Kenobi McCormick

I don't have any major cracks in my runways, either, but I'll keep that in mind. 1.3.0 has the San Andreas Fault running through it. Got ya!

Mmm. These things are great. Even if this is an old version of the game/mod. And I'm glad to see they're still in active dev, means when I get around to getting onto the latest KSP version I'll be good to go! As someone still playing on 1.2, I can say there's not much of a reason to update either. If I decide I want to restart from scratch I'll prolly do it, but I just started plans for a Moho base, and I built a rover I'm six kinds of chuffed about, so I'm in no hurry.

For pivot steering, yes, one track is sped up and the other is slowed. But this fades out at higher speeds in favor of using a brake, and not all tanks can steer that way at all. Pivot steering was bleeding edge tech during WW2. The two most produced tanks of the war, Russia's T-34 series and America's M4 Sherman series, both lacked it. They steered entirely by using a clutchbrake on either side of the final drive which would progressively reduce torque to that track through releasing a clutch and slowing it by applying a brake in order to turn the hull. They can't actually pivot steer, the best they can do is steer around the center-of-grip of the inside track(And often, most seen with T-34s on ice or pavement, they'll sometimes steer around a point that's outside of the tank due to the inside track just sliding along!). This was the case for most tanks of the war. IIRC only a select few...Tiger I, Panther, King Tiger, maaaaybe later model Churchhills and I think Centurions and M26 Pershings...had the regenerative gearboxes necessary to pivot steer. Of course, our kerbals are using electric motors to generate torque, so no clutches involved. But I see no reason they wouldn't mix in some braking effort here and there to get it to steer better. Regenerative braking on the inside track, perhaps? Maybe a harder steering input at speed would cause that track's EC usage to go positive for a bit to simulate that while steering, proportional to how hard it's being steered? I'm A-OK with using a brake to slow the inside track for steering at high speed, in fact that's how real tanks do it. I want to be able to actually avoid smashing face-first into things when I'm going at a reasonable clip. I don't potter around at NASA speeds with my rovers, often times I'll set the cruise control for 25-30 and set a few waypoints, let Jebediah drive the thing for a while. And he can't steer it like that. The old behavior was perfect, honestly. It felt like Jeb jerked on the brake lever for the inside track when I swerved hard in one direction. Self-correcting, too, the rover couldn't flip over because as soon as the inside track lifted off the ground it stopped turning and coasted forward on the outside track. Looked goofy and it was a rough ride, but it worked.

Aw yiisss! Floof Space Program is back up and running! Time to throw space cars to the stars once more! Edit: So nice to have the tracks back, but they're almost unuseable at any kind of speed because they just refuse to steer. Same problem the wheels have, but the speed table I usually edit isn't there. How do I get some semblance of control out of nothing but two tracks beyond 'Merging onto an autobahn' at speeds north of 10m/s?

Yeah I built one anyway and it already looks sleek beyond belief, almost like it was supposed to be built that way.

What I would suggest is that you add in some modules that have fenders, for use with wheels. I love this, yet I'm most likely never going to actually use it as a VTOL/space car, instead as...well...a car.

Don't tempt me about hype trains, I may just raid Shapeways next paycheck and throw some hypetrain bodies down on my N-scale train cars. But, hey, progress! Excellent work!

But do the engines actually function?

I feel like this could be abused to automate things on my rovers. Definitely gonna fiddle with it!

I also noticed ackermann steering in both versions. As a rule my wheeled creations steer like a car, IE only the front two wheels(Darn it GIVE US MORE THAN 15 DEGREES OF SWING), and in 1.1 I've been noticing the inside wheel steers quite a bit farther than the outside one.

I'll hold yer beer!

Two problems, bro. 1: They're still working on getting what we already have working. 2: I posited this sort of idea over a year ago. Replicating real-life stuff is not lo-fi's MO. He did end up producing a track similar to what's found on the T-54/55/62/72 family, but it's not an exact replica. The hulls are....well, easy enough to make yourself really. Get Blender, a free-to-use steel texture, whip it up. A total novice to blender can get a tank hull worked out pretty quick, it's basic geometry.

I honestly have no idea. I download pretty much every good rover part pack and use bits from each in the creation of my vehicles. It *might* be from the buffalo rover? Idunno. Know the chassis blocks are.

Around the space center? No. I clean that up on practical reasons. I'd love to leave them out there but they all kill my framerate. Any active part count over 150-200 is in the mid teens on my processor and my space missions are already kissing that area as-is. I will leave behind surface scrap if it's out of physics range of the space center, though. Up in LKO, however? Well, you can tell how long I've played on a given save by seeing how thick Kerbin's new ring at 100x100km is. I leave that stuff up there. There's spent transfer stages strewn about the system as well, from interplanetary missions. I generally don't leave rovers behind(Bringing their experiments back means more science, also they tend to have vital subsystems for the return vessel like MechJeb and EC generation), but flags and such do end up on the site of every landing I make. In my current save there's some prototype starships floating around Kerbin due to the Kraken removing some xenon tanks without my permission. They're not abandoned in the traditional sense, but they're not in use as intended either.

I can't play the game without mods.

It almost looks like an early 60s F1 racer. Probably the best handling rover I've ever built. There's a probe core nestled into the nose of the thing, stressed member too, I decided to hide it under some fairings from the sounding rockets mod. I forget entirely what mod I got the wheels from, but they're great. Buffalo chassis parts, stock fuel cell, couldn't forget the hood ornament. Named it the 'Duna Buggy'.

While we're at it let's also get LFO and LF-Intake Air burning recip engines behind the props.

Party in the tank~! \o/

It's stickied in the main addons forum. Should be stickied here, either way it's not like it's hard to find that information. @Maximus97: See if you can get that sticky mirrored over here as well.

Excellent to hear good progress on suspension! Regarding the steering...can we have a toggleable option here? The current model in the 1.0.x plugin should be one option, the other a simpler clutch-brake steering that can at most simply lock one track and requires forward throttle input to steer from a dead stop? Perhaps it could even let us use tracks a little earlier in the tech tree. We'd start out with tracked rovers that move in a bit of a herky-jerky manner, ala M4 Sherman, T-34, etc, then as we progress we unlock neutral steering and the much smoother mixing we see in the currently released mode. Having it as a toggleable option means that we, for whatever reason(Replica building? Testing in sandbox for a career build?), can use either mode on a whim once both are available. FWIW I usually find myself feathering in enough throttle to effectively clutch-brake around anyway, as I find it faster to traverse the vehicle than letting it pivot.

They do, yes. To do so simply hold a steer key while stationary, the tracks will spin in opposite directions and the vehicle will pivot. He's referring to pivoting the rover about its center of mass, rather than about the center of friction of the stationary track, while at a standstill, which with tanks is termed 'neutral steering'.

Sounds awesome, and the multiple wheel thing working is a necessity anyway given that the tracks are chock full of them. IIRC there were 7 road wheels in the long tracks I based my space program around, so at minimum 14 wheels for a basic tracked rover. And then there's nothing stopping me from putting some normal wheels up front for a half-track, or docking to a tracked trailer...yaaah. Nice to hear some good progress on the traction and steering, though! This is definitely gonna be worth the wait!

Mm. I wonder if the adjustment would happen in the game world as well, IE loading up a tracked ISRU mining rig with ore would cause the springs to stiffen appropriately and vice versa. Would push these already fun tracks into an entirely new league, I think, as they'd handle 90% as well laden as they do empty.

Be patient. I haven't been playing the new versions at all because my space program pretty much revolves around sending tracked rovers everywhere. Yet you don't see me begging and whining and complaining that these things aren't updated. Lo-fi and co are working tirelessly to generate an entirely new wheel module for the game to get these things to work because the one that came with Unity 5.x is so crap it's laughable they even shipped it. It's not a quick process. Patience is key. Harassing mod authors has never worked, and we've lost very talented creators(BobCat for one) to it in the past. Please for the love of god do not chase Lo-fi and crew away and leave us all without tracks indefinitely.