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The Elcano Challenge: Ground-Based Circumnavigation (4th)


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On 9/5/2022 at 5:07 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

I finally did it. A Kerbin circumnavigation in less than 6 hours.

More precisely, a time of 5 hours, 47 minutes, and 57 seconds, for an average speed of 180.5 m/s. Might post more about it later, but I'm super tired and so here's a "teaser".

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Well, that only took a month and a half. Kind of just posted this here and subsequently forgot about it. I guess now I'll finally showcase my first sub-6 hour run. 

Firstly, there's the new design for the KELP Lightning, and, quite frankly, I don't even remember exactly what I changed about it from the previous version, other than that whatever I did ended up increasing its top speed on water to about 188 m/s, compared to the 182 or so from before. The only thing I can think of is that I added an extra structural fuselage on the front two pontoons, which maybe increased buoyancy and helped me out?

Spoiler

Anyways, the run began, as they all do, with me leaving the KSC and heading directly east around the peninsula.

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20 minutes in, and we're already almost there

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Sunset after passing it and redirecting towards the northeast, which we will continue on until our land crossing (ain't that gonna be fun)

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1 hour in

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Encountered the same speed loss due to lower air temperature problem as before, but this time it isn't as bad. In fact, I actually gained a little bit of speed initially before starting to lose it again.

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2 hours

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In the middle of land crossing. I crashed the KELP even more times on this run than I did on the last by a long shot.

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The props are also spreading out due to physics warp distortion and the constant save reloading, which I suspect is what magically made me go faster on water last time.

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And indeed, once I was back on the water, I was going over 210 m/s!

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3 hours

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4 hours, post-strait crossing. I actually ended up destroying the craft around this strait, which resulted in me having to do over an hour of the run all over again, as the spread out blades would hit the water and explode whenever I was going at less than 170 m/s or so.

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5 hours. This time, I'm going above the island chain instead of below it.

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Home stretch

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Finish line!

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Final time: 5h 48m

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I also made a video about this one, but it's a music video only, with "Around the World" by Daft Punk as a quite fitting soundtrack. It shows some of the moments, such as the initial launch off the runway and into the water, that I didn't screenshot.

 

Edited by Jack Joseph Kerman
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On 10/23/2022 at 10:36 AM, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

Well, that only took a month and a half. Kind of just posted this here and subsequently forgot about it. I guess now I'll finally showcase my first sub-6 hour run.

That's a weird coincidence; I was just having a play around with this as a break from Dres. One question - why go East? It seems like if you set off at midday and go West you might enjoy sunshine for the entire trip at these kinds of speeds.

ETA: indeed it turns out my impressive 200 m/s jet-powered boat just reflects what seems to be problematic buoyancy with Tweakscaled parts. Back, as they say, to the drawing board.

Edited by damerell
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In 2021 i started my rover kerbin run and got most of the way around and just got burned out by it, did other things, and kind of forgot about it for a while. with the recent ksp2 reveal i decided i wanted to finish this before ksp2 comes out. when i started, this new thread wasnt here and the old rules of the challenge didnt have the specifics regarding thrust/control while airborne. my rover DOES use control surfaces and prop power in the air (but it wont actually maintain flight, the longest jumps are maybe 10 seconds) so if this run doesnt count then so be it, ill leave that up to the powers that be to decide. ill probably do it again in ksp2 anyway lol. i just want to finish this run. so ill quote my old post with its updates up to this point and continue underneath.

 

 

On 2/1/2021 at 7:52 PM, Icky said:

day one down. many many more to go. ill just keep updating this post. after driving to the north pole from ksc i wanted to build a rover with better suspension. i had good success with using hinges to make control arms. when i was building for this challenge i knew i would need to do a few water crossings with it so i stuck a couple small props on top. upon testing i found they would get me upwards of 80m/s on land all on their own, and do it using a LOT less power! so i ditched the powered wheels in favor of medium landing gear which could take much more abuse. with some fine tuning of the landing gear's suspension settings and the hinge settings i got a rover that will comfortably cruise at 80m/s across kerbins terrain and soak up bumps and jumps with ease. with added rudder for steering (steering at that speed with the wheels is too sensitive) and ailerons so it wont nose over on jumps, it ends up looking like a plane without wings, but i assure you it wont fly in its current configuration. it will descend at around 10m/s. heres the first few minutes of the trip. setting off, planting the flag: 

this is the route ill be taking:

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day 1:

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day 2:

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got around to my first water crossing, which is i think the longest at around 57km. at 14.3m/s it should take just over an hour. luckily its mostly hands off, just small corrections every now and then. 

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day.....idk...something. theyre getting a bit blurred now. you can see the mission time.

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got all the water crossings done. i discovered i could back the power on the motors down to 5-10% so its just stupid efficient now. i found with sas on its pretty much hands off, it stays level enough off jumps that i dont worry about the landings. i just correct the heading occasionally. its easy to forget im doing nearly 200mph!

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over half way!

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almost jumped clean over this ridge! managed to set it down just at the top. kinda hard to tell from the picture i guess, but that water is a couple hundred meters DOWN the mountain.

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ok first leg of 2022 done.

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so immediately i noticed something changed in the wheel physics since i played last year. even just barely moving the wheels are super jittery and the rover bounces all over the place. i turned the spring rate down from 3 (max) to about half and that calmed it down. eventually i dialed it back to 0.6 and it seems ok now, but not perfect. it'll still be a little weird sometimes.

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into the desert!

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saw my first cactus of the trip (i think). and since i recently found out theres supposed to be a temple in the desert i figured i might give it a visit if it wasnt too far out of the way. also had one or two hard landings.

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getting close! 

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right after i set off from the ruins i found this weird purple crystal. ill have to come back with a scan arm and see what it is.

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MISSION SUCCESS!

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Final mission time just over 9 days, but it took nearly two years lol. i plan to do it again in ksp2. hopefully with better wheel physics and a smoother surface.

 

final water crossing

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way point in view! 100-ish km to go!

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KSC spotted!

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final set of waypoints. the only real deviation i took from the original route outline was going north over the mountains at the very end instead of south.

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Edited by Icky
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On 10/23/2022 at 9:34 PM, damerell said:

One question - why go East? It seems like if you set off at midday and go West you might enjoy sunshine for the entire trip at these kinds of speeds.

No reason really- it’s just what I had done the previous two times, and my craft was powered entirely by RTGs anyways, so it wasn’t really an issue. I thought about going west with a solar powered design to save weight, but the power generation became inadequate at high latitudes.

Edited by Jack Joseph Kerman
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4 hours ago, Icky said:

this new thread wasnt here and the old rules of the challenge didnt have the specifics regarding thrust/control while airborne. my rover DOES use control surfaces and prop power in the air (but it wont actually maintain flight, the longest jumps are maybe 10 seconds)

Unless there are any objections, I'm going to say your rover posted above is allowed.  I added that rule (or maybe the guy before me did, don't remember now..) to prevent ridiculous jumps, which are borderline sub-orbital hops.  An example would be Gilly or even Minmus.  You can cover great distances jumping, but at some point the landing is going to damage or destroy your rover.  Even a single RCS thruster can soften the landing for a heavy rover, especially on low-gravity CBs.  So I have the rule, no thrust of any sort while airborne.  The intention of that rule is to keep the Elcano challenge limited to surface vehicles.  Your vehicle does not appear to flaunt that rule, on Kerbin it appears to act like a normal rover, with brief jumps.  So keep me posted!  I wasn't sure if you had completed your Kerbin run or not.  (looked like you were pretty close at least..)

4 hours ago, Icky said:

rover that will comfortably cruise at 80m/s across kerbins terrain

That is blazing fast!  Yes, I can make rovers that can reach those speeds, but it is very difficult to hit those speeds without risking crashes.  Your rover seems to absorb the bumps extremely well.

4 hours ago, Icky said:

so immediately i noticed something changed in the wheel physics since i played last year.

Arg.  Every new update completely changes how wheels behave.  The good news is if you're using 1.12.3, pretty sure that's going to be the last update.  By the way, if adjusting spring rates doesn't do the trick, tinker with the damping rates too.  I have no advice on what settings work best, but usually if you play around long enough you'll get something that works.  Kinda.  Until the next update changes wheels again.

 

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FInally finished my Wal equatorial circumnavigation, that I started 8 moths ago. I mostly let it drop for several months, until picking it up seriously again in september.

I wanted to make the best mountain-climbing rover and test it on the most difficult terrain I knew, and nothing beats the equatorial mountain ring of Wal. Ok, kerbin has steeper mountains, but it's kind of a different environment. And I already climbed devil's tower (big mountains with near vertical cliffs and flat top to the west of ksc) on wheel power alone, but I wouldn't want to do that for a grand tour.

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anyway, mountains, mountains and even more mountains. This circumnavigation was more challenging, but less interesting than the one on Slate. Less variety

Edited by king of nowhere
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6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

FInally finished my Wal equatorial circumnavigation

Congratulations!  Leaderboards updated!  By the way, now that we've added a modded CBs section to the leaderboards, we need some more folks to circumnavigate them.  @king of nowhere is looking mighty lonely in that section!

Nice rover design by the way!  I understand it was somewhat purpose-built for mountainous terrain.  However, anything that can survive that type of terrain would probably do well pretty much anywhere.  And the terrain on Wal looked impressive!  Okay, perhaps terrifying too..

 

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question:

Now that I'm done with Wal, I was considering going forward with Polta. However, I discovered that the roll cage of my rover doesn't work anymore as intended, because wheels are a lot more fragile and keep breaking.

I considered adding 4-6 struts on the bottom of the rover, to be deployed quickly in an emergency to complete the roll cage on the bottom and protect the wheels. A minor change for a rover that's already very elaborate

If I were to do such a change - using alt-f12 to bring the new rover in place and pretending it's always been like that - would it be legitimate? Or do I have to launch anew and repeat all the trip to Polta?

Edited by king of nowhere
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On 11/1/2022 at 2:34 PM, king of nowhere said:

If I were to do such a change - using alt-f12 to bring the new rover in place and pretending it's always been like that - would it be legitimate? Or do I have to launch anew and repeat all the trip to Polta?

18Watt seems to be away, so; my understanding is that's never OK. When I found my Eve rover lacked the anti-roll mechanism built into the other Mark VIIs, I just had to put up with it.

For the speedboat crowd; I've been seeing how fast a jet-powered boat can go, designing for circa 6 hours' fuel endurance - I started with that figure because it's the ballpark for the best time. My better designs will do 100 m/s fuelled and 200 m/s dry - not, alas, enough to do it in 6 hours, especially since that doesn't mean an average of 150 m/s. I can squeeze out a bit more speed by adding more Goliaths and a longer hull, but I suspect diminishing returns is kicking in there. (Adding empty buoyancy compartments doesn't help; it's just changing the shape of the wetted area).

I think my serious plan is to design around 3h30 endurance and dock to a refuelling tender mid-trip, but I was becoming frustrated with stock aero doing weird stuff above the waterline, so I tried it in FAR. FAR makes boats slower, right?

FAR thinks this boat can do over 200m/s fully fuelled. What's with _that_?

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On 11/1/2022 at 9:34 AM, king of nowhere said:

If I were to do such a change - using alt-f12 to bring the new rover in place and pretending it's always been like that - would it be legitimate? Or do I have to launch anew and repeat all the trip to Polta?

The Elcano challenge has always specified that all replacement parts or craft need to be flown from KSC to their destination.  No exceptions.  Sorry.

22 hours ago, damerell said:

18Watt seems to be away, so; my understanding is that's never OK.

Correct.

55 minutes ago, Icky said:

complete! my main post on this page has a more detailed update. 9 days/1 hour mission time.

Awesome!  I'll get the leaderboards updated!  @Icky is a new Elcano navigator!

 

On 10/28/2022 at 12:20 PM, Icky said:

Final mission time just over 9 days, but it took nearly two years lol.

That sounds like a true Elcano mission!

On 10/28/2022 at 12:20 PM, Icky said:

i plan to do it again in ksp2.

I'm looking forward to keeping the challenge alive when KSP2 is available!

On 10/28/2022 at 12:20 PM, Icky said:

hopefully with better wheel physics

I'm hoping the wheel physics are much worse.  Nah, just kidding!  Like you, I have high-hopes that wheel physics will be much better, and more consistent.  Amen brother!

Also, nice run @Icky!  Wear your badge proudly, the list of Elcano masters is very short!

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Done with Dres: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/146923-elcano-iv-circumnavigate-all-the-things/&do=findComment&comment=4186298 - pretty easy going except that it is much easier to rove into the Dres canyon than it is to get out of it again, but as others have recorded, Dres is really extremely bumpy a lot of the time.

 

Edited by damerell
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14 hours ago, damerell said:

it is much easier to rove into the Dres canyon than it is to get out of it again

:lol:  That is very true!  Congratulations on your latest Elcano run!  I'll get you added to the board soon.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The last tranche of screenshots to follow, but I am around Kerbin by sea. I think there is considerable scope to run a faster jet-powered vehicle - to find the sweet spot in terms of size and length and hull shape, to understand stock aero's weirdnesses, to steer the shortest possible course (albeit I think I did well there by running great circle routes on the long legs), to arrange to arrive almost completely dry on fuel at the end and the refuelling spot (and ideally I would have started at a carefully chosen location so I could sail East to the land bridge with the sun, refuel at the Western end, and have exactly half distance left to go), or perhaps even to design a craft which can quickly maneuver to and dock to floating fuel supplies and refuel more frequently than once at the land bridge.

I don't know about hydrofoils and/or lifting surfaces in the air. If they provide significant benefit when full of fuel I suspect they will ping you right up into the sky when you are empty.

Edited by damerell
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2 hours ago, damerell said:

I don't know about hydrofoils and/or lifting surfaces in the air. If they provide significant benefit when full of fuel I suspect they will ping you right up into the sky when you are empty.

One thing I regret is falling into the trap of trying to do Elcano runs as a speed challenge.  That is not what the challenge is about, and sadly I am guilty of doing some speed runs 'just because.'  

Regarding hydrofoils or similar devices for boats on Kerbin (or Laythe), I did not get good results from them.  However, I play pure stock most of the time, it is likely that there are mods out there which would make hydrofoils practical.

What worked best for me was using a MK2 or MK3 hull, and limiting drag by having as few hulls as possible.  In other words, a catamaran (2 hulls) would have much less drag than a tri-maran (3 hulls).  From there, it's a matter of keeping the vessel balanced (fore to aft).  I have also had good results with a catamaran with two MK1 hulls and a central hull which was above the water.

For aero-surfaces, I used rudders to control yaw.  I have sometimes found small elevators on the tail to provide some help with pitch control, but not as much as I'd hoped.  Personally, I've found the best way to control pitch buoyancy on boats is by moving (or controlling) the COM.  With jet propulsion, that is accomplished by burning or moving LF (liquid fuel) around.  With electric boats, it needs to be balanced properly from the start, or you may need to use ballast tanks.

I can't wait to see your final post for your Kerbin circumnavigation.  Your 'boat' design is fantastic.  Please keep in mind this challenge is NOT about speed.  It makes no difference if you do the circumnavigation in 30 minutes or 30 years, your name goes on the leaderboards in the exact same place.   And you have an impressive list of Elcano completions already @damerell!

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I appreciate it's not a speedrun, but after the propellor trips I was certainly curious to establish a ballpark for how fast a jet-powered circumnavigation could go. (I suspect my time, not accounting for the overnight shutdown, was 8-9 hours simply based on how long two full loads of fuel would burn for, the amount left over at the refuelling stop and the finish, and a thumb-in-air guess about the time to cross the land bridge).

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/146923-elcano-iv-circumnavigate-all-the-things/&do=findComment&comment=4198239

is the now-complete sea trip.

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On 11/25/2022 at 11:03 AM, damerell said:

is the now-complete sea trip.

I'll get you added to the leaderboards tonight @damerell.  Another fantastic run, and as always, your mission logs are a joy to read!

Edit: I just notice a few things @damerell:  First, when you complete an Elcano around Laythe, I will also need to add you to the Master Mariner leaderboard- so don't let me forget about that!

Second, I noticed you have a previous Kerbin Elcano completion.  From back when @Claw was taking care of the challenge!  So an extra shout-out of appreciation from me, you've been participating in the Elcano challenge for a long time!  Thank you!

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Yeah, that's where the equatorial BTDT track on my ScanSAT map of Kerbin comes from, a huge KF tracked vehicle that plugged around - the Mark IV ancestor of the current Mark VII rover.

It may be a while before I get to Laythe, I'm not sure what order I want to do the Jool bodies in. I know Tylo is going to be the last of the Big Ones along with Kerbin and Eve, and I might go on another side trip to revisit the idea of a completely surface circumnavigation of Gilly (ie, no jumps, always in ground contact).

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, I caved in and decided to actually do an Elcano run, even though I despise rovers in KSP (as challenge host 18Watt probably knows about from other threads :lol:). But I decided to do it with a couple of twists (read: mods)

First, we need to deliver the rover to our destination: Duna

Kerbin ascent and departure

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Duna arrival

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First reentry to slow down

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Shedding off the fairing and entering a low Duna orbit

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Staging the transfer stage and descending

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Separating the descent stage

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Yes, your eyes do not deceive you: I am doing the run with Parallax 2.0 with colliders enabled. I did however make things more tolerable by using modded wheels from KerbalFoundries2 mod, because stock wheel physics are absolute abomination and should be burned with fire
Driving a bit downhill to more flat area to plant the starter flag

Spoiler

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Rover went through multiple design iterations before the final build. Lots of wheels, wide track, very soft suspension for better bump absorption, deployable solar panels for EC generation and A LOT of repair kits, just in case

KerbalFoundries2 is pretty dope: adds wheels, aircraft landing gear, landing legs and half-tracks. Wheels still feel a bit wonky sometimes: they can suddenly get a lot of grip and flip the rover during sharp turning at moderate speeds, but they are still a huge improvement over stock wheels. 100% recommend for rover-builders

Parallax 2.0 is a blast as well. Rocks have decent variety to them: flats have noticeably different boulders compared to mountains and it encourages you to plan your route (or landing spots) more carefully.
Colliders however have been kind of inconsistent. It does say in the manual that colliders are still in "beta" and turned off by default, and that colliders are only generated for medium-and-above-sized rocks. But some rocks that seemingly qualify to these requirements don't have colliders, while once I managed to bump into a rock that didn't have visual texture (almost flipped the rover doing it, but I managed to save it) 

So far I've driven 20 kilometers from the start. From my approximates, the whole journey should take me around 30-35 hours. Let's see how it goes

P.S. This might be the first Elcano attempt with Parallax 2.0 posted. Correct me if I'm wrong @18Watt

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Bonus: glitchy colliders

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Invisible boulder that almost ruined my journey after driving only 6 km

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Meanwhile, this rock is a mirage

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41 minutes ago, OJT said:

Rover went through multiple design iterations before the final build. Lots of wheels, wide track, very soft suspension for better bump absorption, deployable solar panels for EC generation and A LOT of repair kits, just in case

If I were going to play with Parallax colliders I'd probably go back to the old rover Marks and use tracks rather than wheels (still Kerbal Foundries; I've been using the Kerbal Foundries parts since before the KSPWheel physics).

I've gone down the wide base, low centre of mass route to avoid rolling. I find it then becomes very easy to bottom out the rover on the ground. If I were designing a new rover (and I'm considering sending myself a new design to Eeloo just for a change) I'd put KF skids or similar along the centreline to avoid that.

I certainly have seen no previous attempt with the new colliders.

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57 minutes ago, damerell said:

If I were going to play with Parallax colliders I'd probably go back to the old rover Marks and use tracks rather than wheels (still Kerbal Foundries; I've been using the Kerbal Foundries parts since before the KSPWheel physics).

I've gone down the wide base, low centre of mass route to avoid rolling. I find it then becomes very easy to bottom out the rover on the ground. If I were designing a new rover (and I'm considering sending myself a new design to Eeloo just for a change) I'd put KF skids or similar along the centreline to avoid that.

I certainly have seen no previous attempt with the new colliders.

I did experiment with half-tracks, but they've proven to be a bit too janky for Parallax colliders: they don't travel as smoothly through rubble as I expected and sometimes outright bump into even small rocks, stopping the rover (and risking flipping it). Wheels have more room to travel and wider range of suspension adjustments
As for clearance, lower CoG easily outweighs the ability to go over rocks: less risk of rolling, more stability and soft suspension doesn't have as much of a penalty. And some of the rocks are way too big to scale anyway, so I might as well drive around the rubble that the rover can bottom out on

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I'm not so much thinking of rocks (which I have not got) as landing after the sort of jump which is difficult to avoid doing at all on low-g worlds (unless, I guess, if you chug around at 3-4 m/s like the Apollo rover, rather than zoom about like us leadfooted Elcano maniacs, but then the IRL astronauts weren't trying to circumnavigate the Moon). I'm pretty sure that's been my problem a lot of the time. Mind you, perhaps all the Parallax rocks will discourage you from pedal-to-the-metal stuff. :-)

Good luck, anyway, it's an interesting looking design.

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Progress update: covered 40 km. I happened to land my rover in very mountainous region: hills seemingly get only higher and higher and it is a bit hard to maintain consistent speed: on open flat areas I can safely push to 25 m/s while on uphill rocky hillsides I have to slow down to basically walking speeds. Rock colliders being noticeably glitchier on hillsides doesn't help either, but hey, we move

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First fail of the run: rover randomly split in half after seemingly trivial attempt to scale the hill. I wasn't traveling fast, there were no big rocks to crash into, but the Kraken still decided to rip off the entire right axle. Lost 10 km of progress and had to reload to previous save. Thank God the save/reloads are allowed

Spoiler

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1 hour ago, OJT said:

Thank God the save/reloads are allowed

Not just allowed, but strongly encouraged.

Welcome to the asylum @OJT!  You picked a great CB to start the madness at.  Duna has enough gravity to keep a rover from flying off into space, but not so much that wheels break every km or so.  (Things will still break, don't get me wrong...).  Also, there are some impressive elevation changes on Duna, which is neat to see.  Despite the impressive elevation changes, the slopes are more manageable than other CBs, for the most part.

I'll say that doing an Elcano with the enhanced terrain features is a very bold move.  The stock terrain features are already treacherous enough, adding more stuff to collide with will certainly add to the challenge!  Good to see you here, and good luck!

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