Why do rovers suck so much?

[Bloody_looser]

They're a pain to build, a pain to transport and don't do anything that walking with timewarp on won't fix already.

You only put them there on principle alone.

Rovers are really useful for various scanning contracts. Good luck doing them on foot.

Kerbals seem to love rovers too.

[Flixxbeatz]

No, because...

Rovers

are

freakin

awesome!

If you said so that they suck, then you're probably doing something WRONG if there's something you think that is "broken"... uhh well I can't find any.

[Steambirds]

I like to use MJ for my rover trips, but I hate having to babysit it because sometimes it still flips over.

[magnemoe]

its much faster (with or without mods) to just set up a small refueling station around the mun and send a lander to ever biome.(hell with some mods you dont even need a refuling station the mun can be used to get fuel.)

Yes, my advice is to do Minmus first, you need less than 2500 m/s dV to jump into all biomes on it, the most expensive part here is jumping between all the different flats so if you drop the far jumps you can do most biomes cheaper than one mun mission.

For Mun use an rover, wheels are not that heavy and it let you do more experiments in each zone. the area where an vertical rift intercept an crater have 7 biomes withing 4 km.

Else I agree with using an oversize transfer stage to refuel from. Later on you would typicaly use an station you was paid to put in orbit as base for this.

[magnemoe]

I like to use MJ for my rover trips, but I hate having to babysit it because sometimes it still flips over.

I noticed that if you drive in some directions you face a lots of resistance similar to driving up an steep hill limiting speed to 2-3 m/s, drive 20 degree off that bugged direction and you accelerate, you can then switch course back to the wanted direction and it takes some minutes before you get slowdown again. This does not happen downhill but moving around a bit I have managed to get 30 m/s driving a 45 degree slope uphill on Eve.

[boxman]

How about some kind of cruise control that attempts to keep the rover within a band around a speed that you set, applying throttle and brakes as necessary?

The old multiwheels mod that came out before official rover wheels had that feature and would also brake so that he speed was kept steady even downhill. I used that and ASAS to basically go from one side of duna to the other which took about 16 hours or so. I basically let it drive for hours while doing other stuff and it mostly kept the heading perfectly and thanks to size and wide wheel base it also could climp quite steep hills without any problems.

Sadly the newer version of this mod is completely different than what i remember and does not seem to have this cruise control.

Edited February 23, 2015 by boxman

[Barefoot Friar]

Would it break, or would it brake? 'Cause that's kind of a significant difference.

[boxman]

@Barefoot Friar

Was of course brake I meant.

Thanks for pointing out the mistake.

[Torquemadus]

This is what I'm currently driving around on Duna with. It was launched to fulfil a "space station" contract.

[FleshJeb]

During a drive on Duna, the rover hits a long down slope. Having taken the autopilot offline to let the rover free-wheel, and now past the speed where passive braking (holding down the reverse key) has any effect, the driver has no choice but to take heading control offline as well (as even touching the steering at this point will surely flip them*) and pray that stability control keeps the rover upright. This it does, and after a wild ride of at least five klicks - with a maximum speed of 40.6 m/s, perilously close to wheel failure - a convenient hill finally slows them down and ends the excitement without having to resort to a quickload.

Stability control will NOT let you do passive (or active) braking if you have fewer wheels on the ground than the limiter allows. Go take a look at the (Waypoint?) settings. When that fails, I have 300 units of Mono to play with.

I need to do some experimenting when I get home tonight, but I'm going to try 25% of the wheels (default is 75%), and 10 m/s for some steep downhills.

I made a 12-wheeled version of the rover in my post, and I'm having a harder time keeping wheels on the ground than on the 8-wheel. Very frustrating. I want to drive about 200km on Eve and I'm looking for solutions.

- - - Updated - - -

I actually managed to make a rover that doesn't suck but rock! Manages 23 m/s and sustained 4x time acceleration (at least on Kerbin) without a problem. Landed it on Eve to scout out possible return launch sites. And it can swim with its ion engines as (slow) propulsion.

http://i.imgur.com/oIh4jlk.png

And it looks like an evil bull when entering the atmosphere backwards

http://i.imgur.com/AMviJao.png

Do the wings act as suspension? Do they flex noticeably? I'm having a hard time deciding if my wheels are too stiff or too loose.

[Renegrade]

I made a 12-wheeled version of the rover in my post, and I'm having a harder time keeping wheels on the ground than on the 8-wheel. Very frustrating. I want to drive about 200km on Eve and I'm looking for solutions.

Does it bounce along the ground in a kinda.. skittery way? I've found if I have too many wheels, that happens a lot. It's quite annoying/disturbing and somewhat dangerous...

[nholzric]

Rovers "suck so much" because they aren't in-game efficient. In KSP there's a big incentive to get to different biomes but in general the biomes are spread out so much that it takes an "unfun" amount of time to drive a rover between more than two. Most people want to love rovers; IRL they're cool, in-game not so much.

[kStrout]

Am I the only person that when a manned rover with simple seats goes into a tumble, even though the kerbals are still there, and not counted as dead, it is impossible to control the vehicle or dismount? This has happened to me twice both times on the mun and if there is an easy way to fix it I would like to know.

[FleshJeb]

Does it bounce along the ground in a kinda.. skittery way? I've found if I have too many wheels, that happens a lot. It's quite annoying/disturbing and somewhat dangerous...

Yes, thanks for the input. I'm going to try mounting them on suspensions per Overfloater and Vagiani's work. If that doesn't work, I'm going back to 8 wheels and hoping it survives on Eve.

- - - Updated - - -

Am I the only person that when a manned rover with simple seats goes into a tumble, even though the kerbals are still there, and not counted as dead, it is impossible to control the vehicle or dismount? This has happened to me twice both times on the mun and if there is an easy way to fix it I would like to know.

This is very common. The Kerbals end up getting set as "debris". You have to fix it by manually editing your persistent.sfs file (it's just text). I can't remember what they're supposed to be set to, but just look at another (healthy) Kerbal in the file.

[Aragosnat]

Also you don't need more then 1 wheel either. 2 works fine as you can see:

[Renegrade]

Also you don't need more then 1 wheel either. 2 works fine as you can see:

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/543019017996488193/877250B83C1678EBD3F54DE7DAA58F8A23BC1070/

#nerfreactionwheelsplox

[Xuixien]

I don't even bother with rovers in KSP.

The Apollo rover was folded up and tucked into a tiny compartment in the LEM. Is there any way to do this in KSP, or with any mod? Nope.

Instead you have to "poverty rig" it and make some ridiculous looking craft. I don't even bother landing on planets anymore as there's nothing to do and walking around in low G sucks. I just design and launch rockets and it's getting... old.

[Terwin]

[quote name='Xuixien']I don't even bother with rovers in KSP.

The Apollo rover was folded up and tucked into a tiny compartment in the LEM. Is there any way to do this in KSP, or with any mod? Nope.

Instead you have to "poverty rig" it and make some ridiculous looking craft. I don't even bother landing on planets anymore as there's nothing to do and walking around in low G sucks. I just design and launch rockets and it's getting... old.[/QUOTE]

You could always use KAS to assemble a rover out of pieces you stowed piece-meal in bins. Alternately you could put together a 'core' that is stowed somewhere in the structure, then put on things like wheels and other projecting pieces using KAS.

[Francois424]

[quote name='Renegrade']Probodobodyne RoveMate 2.0!

Initial draft!

[code]
// Probodobodyne RoveMate :: Squad/Parts/Utility/roverBody/roverBody.cfg
@PART[roverBody]
{
//@TechRequired = fieldScience
//@category = Structural
//mass = 0.15
//cost = 800

CoMOffset = 0, -0.1, 0.0 // (SHOULD) lower the CoM in default orientation

@RESOURCE[ElectricCharge]
{
// a battery of 0.15 mass should have 3k charge, but I'm leaving some out.
@amount = 2000
@maxAmount = 2000
}

// can store science results:
MODULE
{
name = ModuleScienceContainer

reviewActionName = Review Stored Data
storeActionName = Store Experiments
evaOnlyStorage = True
storageRange = 2.0
}
}
[/code]

Would that make the RoveMate suck less? ;)[/QUOTE]

I would love something like that ! Might modify mine for 1.1 now that someone did the "programming" already.

[Majorjim!]

[quote name='Xuixien']I don't even bother with rovers in KSP.

The Apollo rover was folded up and tucked into a tiny compartment in the LEM. Is there any way to do this in KSP, or with any mod? Nope.

Instead you have to "poverty rig" it and make some ridiculous looking craft. I don't even bother landing on planets anymore as there's nothing to do and walking around in low G sucks. I just design and launch rockets and it's getting... old.[/QUOTE]

Yes there is a way. I am working on just that, a small folding rover, all stock. Peruse the forum man, take a peek at the aesthetics thread, ask some of the big name builders. You will be amazed what can be made using just stock parts.

[Van Disaster]

[quote name='Xuixien']I don't even bother with rovers in KSP.

The Apollo rover was folded up and tucked into a tiny compartment in the LEM. Is there any way to do this in KSP, or with any mod? Nope.[/QUOTE]

Look a little harder:

[video=youtube;QQi9_K7FBrM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQi9_K7FBrM[/video]

Fairly sure someone 1.0-ized it, if not then a new one is being built anyway.

[Majorjim!]

[quote name='Van Disaster']Look a little harder:

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQi9_K7FBrM[/url]

Fairly sure someone 1.0-ized it, if not then a new one is being built anyway.[/QUOTE]

Yup, plenty of Mods that can do that.

[Racescort666]

I found it useful to change the key bindings for rovers to something other than w/s to prevent pitch. Also, a reaction wheel is helpful to keep the rover from flipping randomly.

[Pixel Kola]

I agree. It's sad that they did not pay more attention to rovers, both mobile (Spirit, Opportunity, Curiousity) and just landers (viking, etc..). They are a VITAL part of any space program. They are the pioneers. They carry many instruments with purpose, not to mention the landing sites are chosen with purpose. I wish KSP had more of this. There needs to be a reason to visit each body. Probes/landers should have a much more vibrant role in the game.. not some crap rover body that a 3rd grader can produce in a computer class and some low-tec primitive circle on a stick wheel set. It all goes back to asking if Squad has any real creativity or logic on their dev team.

[Choctofliatrio]

[quote name='Pixel Kola']I agree. It's sad that they did not pay more attention to rovers, both mobile (Spirit, Opportunity, Curiousity) and just landers (viking, etc..). They are a VITAL part of any space program. They are the pioneers. They carry many instruments with purpose, not to mention the landing sites are chosen with purpose. I wish KSP had more of this. There needs to be a reason to visit each body. Probes/landers should have a much more vibrant role in the game.. not some crap rover body that a 3rd grader can produce in a computer class and some low-tec primitive circle on a stick wheel set. It all goes back to asking if Squad has any real creativity or logic on their dev team.[/QUOTE]

They have plenty of logic and creativity. They just need to make a game that balances many things:
Semi-Realistic space program simulation
Fun gameplay
Fairly easy to understand gameplay

They could put more of an emphasis on rovers, and I'm sure they will eventually. They just need to focus on the more, well, fun parts of the game first. Give it time.