[1.2] Fix the (description of) extremely weak, breaking "LY-01 Fixed Landing Gear" (updated)

[Guest]

1 hour ago, sal_vager said:

Btw, max take of weight of a Cessna 185 is 1,506 kg, no where near 6 tons, so I wouldn't expect the gear to be that strong.

It's pretty tough to make an early plane in stock KSP that masses 1.5 tons considering the first cockpit available is 1250 Kg and the first jet engine available is 250 Kg. That pretty much leaves you six Kg for fuel, gear, wings, controls, intake, etc... 3~5 metric tons is a perfectly reasonable tolerance for those gear.

Edited October 25, 2016 by regex

[Kerbal101]

1 hour ago, sal_vager said:

@Kerbal101, if you have not already can you please report this on the tracker with your findings regarding tolerances.

Hey Sal! Nice avatar!  After reading the posts, it appears the issue is due to the LY-01 sharing the fate/niche of  RoveMax Model S2 (codename "where is the engineer?") which I wasn't aware of.

 

May I suggest adding the awesome:

2 hours ago, regex said:

(snip)... Anything more than five tons is probably way too much. In fact, five tons may be too much.

to this particular or (much) better "Max weight/wheel: xx t" added to landing gear (and rover?) wheel description?

 

 

22 minutes ago, regex said:

It's pretty tough to make an early plane in stock KSP that masses 1.5 tons considering the first cockpit available is 1250 Kg and the first jet engine available is 250 Kg. That pretty much leaves you six Kg for fuel, gear, wings, controls, intake, etc... 3~5 metric tons is a perfectly reasonable tolerance for those gear.

^^^^  this guy is one of them, Gods of KSP!

Edited October 25, 2016 by Kerbal101

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Kerbal101 said:

May I suggest adding the awesome:

to this particular or (much) better "Max weight/wheel: xx t" added to landing gear (and rover?) wheel description?

Yeah, tolerances in the descriptions would have been nice.

[TriggerAu]

5 hours ago, Avera9eJoe said:

I've found these wheels to be pretty underwhelming myself too. I'm not playing in career mode, but I have a small cessna style plane that uses these wheels. They don't usually break on my plane but it's very common for me to bottom out the suspension on them when landing causing them to grind along the ground and then jump back into place. My main concern has been that they rock back and fourth infinitely once I'm landed on the ground without the aid of SAS. I made a bug report for 1.2 on wobbly wheels which wasn't addressed as well as a general report on certain suspension appearing weaker in U5 which wasn't addressed. This issue isn't new though - I made a report in 1.1.3 which also wasn't addressed. Kryten made a much more detailed report on  wheels just feeling underwhelming but it appears to have been ignored as well. It's possible these reports where read but there was never any official words on the matter. @SQUAD? @TriggerAu?

EDIT: Rephrased a bit more

I've not been across the wheels stuff in detail me-self, but do know some work was done for 1.2 to remove a number of the bandaids that were in 1.1. I have read those reports and wheels are a pain point that needs some attention yes, whether it be better details on limits or changes to them functionally I dont konw what the end result may be. Is on my list of things I poke about periodically

[Kerbal101]

Updated topic title and 1st post about real issue.

[fourfa]

I love the 01/05 wheels as they are right now, if and only if you limit them to small planes (5-6T like everyone says). Perfect in early career for learning to build and fly small, light, maneuverable, easy to land small planes. Flavor-text emphasizing their fragility would make them pretty much perfect IMHO. 

[Kerbal101]

6 minutes ago, fourfa said:

I love the 01/05 wheels as they are right now, if and only if you limit them to small planes (5-6T like everyone says). Perfect in early career for learning to build and fly small, light, maneuverable, easy to land small planes. Flavor-text emphasizing their fragility would make them pretty much perfect IMHO. 

This is already emphasized: "Simple wheel-on-a-stick Landing Gear to bring your birds down safely."

The problem is that its written and thus read like a joke text and not taken literally.   Having more serious data on screen is always better (anyone still playing without KER?).

Edited October 25, 2016 by Kerbal101

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, Kerbal101 said:

Thats what I have done on my "exploration rover" in 1.0.5 career. The catch is that YT-05 has no breaks (B). I have no idea why,  perhaps I should "restore it" in the mod.

Oh is that why I totally decimated my Astronaut Complex with my latest "KSP Science Jet Car"?

[Leafbaron]

@Kerbal101 testing your Lolplane right now. Will let you know what I find and where weight reductions can be made. In the meantime, Here is the "short" range science getter i made last night. 6.3 tones. I was using the ly01 and LY-05 until i unlocked the next tier landing gear. 

It can go much faster than 81 ms as well haha

[Leafbaron]

@Kerbal101

Your plane flies beautifully. I was able to land her in a Hilly part of The grasslands at less than 5 m/s vertical speed and around 75 m/s horizontal velocity. You can definitely lose 2 of the junos and the large MK1 fuel tank. id also suggest putting the solar panels outside the cargo bay. at 7.3 tones she isn't a problem for these wheels at all. just gotta take her in nice and easy.  happy flying partner. 

[Leafbaron]

Here she is after the changes i made. Reduced the weight to 4.6 tones. and still hase over 7000m/s of dV or about 15 minutes of flying time. 

[fourfa]

58 minutes ago, Kerbal101 said:

This is already emphasized: "Simple wheel-on-a-stick Landing Gear to bring your birds down safely."

The problem is that its written and thus read like a joke text and not taken literally.   Having more serious data on screen is always better (anyone still playing without KER?).

See, I don't see where it's emphasized at all.  "Simple wheel-on-a-stick Landing Gear to bring your birds down safely - as long as they're very small birds!  (Warranty not valid over 6T total vehicular mass)" for instance

[Kerbal101]

@fourfa Perfectly agree. I found a video of such gears and really the rear gears do not look solid IRL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guSYoF0xRYQ
Basically, they are designed to be puny - but look too solid in-game. Because frontal gear is soo much stronger, I assumed something is wrong with back wheels.

@Leafbaron Nice, thank you very much. Although you blocked Cabin in your version...
The plane is meant to be for science, its from actual career without any mods.
The robot in the bay is most basic with power cells to assist in stability.
Its packaged with solar panels inside bay to minimize drag, its designed to be exposed for recharge only on landing - when science is collected by scientist. There is sufficient energy before stop provided by batteries.

From what I collected during discussion of this thread - this plane wings are simply too large. Too high weight, too high lift.
The tail construction is likewise too large. The big fuel tank must go. Four engines are too many.
All because the back wheels are really very weak (I am pretty ok with that, this corresponds to reality).

 

To all: Based upon LY-01 and LY-05 stats in config, the following can be said for vanilla config:
Max weight (per wheel):  2t    LY-01/   2t  LY-05    (2+1 wheels = 6 t on all three, 4t on rear wheels)
Max impact vertical speed, when upper limits are triggered for calculation:  ~1-3 m/s vertical LY-01/  ~8-12 m/s vertical LY-05

 

Edited October 26, 2016 by Kerbal101

[sal_vager]

Course, there's always moar wheels!

[Kerbal101]

1 hour ago, sal_vager said:

Course, there's always moar wheels!

Actually, this reliably applies only to wheels with high "crashTolerance". The only instance is LY-06.

All other wheels have that value low and thus (except for extremely smooth touchdown) always need to pass "ModuleWheelDamage" check, which calculates weight distributed on the wheel at touchdown.
Means in best case all wheels must make contact, in worst case - one/two wheels make initial contact - and whole total weight is calculated against only them - causing them to reliably blow up.
The "best case" is exactly when "moar wheels" principle would apply, in reality it is hard to achieve.

Unlike "igniting all boosters at once" - its hard to make "all wheels make contact at same time"...

 

I have created a new craft today that uses very early career parts. It behaves admirably well and has no landing problems.
I would be honored if you'd include it into Stock KSP as no stock vehicles use LY-01/LY-06 to my knowledge.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Kerbal101

[Kerbal101]

... and craft posted. Post #1 changed to reflect latest stand. If gear descriptions are left unfixed/incomplete in upcoming KSP, at least people will not repeat my mistakes approaching this problem.

Thanks everyone!

Edited October 26, 2016 by Kerbal101