Different tyre options

[pandaman]

This came to me while answering another topic. .

This is probably most relevant to rovers (and ties in to another suggestion I made about different ground properties for biomes).

When we select a wheel to stick on our craft we get various setting options.  What if an option to select a tyre for a given terrain type were added?  

So, if I want to drive this craft on soft sand I would select  'soft earth' tyres, for polar regions I may select 'ice' tyres etc.  That way I have to anticipate (or survey in advance) what terrain I will be driving on to get the most efficiency out of my wheels.  All tyres will work wherever they  are, but would give better traction etc if optimised for the terrain they are on.

This would in effect give pre-selected settings without so many sliders etc and 'could' possibly replace some of the setting tweak options to give a simpler UI.   Engineers could possibly be able to change tyre type in situ too.

[The_Rocketeer]

Basically user friendly traction/suspension presets? You got my vote.

5 hours ago, pandaman said:

Engineers could possibly be able to change tyre type in situ too.

I love the idea of doing this, but for immersion's sake there would have to be a clear cost/benefit of changing vs not changing. Mass of spare tyres, or engineer skill level or something. Otherwise you're just transmuting stuff u did bring into stuff u didn't, which is too cheaty for me.

Edited September 17, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[Slam_Jones]

11 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Basically user friendly traction/suspension presets? You got my vote.

I love the idea of doing this, but for immersion's sake there would have to be a clear cost/benefit of changing vs not changing. Mass of spare tyres, or engineer skill level or something. Otherwise you're just transmuting stuff u did bring into stuff u didn't, which is too cheaty for me.

Yeah personally I'm not so sure.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but the big difference between them would likely just be the tread pattern.  And, again I could be wrong, but re-arranging the shape of whatever type of rubber they use on tires doesn't seem like an easy task in the best of conditions, let alone in the middle of a field.

[pandaman]

 You got it with the user friendly presets. 

Yeah, the tyre changing ability would need some thought.  You would probably need to take the new ones with you for example (extra mass and storage space(.   It could be worth it if you don't know (or guess wrong) when designing the rover, or end up in the wrong place and find the you have no traction.

I'm no expert but, in this context 'tyres' would not be just inflatable rubber things.  They could be solid rubber in whatever hardness, to wire meshes, to spiky metal death roller things.  So changing tyres would be more like changing by he whole wheels

 

[swjr-swis]

I don't see anyone complaining about engineers being able to magically repair a visibly completely shredded tyre in the blink of an eye without any cost or effort (spare tyre? materials? jack?), something that's been in the game for a long time now.

In that context, I don't see any problem with engineers also being able to switch tyre types. Whatever the explanation behind magic tyre repair rematerialization is, it can explain switching the tyres too, probably even easier.

 

I'd say go for it, but I fear the problem lies more in the wheels code still not being quite tamed. Wheels behave a bit better in 1.2, but Squad would still need to first fully figure out what combination of settings make wheels behave certain ways at all, before they can add multiple 'presets' that reliably simulate different types of tyres and their respective effectiveness on different surfaces. Baby steps.

 

[katateochi]

I really like the idea of having different tyre types but I'm not sure that the current "wheel" system could model it in such a way that it would make a significant difference.  Also, wouldn't the biggest change required need to be in the actual terrain.  All terrain is pretty much the same (differently coloured) stuff, so there would need to be another layer of information about all planet surfaces (not sure how much work that would be).  
But even if modeling different terrain types was too much, I'd still like the idea of having different tyre types that simply had different strengths and speed ratings (cos Kerbals need racing slicks too). 

[pandaman]

@katateochi.Yes I think you're probably right, this on it's own would probably not make enough difference to be of any noticeable benefit for the work involved.

However, I did suggest a little while ago that biomes could be given 'modifiers' that affect friction and wheel loading to simulate different surfaces.  These modifiers could be randomised to a degree for each new save (like ore is now) so until you do a survey or pay a visit you won't know exactly what you need.

That in conjunction with the different tyres option could be an interesting feature. 

The more I think of it, the more the two ideas are like one more detailed idea.  Shame I didn't think if them both together

[Jonfliesgoats]

I like the idea.