The Practical Walker Challenge

Bubbadevlin · May 28, 2019

With all of the hype leading up to the Breaking Ground DLC, a significant part of it is the idea of walkers. I have seen many people hyped to try and build one, and Squad even made a teaser of one. With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to make a challenge for them.

Walkers are COOL. It is a method of transportation that is found almost everywhere in nature, but is rarely seen in technology. They are a staple of science fiction, and the idea of a robotic walker has only been realized within the past decade. However, any type of walking mechanism has a flaw. In most situations - KSP or otherwise - walkers are just impractical, being; slower, more complicated, and often times less stable than simple wheels.

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The goal for this challenge is to create a practical walker. To do so, there are 3 criteria; Speed, Strength, and Agility. To make the challenge more interesting, it will be a tournament-style challenge and each walker will get points based on how well it fulfills the criteria

Speed:

The faster a walker can go, the better. If your walker can only go 5 m/s it is almost completely impractical for transportation. (I say this as someone who has actually tried to cover a fairly large distance in a slow walker) The speed of a walker is the fastest it can RELIABLY travel over flat terrain. Speed will be judged based on the fastest speed in the F3 screen, or a screenshot of the nav ball.

Strength:

A walker is similarly impractical if it can barely lift itself. The strength of a walker will be classified by how many tons of cargo it can lift - the more cargo it can haul around, the more practical a mode of transportation it becomes. Cargo does not have to be in a cargo bay or anything else, it will simply be counted as the weight of a walker "fully loaded" minus the weight of the walker "empty". A walker should have proof of it working both "fully loaded" and "empty".

*Note* A walker's agility and speed will be based on when it is "fully loaded"

Agility:

Any mode of transportation is again useless if it only works in perfect conditions. If a walker falls over or cannot get up a simple hill, it is impractical. Agility is a difficult property to quantify, especially in KSP, so it will be measured by the steepest slope the walker can travel up. This will be measured by using the degrees on the nav ball, with 0 being no slope and 90 being vertical. Proof must be provided that the control point is parallel to the horizontal.

The score of each walker will be calculated using a formula so that no one aspect of the challenge is more important than another.

(Speed in M/s)*(Angle in Degrees)* ( ( Weight in tons)/5) = Total Score

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Like any good challenge, the unfortunately must be rules, but I am trying to keep the challenge as rule-free and open as possible

Rules

1) All submissions must be walkers (no making hinged wheels and calling it a walker)

2) Mods are allowed, but no part mods that may effect the walkers (like IR)

3) All submissions must be through screenshots or video.

4) No cheating/Debug menu

5) All propulsion for your walker must come from its legs, no booster engines or rover wheels, etc.

I made this challenge before the DLC came out as a way for people to start thinking about walker designs and what they are going to do with the new possibilities that the DLC presents. Once the DLC is released, I will add a leader board and my own submissions. To that end, in the spoiler are the completely impractical stock walkers I have made in the past.

Spoiler