The Ruggedized Wheel, is it rugged enough?

[katateochi]

I think that the Ruggedized (TR-2L) wheel is not as rugged as it's name suggests and breaks far too often. In the end I've got so fed up with constantly having to stop and repair a wheel that I've increased the TR-2L's impactTolerance from 300 to 450 and now it is a much more enjoyable experience. It still breaks if you flip the rover at speed, crash into something hard or take the full force of coming down a steep slope on one wheel and it still has it's 60m/s top speed limit. But it can drive around the bumps by the launch pad, do little jumps and mostly take it (if you land a jump unevenly a wheel or two still breaks).

I arrived at 450 as a better impactTolerance through playing about with different values and comparing it to what the other wheels are set at. The M1 (the next size down) has an impactTolerance of 200 and the XL3 (the big one) has a tolerance of 800. So the default tolerance of 300 on the Ruggedized means it's quite close to the M1 in strength (which I'm sure came off a small trailer). The XL3 really is a big wheel and intended to take much greater weights so the TR-2L shouldn't be anything like as strong as it is. So 450, a bit more than twice as strong as the M1, just under half as strong as the XL3, seems like a good balance. and it is much more fun.

I'm not talking about making it so the wheel can go faster, the 60m/s cap on speed is fine by me, what I want is better ability to handle rough terrain. My test rover (which is a very tough, almost unbreakable thing) is only 2.2 tons so 4 TR-2L's should be more than enough to support it's weight going over some bumps at around 20m/s. With this rover and the default impact tolerance if I drive at 20 m/s square on to the small ramps around the VAB (the ones over the pipe) the wheels will break from just hitting the ramp, with an impact tolerance of 450 they can do that fine, and I can drive fast (between 40-50m/s) over some of the bumpier parts of Duna and it can deal with the bumps ok (still get some breakages, but not nearly as often).

Now before I get the realist arguments saying that rovers are not meant to be driven at anywhere close to 40m/s and they aren't supposed to be jumped! I know, a real rover should be driven very slowing and carefully (the apollo rover went at 3.6m/s).....but there is a counter argument to that; The terrain.

The terrain is kinda glitchy; odd invisible lips, places with no grip, weird spots that wheels get stuck in (and then break) and other odd spots that for no apparent reason will just flip a rover over.

There is also a need for KSP rovers to go a lot lot faster than any real rover would; the terrain a real rover goes over is very interesting and detailed, the terrain in KSP...not so much. This means two things; 1) There is no real wish to gaze at the scenery on route from A to B, you just want to get to B as quickly as possible. 2) the low detail means low optic flow (meaning the speed at which stuff passes over your eye-balls and is what gives us our perception of speed) which means that 40m/s really doesn't feel that fast.

For the game to be fun with rovers they need to be able to cross terrain quickly without the player having to constantly stop to fix wheels or (with an unmanned rover) crawl along in fear of a flat tyre.

The low detailed terrain with odd artifacts (and I don't mean the interesting type of artifact) needs to be balanced with wheels that are more durable to enable a player to get across the dull waste lands quicker (again, not talking about increasing the top speed, just making it so they don't break on every little lump).

Rovers have limited use as it is, making the wheels a bit tougher makes them more viable.

Anyway, what do you guys think about increasing the impact tolerance of the Ruggedized wheel from 300 to 450?

It's pretty tough, can take being rolled at 30m/s without any parts getting damaged, at higher speeds it might loose a couple non-essential parts. All the key parts are contained within the radius of the wheels and then it's got a couple legs as a roll cage to protect the driver.

[kellpossible]

I think that the Ruggedized (TR-2L) wheel is not as rugged as it's name suggests and breaks far too often. In the end I've got so fed up with constantly having to stop and repair a wheel that I've increased the TR-2L's impactTolerance from 300 to 450 and now it is a much more enjoyable experience. It still breaks if you flip the rover at speed, crash into something hard or take the full force of coming down a steep slope on one wheel and it still has it's 60m/s top speed limit. But it can drive around the bumps by the launch pad, do little jumps and mostly take it (if you land a jump unevenly a wheel or two still breaks).

I arrived at 450 as a better impactTolerance through playing about with different values and comparing it to what the other wheels are set at. The M1 (the next size down) has an impactTolerance of 200 and the XL3 (the big one) has a tolerance of 800. So the default tolerance of 300 on the Ruggedized means it's quite close to the M1 in strength (which I'm sure came off a small trailer). The XL3 really is a big wheel and intended to take much greater weights so the TR-2L shouldn't be anything like as strong as it is. So 450, a bit more than twice as strong as the M1, just under half as strong as the XL3, seems like a good balance. and it is much more fun.

I'm not talking about making it so the wheel can go faster, the 60m/s cap on speed is fine by me, what I want is better ability to handle rough terrain. My test rover (which is a very tough, almost unbreakable thing) is only 2.2 tons so 4 TR-2L's should be more than enough to support it's weight going over some bumps at around 20m/s. With this rover and the default impact tolerance if I drive at 20 m/s square on to the small ramps around the VAB (the ones over the pipe) the wheels will break from just hitting the ramp, with an impact tolerance of 450 they can do that fine, and I can drive fast (between 40-50m/s) over some of the bumpier parts of Duna and it can deal with the bumps ok (still get some breakages, but not nearly as often).

Now before I get the realist arguments saying that rovers are not meant to be driven at anywhere close to 40m/s and they aren't supposed to be jumped! I know, a real rover should be driven very slowing and carefully (the apollo rover went at 3.6m/s).....but there is a counter argument to that; The terrain.

The terrain is kinda glitchy; odd invisible lips, places with no grip, weird spots that wheels get stuck in (and then break) and other odd spots that for no apparent reason will just flip a rover over.

There is also a need for KSP rovers to go a lot lot faster than any real rover would; the terrain a real rover goes over is very interesting and detailed, the terrain in KSP...not so much. This means two things; 1) There is no real wish to gaze at the scenery on route from A to B, you just want to get to B as quickly as possible. 2) the low detail means low optic flow (meaning the speed at which stuff passes over your eye-balls and is what gives us our perception of speed) which means that 40m/s really doesn't feel that fast.

For the game to be fun with rovers they need to be able to cross terrain quickly without the player having to constantly stop to fix wheels or (with an unmanned rover) crawl along in fear of a flat tyre.

The low detailed terrain with odd artifacts (and I don't mean the interesting type of artifact) needs to be balanced with wheels that are more durable to enable a player to get across the dull waste lands quicker (again, not talking about increasing the top speed, just making it so they don't break on every little lump).

Rovers have limited use as it is, making the wheels a bit tougher makes them more viable.

Anyway, what do you guys think about increasing the impact tolerance of the Ruggedized wheel from 300 to 450?

It's pretty tough, can take being rolled at 30m/s without any parts getting damaged, at higher speeds it might loose a couple non-essential parts. All the key parts are contained within the radius of the wheels and then it's got a couple legs as a roll cage to protect the driver.

http://i.imgur.com/GoItsvFh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wdfwvk2h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/MdZJN1ql.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/8ArxY8Il.jpg

Just for reference, you do realise that 60m/s is 216km/h right? Pretty bloody fast for a rover!

So is 40m/s = 144km/h and 20m/s = 72km/h.

Totally agree with you on some parts here though, so many glitchy sections around KSC. Also the thing about the scenery boring at low speed, agreed, even with scattering terrain doesn't help very much. Some more fractal/procedural detail might help alleviate things here I guess. A lot of these are meant to be lightweight wheels for optimal delta-v during space transport so I guess they will always be a bit fragile compared to their earthbound counterparts.