Rover wheel oddities?

[strider3]

In the attached pic you will see my "Duna Fuel Rover". It's purpose is to bring mined and converted Fuel/Lox/Mono to a ship, landed near by, which will transfer these to an orbital Duna refueling station.

I have 2 questions:

1. How do I determine if all rover wheels are "pulling" in the same direction?

2. Every time I "link" this rover to the mining facility or the transfer ship, and then unlink when transfer of fuel is done, the steering and wheel direction seem to change. Is there a way to stop this behavior?

OK...3 questions ;-)

3. Every time I link and unlink, as stated above, the craft type and name changes. I realize that it has a "plane" cockpit on it (to carry my engineer for linking/unlinking), but I have to try and find "it" every time I unlink...is there a way that this craft will always be a "rover", named "Duna fuel rover", after linking/unlinking?

Edited February 19, 2019 by strider3

[HvP]

@Victor3 If you are controlling from the cockpit at the front of your fuel truck then all of the wheels should be pulling in the correct direction. Be sure to right-click in the cockpit and choose "Control From Here" to be sure. For longer vehicles the game can sometimes make poor decisions regarding which wheels steer and in what direction. You may have to right-click and disable steering for some wheels or even invert their steering direction from their right-click-menu to get the best results.

As for the steering direction changing when you undock - are you docking to your station using that small docking port on the top of the truck? The game will often revert to the last active docking port as the new control point for navigation after you undock, and in your case that docking port is aiming up at the sky. Unfortunately, I don't know of any method to prevent this. You'll just have to remember to keep right-clicking your cockpit afterwards to control from there every time.

For your third question, there may be a good solution for you. There is now a stock method for setting a priority to the names that each craft retains after docking and undocking. See the linked article below. Changing the name priority is normally only available in the VAB/SPH editors, but you can make a small change to the "settings.cfg" file in your main Kerbal Space Program folder which will allow you to change the name priorities in flight. Find the line called "SHOW_VESSEL_NAMING_IN_FLIGHT" and set it to "True"

There are details on how the naming priority works in this article:

 

Edited February 19, 2019 by HvP

[bewing]

As far as question 1 goes, you can get the rover on a flat piece of ground and disable the motors on all but one pair of wheels. Then tell the rover to go forward. Repeat for all the other pairs of wheels.

Also, if you feel that your wheels are "fighting" you as you drive around, then you may want to turn off the "traction control" feature on all the wheels. Traction control applies the brakes on a wheel if it thinks that wheel is slipping. It can really slow you down a lot on slightly uneven terrain, or on hillsides.

 

Edited February 19, 2019 by bewing

[JadeOfMaar]

Assuming you use KAS pipes (apparently visible in screenshot) the problem may be that the root part of your rover becomes its KAS connector and you're forced to deal with its orientation when you unlink and try to drive. The wheels don't know how to move when "forward" no longer aligns at all with them.

Edited February 19, 2019 by JadeOfMaar

[Espatie]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Assuming you use KAS pipes (apparently visible in screenshot) the problem may be that the root part of your rover becomes its KAS connector and you're forced to deal with its orientation when you unlink and try to drive. The wheels don't know how to move when "forward" no longer aligns at all with them.

I think that's a stock standard junior docking port, but the same can hold true.

 

Resetting the direction to Forward should fix it.

 

Also, in my experience having 2 pairs of wheels close together like that can confuse the steering direction control. Try either evenly spacing out the wheels or disabling or reversing the steering direction.

[strider3]

Thanks! The rear pairs are drive wheels only, no steering. When I say link, I do mean the KAS pipe connectors...the docking port on top is only there to control the craft for landing on Duna, wheels down. An update, also... the steering direction is changing even without linking. I press the 4 number key and the front wheels turn left. I press it again, a bit later and the front wheels turn "in", negating any steering...very weird.

As far as the naming priorities, I assume that, even though the articles deals with naming multiple parts, setting the priority as mentioned for one of the "control" parts should work. You will notice that I have both the RC-L01 remote guidance unit and the MK1 inline cockpit. My assumption here was that an engineer would not be able to pilot the craft from the cockpit, therefore a remote guidance unit was required? The cockpit being nothing more than a place for the engineer to "ride along". Am I wrong in this thinking?

bewing, I will follow your tip for checking wheel direction and also the traction setting...but I need a bit more info on the traction setting...by "turning off" traction control, do you mean taking the slider to zero? I have "auto" and "override" available as a setting for traction control and the slider, of course...sorry to be so "dense"

Edited February 20, 2019 by strider3

[bewing]

2 hours ago, Victor3 said:

Thanks! The rear pairs are drive wheels only, no steering. When I say link, I do mean the KAS pipe connectors...the docking port on top is only there to control the craft for landing on Duna, wheels down. An update, also... the steering direction is changing even without linking. I press the 4 number key and the front wheels turn left. I press it again, a bit later and the front wheels turn "in", negating any steering...very weird.

Then that sounds like a mod bug. I'm not seeing it in the stock game, and I've heard no reports of that in stock.

2 hours ago, Victor3 said:

My assumption here was that an engineer would not be able to pilot the craft from the cockpit, therefore a remote guidance unit was required? The cockpit being nothing more than a place for the engineer to "ride along". Am I wrong in this thinking?

Wrong, yup. Any crewmember can drive a rover. They just can't use SAS, unless they have a probe core.

2 hours ago, Victor3 said:

bewing, I will follow your tip for checking wheel direction and also the traction setting...but I need a bit more info on the traction setting...by "turning off" traction control, do you mean taking the slider to zero? I have "auto" and "override" available as a setting for traction control and the slider, of course...sorry to be so "dense"

Traction control and friction are two different things. Look on the context menu for a pair of wheels. Read it very closely . You will see there is a button for Traction Control (on/off).

[strider3]

AFA the steering direction changing...it only does it on the "left" front wheel...and it only does it once...and NOT every time (LOL!). I can live with it. Your suggestions for checking the drive direction for each pair were spot on...found several wheels going the wrong direction. Since fixing it the fuel rover is MUCH more responsive! A note though...these rover wheels were attached one at a time during construction...still need to learn more about VAB construction tools. That being said, I cannot open a context menu for a "pair" of wheels...only single wheels. I do not have a Traction Control or Friction Control "on/off"...both only have "auto" or "override".  Keep in mind I'm on KSP 1.4...don't know if that changes things? Still waiting on my preferred mods being updated to 1.6. That being said, I took the traction control slider to 0, and my rover is much more responsive now.

If I hear you correctly, I still needed the probe core to safely land the UNMANNED rover on Duna...wheels down. I don't feel too bad about that, then.

As always...Thanks gang!

[Espatie]

I'm not sure, but Traction Control might be only visible with Advanced Tweakables enabled.

[strider3]

I do have Advanced Tweakables enabled, Espatie...and it is visible...just not the "on/off" that bewing speaks of.

[bewing]

Oh jeez, you're right. It's not on/off like I remembered. So yeah, slide the slider down some.

And yeah, you only get to access the wheels' menus in pairs if you place them in pairs with symmetry.

Edited February 20, 2019 by bewing