Tighter rover wheel turn radius.

[Tex]

So when I build rovers for roving around on Kerbin, say for doing things like placing markers, going on road trips, or just testing, even, I notice that the rovers have terrible turn radii in comparison to real-life vehicles.

Now I know it's just a game, but it frustrates me that even with front and rear-wheel steering both turning, the turning radius for rovers is terrible! In most cases it is extremely difficult to follow the roads at the KSC.

What if there was a tweakable for the turning radius? Tighter radii would of course be more unstable, and the rovers would roll, but you could also decrease it so you can turn better.

[Feradose]

Yeah! I would definitely decrease it by 70% (extreme flip carnavals on mun) but, tweakable wheels sound awesome. Maybe we could tweak the power/impact tolerance by 15% or 30% too for increased mass/electric usage so we could have faster rovers.

[klgraham1013]

Tweakables such as turn radius, torque, and suspension would all be nice. Also, the ability to bind torque to the throttle controls.

Also, brake pressure.

[Tex]

Maybe we could tweak the power/impact tolerance by 15% or 30% too for increased mass/electric usage so we could have faster rovers.

Huh, I'm not sure how well tweakable crash tolerance would work... Elaborate

[sumghai]

I've always felt that the turning radius of a ground vehicle is related to a number of factors:

- The type of steering mechanism (Ackermann? Crab?)

- The current speed of the vehicle (some steering mechanisms behave differently at different speeds)

- The width of the chassis (or the distance between the wheels on both sides of the vehicle)

I suspect that simply modifying a generic "turn radius" variable would have less-than-significant effects on how tightly any generic KSP rover can turn in a general case. I'd rather see new types of steering mechanisms / configuration altogether.

[OrbitusII]

Since rover wheel tweakables seem to be a common request I should probably get back to work on my plugin... But in any case I do have a plugin that adds some tweakables to the rover wheels and turning angle is one of them.

Link: [Tweakable Wheels Thread]

It adds tweakables for steering angle (up to 2x standard steering) as well as motor and brake torque (1-100%)

I won't be able to ensure it works until after 1.0 drops since I don't have access to my computer until May 7, but unless there are major changes to how plugins are loaded or wheels are handled it shouldn't have issues.

[Vectura]

Make sure you have a short vehicle.

[Tex]

Since rover wheel tweakables seem to be a common request I should probably get back to work on my plugin...

Oh excellent! I'll definitely look into using it if I begin to regularly use rovers. Thanks a million!

[klgraham1013]

snip

Your mod is one of my first installs. It really should be stock.