How do you get the most speed out of your rover?

[Djsnowboy267]

I've only made 4-5 rovers, and I have never gotten any of them over about 22-23 m/s. What is the fastest rover you have made? How do you optimize them for the best speed?

[CalculusWarrior]

The same with everything in KSP--moar boosters!

That's pretty much my top speed for rovers as well, on Kerbin at least. However, adding rockets to a rover and putting landing gear on the bottom actually works, as the landing gear has fairly low friction so your rover can keep going for quite some time.

If you want to make a long journey go faster, quicksave, then use physical time acceleration as you're driving the rover. (Or use Mechjeb 2's Rover Autopilot feature and go watch TV or something)

[capi3101]

I've gotten one up to 25 on Kerbin before. Of course, it was going downhill at the time...

What CalculusWarrior suggested is probably your best bet. Be careful where you place the booster; too low and you'll flip your rover (I actually use this effect in my rover's "Roll Correction System", which truthfully is more useful in low gravity environments such as Mun and Minmus than on Kerbin). You'll also probably want to be using the docking controls when you're do this so you have translational controls instead of rotational ones.

[Jason Patterson]

If you want higher speeds than the electric wheels will give, use landing gear and rockets. It's how all stock rovers worked until 0.19. It limits your range significantly, but you can get around in a hurry. You can also just fly from place to place if you want to get there faster.

[Spektyr]

(Or use Mechjeb 2's Rover Autopilot feature and go watch TV or something)

How do you get that to work? Every time I try to use the hold heading feature it does one of two things: either drives around in tight circles, or it goes straight down the entered heading for a moment and THEN drives around in tight circles.

The speed control works really well as long as you're willing to pick between maximum throttle and zero throttle.

[Select Few]

I just put some RCS tanks somewhere on the rover, and place some thrusters on the back. BAM! Nitro!

[peter1981]

How do you get that to work? Every time I try to use the hold heading feature it does one of two things: either drives around in tight circles, or it goes straight down the entered heading for a moment and THEN drives around in tight circles.

The speed control works really well as long as you're willing to pick between maximum throttle and zero throttle.

I put a docking port on the front and select 'control from here' this means your oriantation is in the horizontal longditudanal rather than vertical radial direction

[Weatherman159]

My rovers can go up to 59 m/s (could go faster but wheels break at 60). The key is downforce. Add a couple control surfaces to your rover, facing forwards and at an upward angle. Then use trim to achieve desired level of downforce. Obviously, this only works on planets with an atmosphere.

[Blipser]

23m/s is still pretty fast - about 50mph. The LRV went 11mph. But if you ever want to go really fast take a LV-909 powered rover to a lake on Minmus. You can easily reach orbital velocity in less than a minute so use the aircraft gear as it has no speed limit.