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Chapter 1 - Testing Rovers (and being thwarted by the Kraken) So I've been having a great time playing around with rovers on Kerbin. It's been fun, but also definitely frustrating. The first thing that needs to be said is that, unfortunately, the rover wheels all perform much worse in KSP2 than the same wheels did in KSP1. They are all extremely slow. As with many things, I'm not sure if it is intended for the sake of realism, or simply that they haven't been fully developed. I have heard some folks on the forums praising the slow wheels with the realism argument. for my two cents, a lot of people who play KSP and other sims are looking for realistic gameplay, and I respect that. But a lot of us just want to use rovers to have races in multiplayer, or do stunts, or scale mountains or crater walls. We want wheels that go fast and have good traction and suspension. There's room for both options in KSP2. So wheels could use some work. Fortunately, in Bop gravity I am not looking to go super fast, or I end up doing spectacular jumps and crashing spectacular crashes off every bump in the landscape. The only wheel that seems halfway worth using without a method of propulsion is the new RoveMax TR-4 Truck wheel. I was able to get to speeds around 30mps on flat ground with these wheels. They are super wide, which is nice. They look cool. But they, too, could barely handle even slight slopes on Kerbin with the traction level cranked up. My first semi-viable seeming rover was Rover 5. This was a fun bug where the ground painted over me for awhile. I ignored it until it went away. Rover 5 could also pop wheelies. A trippy effect happened while driving around the KSC where flowers would pop out of the ground and grow in front of me, everywhere I went. I built a skycrane, thinking I would take it to Minmus to see how it would handle in lower gravity before sending it on to Bop. I launched it on a lovely evening from the KSC. And then, at 21500m above sea level, disaster struck. At that altitude, regardless of ascent profile or speed, every launch attempt was either destroyed outright or the ship broke in half. It was like hitting a wall. I tried over and over again, to strut the joints that were failing, to approach that altitude differently, to change various things about my build that I thought might be causing it. Finally I managed to not be destroyed, but a jolt still ran through my ship, and I lost all steering control, and the camera could no longer focus on my ship. So, disappointing, to say the least. I launched a simple rocket and confirmed this doesn't happen necessarily with other stuff, just with Rover 5. So I decided to build a completely different rover from scratch. This is rover 6. The ruggedized wheels, as I said, only can get up to about 10 m/s on Kerbin, their acceleration is abominable, and they are completely incapable of climbing even the slightest slope. Which is a let down, because they were probably the nicest wheels in KSP1. But I figured I'm going to be going slow on Bop anyway, and added an Ion engine in hopes that it would help with acceleration up hills. Its also a more compact design, a bit lower part count, and easier to get to orbit. The launch vehicle was much more streamlined than Rover 5's. A beautiful night launch. Rover 6 was much more stable in the ascent. She banked into a nice gravity turn with geometric precision, and then, at 21.5km... So as of my first report, no luck whatsoever even getting a rover into orbit. My next plan is to send a rover up in 3 separate launches, One for the rover, one for the sky crane, and a third for the transfer stage. Then dock them in orbit. And I won't be screwing around on Minmus testing either. If I can get a rover in space, it's heading straight to Bop for the first attempt. I'm going to take a step back from beating my head against this wall for a bit though. In the next chapter I will send a minimalistic ship to get eyes on Bop and hopefully spot some anomalies from low orbit. Got to keep an eye out for those evil space aliens while we work through the problem of how to get a rover there.

Hello there, I've had great success getting fairly simple rockets into space, but lately I've been attempting an interplanetary rover mission. The crafts I've been designing are a little more complex, like 60-70 parts. I've built a couple of designs from scratch for this purpose and had the same issue with both, as well as all the variations of both crafts I tried in an attempt to overcome this. A jarring event happens at 21500m of altitude. Ascent profile and speed do not effect it. It happens every single time at the same altitude. Various structural linkages instantly fail and the ship is destroyed. I have attempted to overcome this by strutting all the linkages that fail. This does prevent the ship from being destroyed, but the visible jarring effect happens, and even if the ship survives intact, I lose steering control and the camera becomes unable to focus on my ship, instead focusing on a point in space. It seems to be a flight ending event regardless whether the craft is damaged.

Bop. On the morning of Friday, the 24th of February, 2023 CE (or 000y, 000d of the Kerbin calendar), an event occurred on Bop that changed everything. Nobody observed it at the time. The astronomers of the KSC tracking station were all at Valentina's KSP2 launch party. When they staggered in the next day, still reeking of Bob's bathtub hydrazine cocktails, and trained their telescopes on the moons of Jool, they were all like "OMG". Bob hypothesized that the changes to Bop's surface were the result of a large asteroid impact. He was laughed out of the room. Everybody knows that there's no such thing as asteroids. They might exist someday, but not today. However, little green men are all too real. The only reasonable explanation is... AN ALIEN DOOMSDAY WEAPON. The survival of the Kerbal species depends on learning more about the Bop Event. The bold Kerbonauts of the Kerbal Space Force have been tasked with a perilous mission - to travel to Bop, circumnavigate the moon by rover, and search for anomalies which could explain the Bop event. Hello fellow KSP fans! I'm sooo exciting to finally be playing early access KSP2. For my first significant interplanetary mission, I will be attempting a rover circumnavigation of Bop. Realistically, I do not expect this to be successful in the current build of KSP2, but what the heck, I'm going to try. And when I probably find myself thwarted by bugs or poor wheel performance or whatever, I will continue to make attempts in subsequent game builds as updates come out, until this works. Along the way I hope to identify the challenges to this sort of admittedly niche playstyle and report lots of bugs. Hopefully this is both helpful feedback for the developers and a fun series of experiments for me. Oh, and when I am ultimately successful, I hope to qualify for completion of the Elcano challenge, assuming that the challenge carries over from KSP1 with similar rules. So without further ado, let's begin this journey... Coming soon - Chapter 1 - Low gravity rover tests on Minmus...

My second session today! Last night I only had about an hour to play. I designed a simple orbiter and launched it with Jeb in the command module, just trying to get to orbit and return. I successfully got to orbit and found that I still had about 2000 dv. That was all the time that I had. Today, I decided that I should use some of that extra dv to go and orbit the Mun. I was a little confused by the changes to the navigation process. For example, after my injection burn, I had a Mun periapsis of about 50km. This number immediately began to shrink, as if I was still under a very slight acceleration. When I time warped for a short period, my trajectory stabilized, but when I came out of time warp, the effect resumed. However. after I time warped for a long period, everything stabilized. This is probably a bug, but I dunno maybe its supposed to work like that. Anyway, it was odd but manageble. Also, in map mode there was so projected trajectory in map mode after the SOI change, just markers on the entry and exit points of Mun SOI that helped to estimate trajectory. Again, not clear if this is intended or not. If so, it will definitely make precision navigation more challenging. Whether I like that or not I haven't decided. Anyway. I successfully orbited the Mun. It was amazing. The music was incredible, and I noticed the stars actually twinkle. Space is beautiful to look at even when there isn't an orbital body in clear view. However, after achieving orbit, my trajectory disappeared completely from map mode, making it impossible to visualize for the rest of the mission or to create any maneuver nodes. I was flying on instruments. Reloading did not fix the issue, so I decided to wing it, and successfully executed a beautifully efficient transfer back to Kerbin and a textbook landing. The beauty of Kerbin, coming down in some sort of grassy area with trees and flowers, with puffy clouds, was absolutely moving. An unforgettable experience. And honestly, the bugs made it more fun. This stuff is so easy for me in KSP1. The added challenge of not being able to see my trajectory was a blast.

Is it at the same location as KSP1?

How did you even try asparagus staging? There don’t seem to be any fuel lines that I have been able to find. Or can fuel just transfer across decouplers without any lines in KSP2?

I only had an hour or so to try the game last night, so I launched a simple orbiter and left Jeb with it in orbit. KSP2 doesn’t seem to have much in the way of VAB tools to estimate your dv at different altitudes, so I ended up wildly overestimating what I needed to get to orbit, so now I’m pondering whether to take my simple orbiter to Duna or something tonight. Loving the game so far. I was pleasantly surprised that it runs smoothly on my old laptop with specs well below minimum. (Haven’t tried launching anything really large yet though). Haven’t encountered any bugs yet. The UI is going to take a little getting used to. Great first session overall.

I'll second this. I know KSP1 didn't have this feature for a long time. A mod like KER was basically essential until they added it. But being able to see how different stages will perform in their intended situations is definitely essential to planning complex missions with a reasonable chance of success. Maybe I just haven't figured out where to find that function yet, but it's pretty important, so if it hasn't been added yet, I hope it will be soon.

Vall circumnavigation complete! For background, I did this circumnavigation with Rover 1, the same rover used for my Minmus entry. Relevant pictures of launching from KSC are there. This is a "stock craft" entry. I began this adventure by undocking from Rover 1's berth at Mun Station and heading for LKO. I then rendezvoused with a new lander, designed for the moons of Jool. With the new lander, i headed to Jool, docked to Laythe Station for refueling, then headed to Vall. Here are some pictures from the journey there: I've already shared some pictures from the journey here, but here are a few more- And done!

Maybe there should just be a clean slate. Separate leaderboards for KSP1 and KSP2. The experience of doing a surface circumnavigation may be somewhat comparable between the two games at first, but I don’t know if that will last. They’re talking about forests of collidable trees and stuff. I feel like it’s going to be a different experience, probably more difficult. The rules may not make sense either. Interstellar rover journeys may not be super feasible. RTGs have a shelf life, for example. Launching from remote colonies should probably be allowed. There should probably be separate awards for Kerbol Grand Master and Debdeb or whatever Grand Master.

I am super excited to try to be one of the first players to complete an Elcano Challenge surface circumnavigation of one of the new orbital bodies when they are added.

You’re not the only one who’s disappointed with the color change of Minmus, so I’m sure there will be early mods to restore its minty greenness. Personally, I welcome the change. I always found Minmus to be an obnoxious moon. I built my first space station there, and after several days expanding it and flying missions from it, all that green just made me crazy. I still can’t look at a bowl of mint ice cream without wanting to barf. I have avoided Minmus for years because it’s so excruciatingly ugly.

O ye of little faith… I agree, rescuing your own kerbals is both educational and deeply satisfying. I definitely repeat my mistakes sometimes though. The “that seems like enough delta-vee…ish…” one is a classic that never gets old.

Pick away at your long adventures over a longer period of time. Like this guy who has been doing a Kerbin elcano since 2016. I don’t know how this will work in KSP2 early release, as I imagine we might want to start fresh saves occasionally when we get big updates, but after full release I think it will be fine.

I did a rover jump on Vall that was so awesome the entire moon turned pink in appreciation.

Finally getting back to my Elcano run on Vall, which I began some time ago if anyone remembers. I'm hoping to finish it up before ksp2. Back in July, to recap, I landed Rover 1 on Vall. This was the same early career mode science rover that I had used to make several landings on Mun, and to complete a Minmus Elcano. I intended to begin and end my run at Vallhenge, but was unable to find it until I uninstalled Parallax and dropped from the sky 200m directly above it. Fortunately, Rover 1 seemed to be ok. The lander was destroyed, but that's probably ok too, since I intend to switch to KSP2 about the time that I finish this one anyway. Valentina, Buzz and Wendo plant the first flag. They head south and soon spot Jool over the horizon. Things quickly get weird. The south pole itself is horrifying. Escaping the south pole was trickier than approaching it, as the slope was very steep. Heading north Buzz and Wendo take in the view Progress so far, about 500km

I definitely have been thinking about my KSP1 bucket list since KSP2 was first announced. A lot of the items have already been checked off, even years ago at this point. Others, I feel like they are just going to be more awesome if I just do them in KSP2. One little thing in the back of my mind was that I had never tried to fly under a Mun arch at orbital speeds. Since I'm not sure if there are even going to be Mun arches in KSP2, I figured I should get it done. When we got the last update with the addition to one of the arches, I felt compelled. It's a small thing for a last hurrah, but I'm glad I did it.

I agree that most of the anomalies should be unique and challenging, not copy/paste monoliths, and I do think that is worthy of dev resources. I do think you’re underestimating the challenge and interest of exploring in rovers or planes though. Just because it’s a fairly mindless pursuit to cruise across open grasslands on Kerbin doesn’t mean that rover exploration isn’t fun and challenging even in ksp1. Rugged terrain, mountains, craters, low gravity environments all make it more challenging. It’s a blast to cruise around low gravity moons, jumping off crater rims and doing stunts. The Kerbol system already has both easy places and difficult places to drive. The fact that you chose the easiest one to demonstrate how boring it supposedly is doesn’t prove your point. And when we look at KSP2, we can already see plans for terrain on some orbital bodies which is much more challenging than we have seen before. Rugged terrain, molten lava, and who knows what else awaits us, and I would personally love to see all those worlds riddled with anomalies.

@SolarAdmiral If I understand your point correctly, you seem to be saying that KSP2 should not have large numbers of anomalies because exploring them is not your cup of tea. Correct me if I’m wrong. You also seem to be hinting that you would feel compelled to explore all the anomalies that are there. Personally, I think that there really can’t be too many anomalies. I, for one, enjoy long rover journeys. And I enjoy them more when there are points of interest all over the planet or moon that I can treat as waypoints. Even so, if there were like 80 anomalies on a given body, I would probably never get around to exploring them all, and that’s a good thing. It’s great if there’s always more stuff out there to find. It adds replay value. For my 2 cents, I am in favor of drastically increasing the number and variety of anomalies. I can see no downside to the idea.

Here's the link if you want to check it out. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/w926gk/found_vallhenge/ I spawned about 100m directly above the Vallhenge. Rover 1 is strong though, no biggie. (Hopefully the lander is ok, I should check that out). Yeah I think I'm going to go for the polar route. I was debating some kind of diagonal route to try and hit most of the biomes but I've decided I don't really need the science.

After a break to do other stuff, I've started a circumnavigation of Vall. I'm still driving Rover 1. So far this rover has seen a 150 km expedition to the Mun Canyon (and several attempts to jump off the rim), and a successful circumnavigation of Minmus. I gave her a new lander, with a bit more delta vee and more thrust for bigger moons, and flew her from her berth at Mun Station to Vall, with a stop at Laythe station for refueling on the way. I made a few minor modifications using EVA construction - a couple of RTGs under the cockpit, a command chair on the roof so Valentina can come along (what is Vall without Val?), and a snazzy bumper sticker commemorating my Minmus circumnavigation. Funny first day on Vall. We landed 10 km from Vallhenge and started looking for it. Roamed around for an hour searching with no luck. I figured it had to be around there somewhere. Decided to try uninstalling Parallax. Logged back in to this - Fortunately no damage!

My Mun entry was technically "Stock Craft". I am pretty sure the only mod I had installed at the time was Trajectories, so it didn't really affect much, though. @Watermel00nGood luck! The Mun is my favorite so far. Mun gravity seems like a sweet spot where you can do fun stunts but still feel like you are driving with decent control. I am making preparations for my next circumnavigation and will post more soon.

Minmus complete! All the details can be found in this mission report: Happy circumnavigating!

Challenge Complete! The OP is updated with Chapter 6, the final chapter in this particular Elcano journey. I actually finished some time ago but have been procrastinating with this last upload. Here's a bonus video of Valentina trying her hand at roving using the Elcano Support Hopper.

Chapters 4 and 5 have been added. Here's a video of Rover 1 descending onto the Lesser Flats.