How to stop rovers from being unusable

[quasarrgames]

All the rovers i've made so far in 1.1 have been virtually impossible to drive. Once i get going over 10m/s, or try turning AT ALL, my rovers will lose traction and spin 180 degrees. 

I've tried almost everything to stop them from spinning out: Disabling steering and motors on the back wheels, angling the wheels a few degrees inward, adding weight to the rover to give the wheels grip, using copious amounts of reaction wheels to keep the craft pointed in a straight line... nothing works.

So, how do i stop my rovers from spinning out? Is it something to do with the traction control settings on the wheels? What should i do?

[Majorjim!]

6 minutes ago, quasarrgames said:

All the rovers i've made so far in 1.1 have been virtually impossible to drive. Once i get going over 10m/s, or try turning AT ALL, my rovers will lose traction and spin 180 degrees. 

I've tried almost everything to stop them from spinning out: Disabling steering and motors on the back wheels, angling the wheels a few degrees inward, adding weight to the rover to give the wheels grip, using copious amounts of reaction wheels to keep the craft pointed in a straight line... nothing works.

So, how do i stop my rovers from spinning out? Is it something to do with the traction control settings on the wheels? What should i do?

Override the two settings at the bottom of the wheel tweak UI window and set the top setting to max. Also part of the issue is using keys, try to tap the keys instead of holding them down to turn. Also be sensible when turning, in a car you would not yank the wheel hard over at high speed so try to think more like you are controlling a real vehicle. 

[quasarrgames]

15 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

Override the two settings at the bottom of the wheel tweak UI window and set the top setting to max. Also part of the issue is using keys, try to tap the keys instead of holding them down to turn. Also be sensible when turning, in a car you would not yank the wheel hard over at high speed so try to think more like you are controlling a real vehicle. 

Okay. Thank you. I have one more question though: Sometimes when i build a rover, the motors don't work. They're listed as inoperative, and i'm not sure why. How could i fix this?

[Majorjim!]

1 minute ago, quasarrgames said:

Okay. Thank you. I have one more question though: Sometimes when i build a rover, the motors don't work. They're listed as inoperative, and i'm not sure why. How could i fix this?

If this happens a part is too far clipped into it.

 This was a quick temporary fix for unwanted behaviour when parts were clipped into rover wheels. They where causing phantom forces and breaking. Try to offset them until they are activated again. This will be fixed at some point. 

[nli2work]

re wheel clipping, there are 3 values in the settings.cfg

WHEEL_CLIP_OFFSET = 0
WHEEL_CLIP_RANGE = 1
WHEEL_CLIP_MULTIPLIER = 1.05

You can increase CLIP_OFFSET in small increments until the wheel is no longer blocked. This bypasses what Squad implemented and doesn't prevent the wheels from breaking when you actually clip through the wheelCollider. If your design has parts physically clipping through the wheel, the wheel will break whatever the values you change to. This is only good for borderline cases.

 

[OminousPenguin]

Does anyone know if Squad are continuing to work on wheels or are they satisfied with their current ridiculousness?

[cicatrix]

How many wheel pairs do you have?  No matter 4 wheels is a bad idea in 99% of the cases. You have to have at least 6 wheels (or more).

Your rover wheels should follow this principle:

Meaning: no torque and no brakes on the forward and backward wheel pairs. 

The more wheels you have the more you can sacrifice - wheels get damaged and if there's no one around to fix them your 4 wheel rover has absolutely no backup. Having 8 wheels is better than having 6 and having 4 is a very poor choice.

On some low-g world it would be a nice idea to have an ion engine looking up - to push your rower down to the ground.

And finally: Your rover will eventually overturn. It's not a matter of *IF* it's a matter of *when* - so have means to get it back on its wheels (anything goes - from extendable landing legs to rocket engines)

Have your rover built inside a strong frame - test it by dropping from heights on Kerbin. It should survive most of the drops.

[Valkyria90]

On 25/04/2016 at 6:23 AM, nli2work said:

re wheel clipping, there are 3 values in the settings.cfg

WHEEL_CLIP_OFFSET = 0
WHEEL_CLIP_RANGE = 1
WHEEL_CLIP_MULTIPLIER = 1.05

You can increase CLIP_OFFSET in small increments until the wheel is no longer blocked. This bypasses what Squad implemented and doesn't prevent the wheels from breaking when you actually clip through the wheelCollider. If your design has parts physically clipping through the wheel, the wheel will break whatever the values you change to. This is only good for borderline cases.

 

Small incremeants means what? Is there a total value I cannot exeed? Is 1 the total value it can have, and does small increments mean .05 increases, or does the value go to 1000000 and I should do increments of 100 at a time?

[nli2work]

usually ~0.1 increments. Really depends on the size of the wheel. Range and Multiplier appear to be multipliers of wheelRadius of the part. so for a huge 5m radius wheel from some mod with 5m suspension travel, you can use larger increments as opposed to the smallest wheel in stock parts where you might want to only go in 0.05 increments. Lowering CLIP_MULTIPLIER to less than 1 may help as well. 

Again, this is all for borderline situations where the part is close, but not clipping through the wheel, and still blocking the wheel. if the part is visually clipping through the wheel, adjusting these values will make KSP indicate the wheel is not blocked, but the wheel will still be non-functional.

[Corovaneer]

Rectangular wheelbase of 8-10 wheels usually works better than 4 wheels. It offers lots of grip, adding a kind of "on the rails" effect to any vehicle. Center of mass should be low and roughly in the center. Don't make hard turns going full speed. Brake when going downhills. Power and steering work better on front wheels, braking in the back. Etc, common sense mostly.