The Kerbal Dakar 2017 entry vehicles thread

[DarkOwl57]

11 hours ago, GDJ said:

 

I'll grab you both some beers when you reach the finish line.

ah ah aah Forum rules

[Madrias]

"Brakes, Jeb!  Brakes!"

"Calm down, Bill!"  Jeb then yanked the handbrake, gave the Dead Bug's wheel a quick flick left, then right, and floored the throttle, causing the Madness Industries engine pushing the car along, the FART, to release the obnoxious blue cloud of gas.

"We don't need brakes, Bill.  We've got this Fast Acting Reaction Thruster.  Gotta love testing some company's new and unusual products."

"I think I'm going to need a new space suit."

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi, after the I feel inauspicious run with my original vehicle,  a little bit of the Hare effect i think and a touch of over confidence I've decided that I'm running again with something new. This time EC and fuel cells no jets, another new set of wheels with reduced arm offset for a lower roll center and another SMR cage , this time long and narrow instead of wide, the wide track wheel units address the stability reduction caused by a narrow chassis, and i think I've nailed the effective spring and damper range in unity so as not to be affected by terrain seams in any way.  A complete lightweight compared to anything else I've tried, coming in at a shade under 1tonne,

The top speed is very dependent on drag and it's a very draggy chassis, as is obvious by the rate at which speed drops when off the power, 

As with all these things, or at least in my case the set up takes a little while to get right, although the wheels are almost fit and forget, having what i reckon are decent unity friction and shock settings,  the long travel suspension does take a little more tweaking as it displays that tendency of IFS of kneeling, that is over compressing the inside front suspension , lifting the outside rear wheel clear of the ground and making the whole plot a little twitchy,  so it's just points above default but every point seems to make a big difference, I'd really like a finer adjustment scale, so just like in RL i could go half or quarter turn instead of having to go up in one full turn steps. 

As an aside the comments i made a few posts ago about the M1s hierarchy proved correct and i now have two sets of M1 wheels that work much better than before, and my steering knuckles don't turn with the wheels, whoever did the conversion either got confused or was new at wheels as the steering knuckle was called wheel! and the wheel was called mesh and there was a duplicate broken wheel mesh for good measure, so that the steering knuckle which should have been a child of SteeringPivot ended up a child of wheel pivot instead

An unofficial run for a stage 1 test timed out at 00:04:57:36, with a couple of oops moments so a clean run could potentially be faster

The SM RKR Dakar 11 OCEC

[GDJ]

19 minutes ago, DarkOwl57 said:

ah ah aah Forum rules

Curious. Which rule did I break?

[DarkOwl57]

You know what.... I say screw it. I'm changing cars again. No idea what I'm gonna use... but in testing the thing was slow. TO THE DRAWING BOARD!!!

1 minute ago, GDJ said:

Curious. Which rule did I break?

There was something earlier in one of the threads about how drinking calms you down or something like that.

[Madrias]

6 minutes ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

another new set of wheels

You know, I'd totally rock a set of those if I could make 'em work with the Dead Bug (which is using that cool Jeep body and the structural tubes, although the Jeep body isn't exactly in stock form anymore.  I swapped it from mesh to MODEL in order to make it a bit taller, so it's more Willys than Wrangler.  Plus I've got three sizes of it because I was toying around with the idea of a bigger vehicle.)

Though I've been more wanting a truck to run this rally in, but there's, well, a lack of "build as pieces" vehicles for KSP, as I'd want to be able to lose fenders, etc. on the Kerbal Rally.

Plus, the tweak-scaled KR-2L's are the definition of slow and wimpy, as I have to have that thruster to climb hills, or travel across dead-flat-ground above 20 m/s.  Without the FART, it won't make it through Stage 1...

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

30 minutes ago, Madrias said:

You know, I'd totally rock a set of those if I could make 'em work with the Dead Bug (which is using that cool Jeep body and the structural tubes, although the Jeep body isn't exactly in stock form anymore.  I swapped it from mesh to MODEL in order to make it a bit taller, so it's more Willys than Wrangler.  Plus I've got three sizes of it because I was toying around with the idea of a bigger vehicle.)

Though I've been more wanting a truck to run this rally in, but there's, well, a lack of "build as pieces" vehicles for KSP, as I'd want to be able to lose fenders, etc. on the Kerbal Rally.

Plus, the tweak-scaled KR-2L's are the definition of slow and wimpy, as I have to have that thruster to climb hills, or travel across dead-flat-ground above 20 m/s.  Without the FART, it won't make it through Stage 1...

In a previous version of the FrogStomp, I was also running TR's on the jeep body, scaled to 80%. To counteract the diminished horsepower, I tweaked the config to add that lost 20% back in. Various control issues and a poor rover pilot (me) saw fit to switch to a set of M1 wheels, but the modded TR's worked as intended. 

PS, cool to hear someone's using the RoveMate Classic. Drop a line in the release thread if you have any feedback. 

[SasquatchM]

Now try driving the stages with a locked 3rd person camera behind the vehicle:

 

 

[GDJ]

1 hour ago, DarkOwl57 said:

There was something earlier in one of the threads about how drinking calms you down or something like that.

Well I would consult with a moderator  before making judgements like this in the future.

Edited January 2, 2017 by GDJ
Grammar

[Triop]

[TheKurgan]

Well here is what I built in the last hour or so... It's not bad, topping out at only 110, but it handles the jumps REAL nice!!

The jump at the 1:05 mark was pretty good... I think.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2017 by TheKurgan

[Fireheart318]

BEHOLD MY HOVERKRAFT, PEASANTS!

[rkarmark]

2 minutes ago, Fireheart318 said:

<SNIP>

but HOW????

[Triop]

1 hour ago, rkarmark said:

but HOW????

Mods.

I'm testing something very small at the moment:

I've done stage 1 about 30 times now, I keep crashing on stage 2...

[mrmcp1]

Thought a new design might be a good idea. My last car had a weird issue, when it landed it would often spin 90 degrees (in the yaw axis) then the momentum of the car and friction of the wheels caused it to roll of multiple times

It has a longer wheelbase than the last one and a lower centre of gravity

[Azimech]

22 minutes ago, mrmcp1 said:

Thought a new design might be a good idea. My last car had a weird issue, when it landed it would often spin 90 degrees (in the yaw axis) then the momentum of the car and friction of the wheels caused it to roll of multiple times

It has a longer wheelbase than the last one and a lower centre of gravity

 

Uhm ... do you have friction and traction set to automatic? If so, may I suggest override?

[mrmcp1]

1 minute ago, Azimech said:

 

Uhm ... do you have friction and traction set to automatic? If so, may I suggest override?

The last car had traction automatic and friction set to manual (1.6 on the front and 2 on the rear).

The current one has the same values and traction set to manual. 

It was a weird issue and the new car has a similar problem but it's not as bad. Couldn't think of how to stop it 

[Azimech]

5 minutes ago, mrmcp1 said:

The last car had traction automatic and friction set to manual (1.6 on the front and 2 on the rear).

The current one has the same values and traction set to manual. 

It was a weird issue and the new car has a similar problem but it's not as bad. Couldn't think of how to stop it 

Often the case is basically too much grip. For me, rolling over is in any circumstance unacceptable. That's why I have pretty low friction settings both on front and rear, I tune until the vehicle never flips. After that I choose a slightly higher friction on the rear wheels, this way the vehicle is basically understeered but can be forced into oversteer when I want (fast left/right actions for example). Yes, traction suffers a bit and braking even more ... but I rather have that than the pain of picking up a trail of pieces ;-)

A bonus: with lower friction settings the behaviour becomes more predictable. This is true even in real life, the more grip a vehicle has, the more violent the reaction when it loses it ... and often the more unpredictable. I'll never forget reading a car magazine 25 years ago ... it was a rally report. One of the drivers complained of having too much grip.

Edited January 3, 2017 by Azimech

[Fireheart318]

2 hours ago, rkarmark said:

but HOW????

With the magic of friendship! determination! cheats! science!

[Fireheart318]

On 1/2/2017 at 10:01 AM, Madrias said:

"Brakes, Jeb!  Brakes!"

"Calm down, Bill!"  Jeb then yanked the handbrake, gave the Dead Bug's wheel a quick flick left, then right, and floored the throttle, causing the Madness Industries engine pushing the car along, the FART, to release the obnoxious blue cloud of gas.

"We don't need brakes, Bill.  We've got this Fast Acting Reaction Thruster.  Gotta love testing some company's new and unusual products."

"I think I'm going to need a new space suit."

What mod adds in the intake air ion engine?

[Triop]

[TheKurgan]

Well, here is my official entry, the Dakar Spider.

43 parts, 1734kg, 40kN of thrust, top speed of ~119m/s, cost of $10,059, piloted by Jeb, with Bill as co-driver.

Only been tested on stage 1 and 2, unofficial stage 1 time of 6:26

Mods:

KSP: 1.2.2 (Win64) - Unity: 5.4.0p4 - OS: Windows 10  (10.0.0) 64bit
B9 Aerospace - 6.2.1
B9 Aerospace HX Parts - 6.2.1
DistantObjectEnhancement - 1.8.1
EditorExtensionsRedux - 3.3.11.1
Firespitter - 7.5
Kerbal Engineer Redux - 1.1.2.8
KSP-AVC Plugin - 1.1.6.2
LLL-Continued - 1.0.2.5
Modular Rocket Systems - 1.13.1
ModularFlightIntegrator - 1.2.2
NEBULA_DecalsContinued - 0.1.1.2
Stock Visual Enhancements - 1.1.4

Surface Mounted Stock-Alike Lights for Self-Illumination - 1.3.1
Stock Visual Terrain - 2.0
SXTContinued - 0.3.5
TakeCommandContinued - 1.4.5
TweakScale - 2.3.3

Some TweakScaling, and a minor tweak to the torque curve inside the config file of the wheels used.

Yes, I am using SVT... so I am doing this with real trees and rocks... I dunno why... I really don't.

Oh and yes I made decals for all the major mods used in the construction of my car.

Edited January 3, 2017 by TheKurgan

[Mycroft]

9 minutes ago, TheKurgan said:

Well, here is my official entry, the Dakar Spider.

Dude, that is awesome!

[Matuchkin]

So now we have a car that actually looks like a car. This is getting interesting.

[Triop]

My new stock frame:

I need the reaction wheel to prevent me from turning corkscrews during jumps....