data collection missions almost impossible, because you can't see the navigation waypoint. The standard solution is to add another probe, like in the wiki, and this does indeed fix the navball and now I can see the waypoint. However, when I do that (exactly the same as the example in the wiki), the steering no longer does anything (either keyboard or joystick). I can see the joystick/keys moving the yaw to its extreme values, but the wheels don't move (moving forward/back works). Is RoveMate really as good as it gets? Are there any better best practices other than just living with the RoveMate's terrible navigation? I've put an unmodded craft in https://gist.github.com/fommil/012d4476512571314698ac2edae2092b (but a few mods I've installed add in some inactive modules) I'm using the ArchLinux distribution of GNU/Linux.

Skyhooks are fine, but sometime I'd really like to do something more along the lines of a Lunokhod or Pathfinder/Sojourner, with deployable ramp(s)... occasionally I see ramps or ramplike mechanisms in this or that mod, but I'm really not clear on what would be best/most practical for a small rover (i.e., Mk3 cargo ramp is too big). I see people (esp @Majorjim! ) experimenting with hinges, but I'm not clear on how that could be used for a ramp... would some kind soul please give me a pointer in the right direction? Thanks!

The Glorious Astarian United Army Space Administration, is proud to present our first modular rover system. Known only as The Multi Purpose Exploration Manned Science Excursion Vehicle, or MPEMSEV, Mei, or whatever else you'd like to call it. Album: http://imgur.com/gallery/V85fM Finished: Modeling the cockpit Placeholder textures To do: Everything Textures. Theses ones are crap Collision boxes. Cant pick it up in the editor yet. The rest of the rover

Here are some bugs for the Xbox One KSP: -Planes on runway are a few degrees to the left -Flaps on planes are "wonky" -Half the wheels on rovers go the wrong way -Objects in Spaceplane Hangar do not snap onto the middle automaticly Thats it! Don't expect these bugs being fixed, or if they even are bugs, but I hope you do your best. Thanks!

Alright, I want to do that one challenge going round Kerbin, call me a lazy bum but I don't want to spend 30 hours, (Kerbin's C/speed) So I was wondering what your personal top speed (while not crashing) using rover wheels Epic Bonus Super Q: What is the top speed underwater. Please answer, I would REALLY like to make a Hypersonic Submerged Rover H.S.R.

I'm going to perform an experiment, but first I need cars to test it on. So I would like the community to provide their best manned vehicles.