Rover Wheel Steering Problem

[LeChuck]

Hello Everyone! First time poster, long time lurker! 

Did something change recently with the newer releases of KSP? For some reason my rover wheels and their steering is totally borked right now. My wheels only ever point inwards or outwards now when they were working perfectly fine before. If I invert the steering on the front axle, It just swaps the direction the wheels point on both sides. They used to both point the same direction prior to one of the updates. In both of these screenshots below, I'm trying to steer to the right hand side of the screen.

Sorry for them being super wide, I play on a 21:9 monitor . 

Inward:

 

 

Outward:

 

I'm only holding right but the wheels point in opposite directions when they used to point the same before. 

 

Is there anything I can do to salvage this rover? I have a really nice mining / fuel outpost setup on the surface of Minmus and since I'm playing career, I'd rather not spend the resources sending another one. 

Please forgive me if this has been addressed before. But my search results on the forum wasn't returning any useful results. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. 

 

LeChuck 

Edited May 12, 2016 by LeChuck

[bewing]

Hi LeChuck! It has long been surmised that (since there were so many changes to wheels) the upgrade from 1.0 to 1.1 would "break" the rover wheels. And it did. The rover that I created in 1.0.5 has exactly the same issue as yours. The "driving around the landscape" function of my rover happens to not be its primary function (it's an ISRU) -- so I can make do with the broken one if I just push it from here to there with another rover. If I hit S or W, it kinda sorta turns. Otherwise, it goes straight, and I can push it sideways with the other rover to make it turn in a predictable direction. There may be something that you can do about editing the craft file and the savegame to make the wheels steer properly, but I don't know it.

Oh -- one other thing: my broken rover had those balloon wheels, the same as yours. The motors on those wheels used to be decent enough to move a rover the size of yours and mine. It turns out the balloon wheel motors are pathetic now. So even if you can get the steering fixed, I hope you don't have to drive that thing up any slopes -- even on Minmus, I think it would be a challenge with those wheels.

Edited May 12, 2016 by bewing

[Plusck]

This is almost certainly because the "control from" part (which looks to be the docking port, here) is rotated 90° to the horizontal. Hence the NavBall being the way it is. The rover thinks it is lying on its side on the ground. What do "up" and "down" do?

To fix this, you either rotate the docking port in your save file (something that I'm certainly not qualified to tell you how to do) or you add another docking port using another ship - which could be tiny (i.e. you build a rover or tiny ship to dock in orbit, with a triplet of docking ports on it, so that you can transfer a properly-facing docking port on to the front).

Alternatively, maybe KIS would let you remove the docking port and replace it the right way around, but I haven't tried it and don't know whether this is something you could do immediately with an engineer or two on EVA.

[bewing]

Well, isn't that a rovemate controller on the top of the thing, though? If it is a "control from" issue, maybe changing the control point between the rovemate and the docking port would help.

Edited May 12, 2016 by bewing

[RizzoTheRat]

I'm with Plusck, it thinks it's on it's side looking at the nav ball, so I'm guessing you're controlling from the docking port rather than the rovemate.  If switching to the rovemate doesn't work then an engineer with KAS/KIS should be able to remove the docking port and reattach it rotated 90 degrees which might do the job.

Edited May 12, 2016 by RizzoTheRat

[LeChuck]

You guys are correct. The frontside docking port is indeed on its side. However the rear side docking port is correct. Silly me didn't test controlling from that specific port on Kerbin before launch. I only used the rover core before launch. 

However, last night I did indeed try the other control points and I experienced the same issue. I'll play with it some more once I arrived home from work but I'm fairly certain the results are the same.

 

Thank you also to bewing for the explanation. Lucky for me my landing spot / mining area are fairly level on Minmus.

Thank you all for your responses!

 

Edited May 12, 2016 by LeChuck
correction

[bewing]

Well, I just did a "Control from here" test on mine, and it did fix the issue. But on mine, it's the other way around. I have an OKTO that's mounted vertically (like for a rocket), and that's the one I used to use for control. My navball is pointed at the center of the sky when I use that control point. And the wheels steer wrong.

I also happen to have a klaw on the nose of my rover, mounted horizontally. When I select that as my control point, the wheels steer correctly. My navball points at the horizon, level, when I use that one.

[pincushionman]

2 hours ago, bewing said:

…My navball is pointed at the center of the sky when I use that control point. And the wheels steer wrong…

Did you use Q/E instead of A/S in this case?

[bewing]

I'm not sure if I tried QE before, but I just tried it now as an experiment. QE does nothing while I am trying to drive the rover using the "wrong" control point -- I assume that the (tiny) reaction wheel tries to spin the rover, but there is no visible effect on steering or motion. SW cause a different (ineffective) wheel turn pattern, and some of the wheels try to spin, so you get an odd motion.

The "wrong" control point is also the default, so after I grab with a klaw and then detach, I always have to reset it.

[LeChuck]

Looks like you guys were correct about the docking port positioning being the issue. I just swapped over to the rear side port and everything is working again. I disabled steering on the front wheels and enabled them on the rear instead. I now have control over the rover again. 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I got up a little early for work and was most likely too tired to see the problem clearly enough. 

LeChuck