What do you think would make rovers better?

[tater]

1 minute ago, regex said:

My statement had nothing to do with the "shared experience".

No, you didn't, but I did. Corona688 mentioned the fact that in KSP we cannot "explore" in a real sense (certainly not in replay). This is true, because the destinations are always the same, and the worlds are not minutely detailed enough to make landing near one crater any different than landing near another.

I was agreeing with you WRT to this game, but not vs all sandbox games. Clearly MC is sandbox, but every single replay can afford the player a unique place to explore. The same bits rearranged to make interesting, sometimes spectacular (in their blocky way) terrains. Squad doesn't randomize the Kerbol system even as an option, because they have said they want a shared experience (which is weak, IMHO).

1 minute ago, regex said:

There's a reason planet packs and total conversions are quite popular around here.

No kidding... but we're talking about making rovers better in modded, and stock games, right? My point was that offering novel places to explore on the ground might make people want to EVA more.

[LordFerret]

3 hours ago, SpenSpaceCorp said:

I think that some sort of camera that one could actually see out of and take pictures with would add a bit to not only rovers, but the general immersiveness of the game itself.

 

You should check out the Hullcam VDS Continued mod, which has some great cameras for use on everything including rovers - like nightvision, which is awesome in those dark places at the bottom of craters.

 

3 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Not to sound dumb or bitter, but wheels that work. Mayne a selection of tracks, too.

This. More than anything else posted in this thread thusfar, this.

 

1 hour ago, Corona688 said:

Cruise control, or perhaps a way to tie the throttle to the motors.

Yes...

1 hour ago, Alshain said:

@Corona688... I would say auto-pilot. ...

 

Yes...

37 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

An Auto pilot system that can follow waypoints at a constant speed would be ace. 

...and yes.

 

I've spent a hell of a lot of hours rovering around on the Mun, and all three of the immediate above would have been a major bonus.

Edit:
Maybe a mod that interacts with SCANsat, where you can zoom in and click-set waypoints on the map that you've previously scanned and created? Perhaps a function attached to / part of the BTDT scanner?
 

Edited September 8, 2016 by LordFerret
afterthought, and because I can't freakin spell

[Wabbit]

I'm just tired of having to make my Kerbin rovers teeny-tiny. I want a fuselage system (5m?) that can carry a decent sized land vehicle. Maybe some more actual reward from exploring Kerbin, or exploring other planets in general.

[Alshain]

17 minutes ago, Wabbit said:

I'm just tired of having to make my Kerbin rovers teeny-tiny. I want a fuselage system (5m?) that can carry a decent sized land vehicle. Maybe some more actual reward from exploring Kerbin, or exploring other planets in general.

They aren't as small as you might think.  They seem small because they are being compared to the rocket and plane parts.  The rover body is probably closer to Spirit and Opportunity, which you can see here is quite large (upper left).  The upper size fuselages (2.5m+) can certainly carry something as big as the Curiosity (upper right) in Kerbal relative terms.  Bear in mind the Mk3 cargo bay is intended to replicate the Shuttle bay, which carried the Hubble which was compared to the size of a of a school bus, just to give you a size comparison.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Alshain

[Fearless Son]

Two quick thoughts on what would improve rovers for me:  

• Allow us to set a "cruising" speed tweakable on rover wheels.  Once the rover is moving forward beyond that speed, the torque on the wheels scales back to maintain it, scaling back up once we drop below that forward speed.  Have a button that can be held down to override that speed limiter when we accelerate, like the shift key.  It segues nicely with the walk/run system we are already used to with on-foot Kerbals and gives keyboard users more finesse that they would normally have to go to a gamepad to get.  It would be like a very simplified gearing system.  
• I realize this might need some new parts, but adjustable hydraulics on wheels would be an incredible asset for surface bases.  Refueling tankers could dock with ports at slightly different elevations without requiring some kind of finicky thrusters or forced compression with excessive reaction wheels.  Or a little ground carriage tug could go low to the ground to get under a base module, then raise up to dock with it and push it off the ground so it can carry it around to a new position.  

Edited September 8, 2016 by Fearless Son

[Wabbit]

3 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

Two quick thoughts on what would improve rovers for me:  

• Allow us to set a "cruising" speed tweakable on rover wheels.  Once the rover is moving forward beyond that speed, the torque on the wheels scales back to maintain it, scaling back up once we drop below that forward speed.  Have a button that can be held down to override that speed limiter when we accelerate, like the shift key.  It segues nicely with the walk/run system we are already used to with on-foot Kerbals and gives keyboard users more finesse that they would normally have to go to a gamepad to get.  It would be like a very simplified gearing system.  
• I realize this might need some new parts, but adjustable hydraulics on wheels would be an incredible asset for surface bases.  Refueling tankers could dock with ports at slightly different elevations without requiring some kind of finicky thrusters or forced compression with excessive reaction wheels.  Or a little ground carriage tug could go low to the ground to get under a base module, then raise up to dock with it and push it off the ground so it can carry it around to a new position.  

I hope we get adjustable suspension + the earlier mentioned track idea. Then I can put together a sick Stridsvagn 103.

[Diche Bach]

Big fat dragster tires and nitrous-oxide fuel . . .

 

Edited September 9, 2016 by Diche Bach

[Sharpy]

Gawd, I can't wait for 1.2

I'm building a big Minmus base. I have a bunch of utility rovers. And I'm sick and tired of things going flying skywards wherever the wheel touches anything.

I mean it's not even harmful. My truck gets launched 300 meters above the surface, and lands unscathed. But with Minmus gravity it lands 3 minutes later! And two minutes of drive away from where it was working!

[LN400]

A few things that would work for me at least (and I believe there was a mod for this at some point):

Have a control room back on KSC for controlling the rover. Current control method also available for anyone wanting that of course.

Add to that: A video camera part that could send live images for the controller together with telemetry, science and discovery code (in the game code) that would award science points for filming new topographical features and biomes with perhaps a bit of extra points for filming easter eggs? The ability to save the film to your hdd to watch later, either in KSP or with a media player like MS's own or WinAmp etc. More types of scientific experiments like geological experiments, the search for micro organisms (it's fairly safe to say now that Kerbin is the only planet with advanced life forms, as well as snack loving life forms). Experiments that are specially designed to fit on a rover chassis.

The ability to move "on rails" from one location to another like orbiting spacecrafts can. This might be a bit tricky to implement but it would have had a huge effect on a rover's usefulness.

One thing rovers excel at now though, is to scout for those flat spots on the ground where a manned lander can land safely without toppling over. That is as it is now, my main use for rovers. Find a flat piece of ground and let the lander target the rover to land right next to it. 

[Armisael]

15 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

• Allow us to set a "cruising" speed tweakable on rover wheels.  Once the rover is moving forward beyond that speed, the torque on the wheels scales back to maintain it, scaling back up once we drop below that forward speed.  Have a button that can be held down to override that speed limiter when we accelerate, like the shift key.  It segues nicely with the walk/run system we are already used to with on-foot Kerbals and gives keyboard users more finesse that they would normally have to go to a gamepad to get.  It would be like a very simplified gearing system.  

It'd have to be a different key; you could have engines on your rover. It works for kerbals since they're a dedicated ship unto themselves with special properties. You'd have to add another key for a mode-swap (and at that point you might as well just use that as the sprint key).

[Xavven]

I already find rovers useful as fuel trucks for ISRU operations. For exploration, they're not as useful as hoppers, planes, or even just orbiting at very low altitudes. To make them better, they need to be able to function on time-warp, because for most of us (there are notable exceptions of course) sitting there for 15 minutes holding down the W key and barely getting anywhere is about as exciting as a commute to work.

So while I agree with a lot of the suggestions in this thread, none of them are as important as waypoints + autopilot on timewarp.

[Terwin]

 

23 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Take the missions on Kerbin where you have to do 3 EVA reports at 3 destinations which are reasonably close to each other and add other planets to them. I always use a rover in a plane for these, on other planets I could use a rover attached to a lander. Would give me a reason to bring them.

The entire reason NASA took a rover to the moon was to drive to several different locations near the lander. The game needs to give us a reason to do this. Biomes are typically too far apart unless you are on a border.

I actually have a rover parked on the Mun which I drive about sometimes for fun...but sadly it serves no actual purpose.

Whenever I have a probe on the Mun or Minmus, I will occasionally get 'take readings near' missions that involve taking the probe to a series of locations and using one of the on-board science instruments.

I think the only requirement is that you have a vessel with one or more science instruments landed on that body.(my 'vessels' were generally a probe core in a service bay with a thermometer, antenna, reaction wheel, and solar panels, so it was a fair bit of effort to get to those destinations which were usually around 1-2 km away from the starting/previous position)

These came available at the same time as the 'expand space station' and 'change satellite orbit' missions.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

44 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Whenever I have a probe on the Mun or Minmus, I will occasionally get 'take readings near' missions that involve taking the probe to a series of locations and using one of the on-board science instruments.

I think the only requirement is that you have a vessel with one or more science instruments landed on that body.(my 'vessels' were generally a probe core in a service bay with a thermometer, antenna, reaction wheel, and solar panels, so it was a fair bit of effort to get to those destinations which were usually around 1-2 km away from the starting/previous position)

These came available at the same time as the 'expand space station' and 'change satellite orbit' missions.

Yeah I've seen those as well, for some reason though the game never actually seems to pick any vessels that have wheels or usable fuel left.

It'll just be like "Hey remember that abandoned lander from like 2 years ago? How about you move it for us?" And I'm like "Well...I would if it wasn't; A: out of fuel, and B: never designed to be moved after landing."

So in theory, I like these missions, but the game needs to be smarter about picking the target vessels.

[Guest]

14 hours ago, Diche Bach said:

Big fat dragster tires and nitrous-oxide fuel . .

That reminds me of something...

I can feel the ozone layer melting away in realtime.

 

 

Personally I want medium-large sized wheels that don't sacrifice as much speed as the huge 'tank wheels', maybe tracks (with procedural length?), and scientific incentives for medium-distance travel for which rovers would be efficient.

[Diche Bach]

5 minutes ago, String Witch said:

That reminds me of something...

I can feel the ozone layer melting away in realtime.

 

 

Personally I want medium-large sized wheels that don't sacrifice as much speed as the huge 'tank wheels', maybe tracks (with procedural length?), and scientific incentives for medium-distance travel for which rovers would be efficient.

That is awesome. I'll have to show that to my wife. Murican like me, but went to High School in France and fluent in the language. She'll be impressed that her French amies have such good tastes in semi-truck drag-racing aesthetics.

But yeah: overall, rovers that don't suck and can actually behave more like dune buggies, semi-trucks, tractors, tanks: that would make the game a LOT more fun than the current situation: Rovers that feel like they are made out of balsa wood and with suspension made out of dried spaghetti.

[Sharpy]

I have an idea of how one might implement an incentive for actually using rovers.

Resource search.

Not ore for ISRU (though it could be included), but finding specific minerals for science and business - as an experiment, and for contracts.

So, orbital survey scanner displays rough estimate of area richness - if even that. There may be resources findable from orbit, and ones where you need to get your hands dirty.

Then you have a rover, that shows - and possibly maps, a'la scansat - totally local concentration of the resource. Your task: find a location with concentration higher than ...%. As requested for contract-giver, or required to activate the experiment for science gain.

And make sure there is a lot of hunting for the peaks.

 

Let me give you examples.

Contract: Plant a flag on Mun, at location where ore occurs at abundance exceeding 9%.

Nuff said. Just find the location using the tools the game provides. Put a flag there.

 

Contract: Find aminoacids in shallows of Eve.

Details: Just at the very edge of Eve ocean conditions for developing life are believed to occur. Find any traces of the life-building particles. They are believed to occur most abundantly near ejecta regions.

Function to determine the percentage: Altitude = -1 to 0m, distance to Ejecta biome (apply a wide gaussian blur on map of the biome to generate a map of probability), near-equatorial latitude. Keep the percentages near 0.01% which is the device detection threshold.

 

Contract: Detail the composition of the very edges of white veins on Eeloo.

Such a precise landing would be hard, but drive a rover across the edge (just ground texture color!) with the device active and you've got it.

 

Contract:  Check Minmus surface never exposed to sunlight for photosensitivity.

Details: North-facing slopes near North pole and south-facing slopes near south pole are the prime candidates.

Function: Raytrace circle at 0 inclination, must hit surface in all directions.

 

Contract: Find water in concentrations exceeding 80% on Duna. Transmit readouts at the location.

Details: Most of Duna ice caps are solid carbon dioxide, but it is believed some of the ice in valleys near the border of the ice caps is nearly pure water.

Function: "Is ice caps biome", distance from latitude 75, slope near zero, slope gradient positive (valley), some random factor.

 

Contract: bring surface sample of Laythe ocean bottom, depth at least -1000m.

 

Contract: Find Eve atmosphere region with less than 0.01% sulphur content.

Function: specific altitude, high distance from ocean and ejecta biomes, high terrain altitude

 

Contract: Find uranium ore on Bop.

Function: few random splotches.

 

Contract: Plant a flag on top of the highest mountain of Dres.

 

Contract: Analyze surface sample from the point where three biomes A, B and C of planet X converge. (tolerance 1km)

 

I can think up many more.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Sharpy

[Fearless Son]

6 hours ago, Armisael said:

It'd have to be a different key; you could have engines on your rover. It works for kerbals since they're a dedicated ship unto themselves with special properties. You'd have to add another key for a mode-swap (and at that point you might as well just use that as the sprint key).

Oooh, I had not though of that.  I forgot that you can attach (non-electric) engines to a rover.  Though I would love to be able to throttle the electric wheel power as well.  

[322997am]

My 30+ ton bus series revision 3 will be released soon. I tried working around all the bugs with a few neat features but yes bugs are annoying.

[limeyptwo]

WORKING WHEELS

[foamyesque]

Wheels work fine.

 

My big ask would be more interesting stuff on planets. Like @Rocket In My Pocket said, exploration contracts for other bodies that are "do X at these 3+ close-together locations" for a start (since it's the simplest). Have those contracts tie into the various points of interest/easter eggs scattered around the system, so that new players actually discover them in the course of playing. More of those kinds of things in general, as @Sparky suggests.

 

FWIW, you can set rover controls the same way you set trim, through the ALT key. This includes forwards and reverse. I have my rover controls broken loose from my flight controls, so I can tell a rover to drive forward without also telling it to pitch down.

[Francois424]

Things that IMHO would help tremendously :

• Cruise Control (That keeps the speed and heading no matter if it's going uphill, flat, or downhill), say 10 m/s on the Mün. Say, press "numlock" and the rover keeps the speed/heading unless you re-press it.
• Steel wheels (that do not bust tires) -- Sturdier and much heavier parts, but if roving all of the Mün's biomes with it's terrain... same for Moho which has wicked obstacles, well worth it.  They also keep the CoM down which is excellent.
• Electric propellers (For boats, planes, and some interesting rover designs) -- with at least 2 sizes: 0,625 and 1,25.  I've sometimes fit a prop on a rover to make it maintain a constant speed.  Flying rovers are great for Eve, Laythe, and Tekto.
• A landing airbag... put the part anywhere on your rover, and it acts as an inflatable airbag on activation... in the VAB it could be like the procedural fairings, except in a Dodecahedral fashion (12-sided).  Give it like 100 m/s hit tolerance, and let it bounce around until it stops.  Then "Decoupling it" would slowly open the bag in every direction ( like a pentagon every 3 sec or something)... the texture could be the same as the inflatable heatshield.

A lot of ppl have good ideas.  I often just rove for fun, but the 2 worst are wheels breaking/busting and constantly having to trim/hold down "W" to go forwards.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Francois424

[pandaman]

Specific, precise, locations to visit.  I think the basic idea has already been mentioned here earlier,  but...

A rover gives the ability to cover larger distances in shorter times than walking, and, depending on the task, without needing a crew present. 

So, once landed, 'mission control' could see an interesting feature they want you to check out.  This could be an existing terrain detail, or a specially generated for the situation 'object' like an unusually coloured rock etc. 

That's what they do with Curiosity etc.  Land with a plan of where they want to go, and what they want to do, then get those 'ooh!  That looks cool, let's take a closer look' moments.  That's exploration.

 

[N_Danger]

 I found one useful recently on a landing at Duna. I had 3 Biomes and an anomaly all with in 15 KM of the landing site.

The rover loaded with instruments and with a scientist driving can collect quite a bit of science in one drive.

 It is extra challenging with the wheel thing I'll admit. Long trips are nerve racking and I have no shame in using F9. 

 I will say that cruise control is on my wish list

[Samniss Arandeen]

Hinges, so I can make rovers foldable. I'd be more likely to bring one along if I could more easily pack one in the spacecraft.

[psychogre]

On 9/8/2016 at 2:36 PM, Corona688 said:

Cruise control, or perhaps a way to tie the throttle to the motors.

I found that you can do this by assigning the wheels 'throttle axis' to the joystick throttle.

The thing that makes this potentially hazardous is that for the rover to be stopped, the throttle needs to be at the half-way level (at '0' your rover is going in full reverse).  If you switch to the lander that you just parked the rover next to, you might unintentionally launch the lander...