Any way to fix the broken landing gear?

[_Aramchek_]

I have no idea why they no longer work at all, but it's kind of ridiculous, they worked fine previously and now getting a plane down the runway is nearly impossible.

[Xyphos]

Currently there is no "fix" but there is a work-around.

for launching, you have to build a separate launching platform out of girders, struts, XL landing gear, and BigS tailfins for steering. attach your plane to it using a docking port or decoupler, jettison it at the end of the runway.

for landing, don't bother. place cubic struts under your plane to absorb the impact, and spam radial parachutes all over the plane body, fly low over the area you wish to land, kill the engines and deploy the chutes. when the cubic struts explode, the rest of your plane should be fine.

welcome to KSP, this is as real as it gets... I'm told that it's supposed to be funny, but I don't think I understand the dev's sense of humor.

Edited May 22, 2016 by Xyphos

[Freshmeat]

I have had good results using taildraggers and fiddling with the springs for takeoff. Landing is not impossible if you use a couple of drogues, but you need to be absolutely certain that your vertical speed is at a minimum. Note your altitude and drill the landings over a couple of days, and it will be possible, at least for light planes. Have not tried anything heavy, though.

[_Aramchek_]

None of that sounds good, there isn't anything "real" about the first and I've no interest in only building light planes.

 

Are they going to fix this mess at some point? 

I really hope so, because for now the solution for me would seem to be going back to a previous version if those are the only workarounds.  Which is also less than ideal.

 

I have to wonder why they decided the "new" landing gear were a good idea and ready for the full release of the game.

[Xyphos]

it's not Squad's fault, it never is. it's all Unity to blame.

honestly, I'd like to see the devs make their own custom game engine, tailored specifically for KSP, because Unity has caused so many problems. one size never fits all.
but then again, you can only expect so much, from a lazy and unprofessional programmer.

Edited May 22, 2016 by Xyphos

[_Aramchek_]

10 minutes ago, Xyphos said:

it's not Squad's fault, it never is. it's all Unity to blame.

honestly, I'd like to see the devs make their own custom game engine, tailored specifically for KSP, because Unity has caused so many problems. one size never fits all.
but then again, you can only expect so much, from a lazy and unprofessional programmer.

I can't see how this is unity's fault tbh, they worked just fine prior to implementing all the "new features", in the release just before the last patch. 

They seem to have tried to fix something that wasn't broken..and broke it in the process.

(if you were being sarcastic, I apologize.)

[Green Baron]

Wheels, combined with squads head-in-the-sand behavior are actually one of the reasons i'm starting to turn away from ksp. If i recall the devnotes right they spent so much time on the wheels that i doubt they'll get it right in the near future.

Provoke-mode: Building an own game engine requires more than c#-coding. Before setting out on that i'd strongly advice to redesign the whole internal value creation chain, from feasability study to product release.

btw. game engines: a very nice and completely open source game engine is godot ! It's more stable and easier to use than unity (linux). Two problem: first it's just 20mb, unity is a gb. How can that be :-) ? Second: no documentation ...

 

 

[Adelaar]

I really don't have much of a clue what's the big issue here. True, the workings of the landing gears are in general worse than they were in 1.05, but much of the problems can be resolved by craft design, landing gear placement and proper alignment. The only landing gears that are giving me real issues are the smallest (fixed) landing gears, which can't even carry a feather around, let alone a plane of 10 tons.

Some general tips:

• Make sure that the main landing gear sits lower than the nose landing gear, because when taking off, a negative pitch will put more pressure on the nose landing gear, causing it to wobble.
• Make sure that the braking power of the nose gear lies at around 30% of the main gears, this will help prevent spinning around due to the CoG being forward of the centre of brakingforce (if that is a thing).
• Uncheck steering on main landing gears if option is present.
• Make sure that the main landing gears are properly aligned, but a bit of toe-in is okay.
• a too high weight pressing down on landing gears, especially when they are attached to wings (which can now flex) will increase wobble, either strengthen the wing or reduce wheel load.
• Finally, properly determine the take-off and landing speeds, adjust lift on your main wings if your take-off speeds are high (I generally want to have my light aircraft take-off at 70-80 m/s, medium sized aircraft at 90-100 m/s and heavy craft (in excess of 100 tons) around 100 - 130 m/s...

As a result, I have virtually no wheel wobble.

 

Edited May 22, 2016 by Adelaar
clarification...

[_Aramchek_]

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

Wheels, combined with squads head-in-the-sand behavior are actually one of the reasons i'm starting to turn away from ksp. .

 

 

Sadly, I am in the same boat, it's a shame too.

[Xyphos]

5 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

squads head-in-the-sand behavior are actually one of the reasons i'm starting to turn away from ksp.

ditto. I'm starting to like Space Engineers and Scrap Mechanic, more and more.

[_Aramchek_]

Just now, Adelaar said:

I really don't have much of a clue what's the big issue here. True, the workings of the landing gears are in general worse than they were in 1.05,

 

You answered your own question, and I do not need "tips", until the latest release everything worked fine so it's not the fault of my designing skills, my designs are fine, the wheels themselves are the only part that fail when previously they worked perfectly well.

[Xyphos]

1 minute ago, _Aramchek_ said:

until the latest release everything worked fine so it's not the fault of my designing skills

I gave you a working method to work around the problem, you didn't like it, can't blame you either, but it's all we got for now.

[_Aramchek_]

4 minutes ago, Xyphos said:

I gave you a working method to work around the problem, you didn't like it, can't blame you either, but it's all we got for now.

I like realism, it's not very realistic to strap carts on to the bottom of my planes, nor is it aesthetically pleasing. The same goes for the parachutes, etc.

 

As I said I'll just go back to a version of the game where things actually worked and were fun.

 

And hope they fix this broken feature at some point in the near future.

Edited May 22, 2016 by _Aramchek_

[Xyphos]

2 minutes ago, _Aramchek_ said:

As I said I'll just go back to a version of the game where things actually worked and were fun.

I don't remember ANY version being fun, just a different slew of problems and non-realisim.
the only reason I bother to play, is because I like being challenged, and the guaranteed constant failures in KSP is highly challenging.

Edited May 22, 2016 by Xyphos

[_Aramchek_]

2 minutes ago, Xyphos said:

I don't remember ANY version being fun, just a different slew of problems and non-realisim.
the only reason I bother to play, is because I like being challenged, and the guaranteed constant failures in KSP is highly challenging.

I've been playing the game since before the Mun, I remember many versions of the game being quite fun and challenging, broken landing gear isn't a "challenge", it's a broken feature that distracts from things I would actually want to do.

[Xyphos]

3 minutes ago, _Aramchek_ said:

broken landing gear isn't a "challenge", it's a broken feature

oh, no... it IS a challenge, you have to find a working method to get around the broken feature. I've grown quite used to building Kludges

Edited May 22, 2016 by Xyphos

[qromodynmc]

Can i see any of those planes who cant take off? Any .craft file would be nice.

[_Aramchek_]

Just now, Xyphos said:

oh, no... it IS a challenge, you have to find a working method to get around the broken feature.

Read again, whilst you may enjoy buggy features, I enjoy playing the game, including actual challenges..not trying to fight against something that doesn't work as implied.

[Xyphos]

17 minutes ago, _Aramchek_ said:

whilst you may enjoy buggy features

actually, I don't enjoy it one bit, I've just grown accustomed to accepting the fact that KSP will never be enjoyable or realistic, and it's players must build kludges or don't play at all.

 

this game is wheely broken. (see what I did there?)

Edited May 22, 2016 by Xyphos

[Green Baron]

I enjoyed it very much between .23 and .90. But game mechanic hasn't changed that much. 0k, we got the manouver nodes and indicators on the nav ball as well as automatic holding of direction which made landing a peace of cake. 1.0 was a set back, 1.0.5 brought me back to the screen again. I did enjoy 1.0.5 long enough to install opm and head out with a big fleet of star ships.

Up to now i have set a few hundred (maybe thousand) manouver nodes, the game is becoming customary, i was looking out for 1.1 because of performance gain, dreaming of huge stations. But, being on linux, the performance gain isn't that big (it's not like multiple times faster), though i realize some.

I only played a few hours mainly because of crashes and because rovers, planes and everything wheels breakdances about the place. Even landing gears are difficult to handle (though they work for me).

Of course i read "do this and that, strut it up and fill out a bug report, when we're back from vacancies we'll have a look".

Hmmm ... we'll see

:-)

 

Edited May 22, 2016 by Green Baron

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Although I'll admit the new wheels are a little buggy I've been playing quite a bit of Career mode lately and I haven't had any problems with landing or taking off both large and small craft.

What exactly is the issue your complaining about? Is it veering uncontrollably? Are they being destroyed on landing? Can you show us a picture of the plane in question?

More than likely it's just a design issue, the new gear have to be placed a bit more carefully than in previous versions.

[tseitsei89]

As I said in another thread:

1. Choose the right sized landing gear for your plane. Too small will crush under the weight

2. Disable steering from all gears

3. Set friction control to override from all gears. And friction control slider to 0.0 from front gear and ~3 for rear gears.

4. If that still doesnt work, set friction control to 0.0 on all gears and then after takeoff you can adjust the friction control of rear gears back to 3 for landing.

You dont need drogues or parachutes. If you would like to brake faster you can also slowly start sliding the griction control slider up from the rear wheels after touching down.

This works very well on all my planes and I have no problems at takeoff and landing

[Green Baron]

Example: A rover on the pad starts to jump around ever more wild in a self increasing cascade.

Landing gears slip until the lander topples over (solved).

And then ... the crashes.

@tseitsei89: I know about the "workarounds", they don't solve the problem. I'm not so much into planes in 1.1 seeing the problems wheels caused in other threads and because the aerodynamics make me laugh. Rovers where enough to keep me from trying.

... so it's Orbiter for me (right now).

:-)

[TimePeriod]

Disable steering while landing.

Stiffen the springs to reduce bounce.

Land at a lower velocity.

Use drogue chutes.

Ditch landing with wheels altogether and land by chutes.

I for one seem not to have encountered the issues.

Edited May 22, 2016 by TimePeriod

[Superfluous J]

Squad has been on vacation since release of 1.1.2. You can debate whether or not that was a good idea* but can't count that time against this problem. It's not been a problem for 3 weeks of development time. It's been a problem for zero of them. And I suspect it'll be pretty high on the list tomorrow (I assume? I don't have their schedule handy. Or at all. But from what I read it seems they're back to work on Monday).

The workarounds with cubic octagonal struts are workarounds. They are not what Squad wants you to have to do and Squad does not think they are the best way to build planes.** They work right now. Use them, find another workaround, or wait for the next build. Or quit and play Space Engineers. Whatever sees you through.

*I think it was, even though I - like you - am not happy with the current state of the game. I've been burned out enough times myself that I suspect this vacation was more a requirement to keep going than a reward for completing the job. If a car runs out of gas on the freeway it does no good to complain to the driver that walking to the gas station is taking a long time.

**I do not speak for Squad and do not actually know their intentions or desires. I do however have what seems to be an excessive amount of common sense and applied it to this situation.