The Kerbal Dakar 2017 entry vehicles thread

[Madrias]

9 hours ago, Fireheart318 said:

What mod adds in the intake air ion engine?

Something I config bashed myself.  Swapped XenonGas for IntakeAir, cut down the electricity use so it's more efficient.  Still weighs just as much, so it's a heavy piece of equipment to drag around.

[mrmcp1]

14 hours ago, Azimech said:

Often the case is basically too much grip. For me, rolling over is in any circumstance unacceptable. That's why I have pretty low friction settings both on front and rear, I tune until the vehicle never flips. After that I choose a slightly higher friction on the rear wheels, this way the vehicle is basically understeered but can be forced into oversteer when I want (fast left/right actions for example). Yes, traction suffers a bit and braking even more ... but I rather have that than the pain of picking up a trail of pieces ;-)

Thanks, that seems to have resolved the problem (also made it possible to drifts which is a bonus)

[Azimech]

I have returned to a more standard look for the R/D. Upgraded too, it has 8 juno's now. Top speed: around 112.

 

 

Meanwhile somewhere on Kerbin, things aren't looking good. Two competing gas stations ... and they aren't looking very happy at each other.

 

 

[mrmcp1]

I have found another weird issue with my car. 

Testing it around the administration building it seems that if I hit the ramp at 40m/s + the front wheels just explode, tried adjusting the suspension but it doesn't seem to help. It seems that rotating the wheels around 15 degrees seems to help but then it handles weirdly 

Anyone got any ideas?

[Azimech]

19 minutes ago, mrmcp1 said:

I have found another weird issue with my car. 

Testing it around the administration building it seems that if I hit the ramp at 40m/s + the front wheels just explode, tried adjusting the suspension but it doesn't seem to help. It seems that rotating the wheels around 15 degrees seems to help but then it handles weirdly 

Anyone got any ideas?

That's pretty normal ... KSC ramps are very steep and unforgiving.

[DoctorDavinci]

27 minutes ago, mrmcp1 said:

I have found another weird issue with my car. 

Testing it around the administration building it seems that if I hit the ramp at 40m/s + the front wheels just explode, tried adjusting the suspension but it doesn't seem to help. It seems that rotating the wheels around 15 degrees seems to help but then it handles weirdly 

Anyone got any ideas?

Don't test at the KSC ... Do your testing in the hills to the west as around the KSC a vehicle will RUD when hitting the steep angles of the ground at high speeds in that area

Edited January 5, 2017 by DoctorDavinci

[mrmcp1]

17 minutes ago, Azimech said:

That's pretty normal ... KSC ramps are very steep and unforgiving.

 

11 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Don't test at the KSC ... Do your testing in the hills to the west as around the KSC a vehicle will RUD when hitting the steep angles of the ground at high speeds in that area

Thanks, its happened a couple of times of the dakar. Must have been a few other factors that caused it. I suppose hitting a 45 degree angle at full speed is not a good idea

[Azimech]

4 minutes ago, mrmcp1 said:

 

Thanks, its happened a couple of times of the dakar. Must have been a few other factors that caused it. I suppose hitting a 45 degree angle at full speed is not a good idea

Even 20 can be fatal with a wrong mass distribution, too stiff suspension and indeed ... speed.

[Triop]

So I added tweakscale to get some smaller wheels, looks like I'm going Mario style.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

14 minutes ago, Azimech said:

That's pretty normal ... KSC ramps are very steep and unforgiving.

 

9 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Don't test at the KSC ... Do your testing in the hills to the west as around the KSC a vehicle will RUD when hitting the steep angles of the ground at high speeds in that area

This backs up my findings also, some or those ramp are more like steps and there is no transition to speak of either its flat or an angle and doesn't give the wheel any time to react

 

35 minutes ago, mrmcp1 said:

Thanks, its happened a couple of times of the dakar. Must have been a few other factors that caused it. I suppose hitting a 45 degree angle at full speed is not a good idea

The issue here is the way the wheel colliders work, they are not wheels, they are not even round, the effective wheel is actually a point with no width depth or breadth.

So when you encounter a steep transition, unless the wheel is relatively lightly loaded then there is a really good chance of collider punch through, because the next part of the terrain is appreciably higher up than the wheel collider force point  and the wheel collider pushes through the terrain and leaves the wheels collision enhancer to take the wallop, sadly these collision enhancers have some unfortunate properties and bad things happen when the are forced into high speed collisions.

[Redshift OTF]

@Azimech Heh, it looks like you are going down the "I want my car to survive every bump on the Dakar course" route. Same here with my next vehicle and with a lot of other people I think:

I've added two small landing gears to each RV wheel in the hope the vehicle can take the most punishing bumps on the course and I'm not that confident that it will. We shall see.

@mrmcp1 The bumps around the KSC are a great place to test your wheel strength. The bump on the road thing between the VAB and the launch pad is a great testing spot. However there are some worse bumps on the course so testing around the KSC is no guarantee of success.

@SpannerMonkey(smce) Thanks for that info. That's really useful. I tested my buggy by dropping it from a VTOL and found that if it hits the ground too hard for a fraction of a second it looks like the RV wheels have clipped through the ground. Along with extra landing gear wheel I found having an I-beam piece under the car that can hit the ground before the wheels clip through can allow a vehicle to hit the ground over 60 m/s vertically and survive. I'm not sure why they coded the wheels like that but it's good to know.

1 hour ago, Triop said:

So I added tweakscale to get some smaller wheels, looks like I'm going Mario style.

Lol, it looks like Diddy Triop riding that. Make mini Juno's either side for exhaust trails.

[Madrias]

1 hour ago, Triop said:

tweakscale to get some smaller wheels

Yeah... About that.  The smaller you make the wheels, the less acceleration and braking power you'll have.  Just something to consider before you get too far into that idea, because I've gotten vehicles stuck in Stage 3 because they couldn't climb out of the pit at the bottom of Dead Kerbal Hill.

[Triop]

2 minutes ago, Madrias said:

Yeah... About that.  The smaller you make the wheels, the less acceleration and braking power you'll have.  Just something to consider before you get too far into that idea, because I've gotten vehicles stuck in Stage 3 because they couldn't climb out of the pit at the bottom of Dead Kerbal Hill.

I also noticed this, I guess I will tweak the config file.

Regards, Diddy Triop.

 

14 minutes ago, Redshift OTF said:

Lol, it looks like Diddy Triop riding that. Make mini Juno's either side for exhaust trails.

Great tip, thanks !

I will put on a rapier and see how it will go.

[Redshift OTF]

Oh wow, that looks awesome. Do the Junos produce thrust that small? How much?

[Triop]

2 minutes ago, Redshift OTF said:

Oh wow, that looks awesome. Do the Junos produce thrust that small? How much?

only 25 m/s with 2, 3x downscaled junos....

[DarkOwl57]

46 minutes ago, Triop said:

It was at this moment, [Insert name here] Kerman realized, that stain wasn't coming out.

I mean seriously, that face is like "Why did I accept Jeb's bet? I knew I couldn't beat him in a flight sim... AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

53 minutes ago, Madrias said:

Dead Kerbal Hill.

hhahaahahahhahahaha That is the best name ever

Okay, so after testing a car with engines, I have decided to go back to my all-electric roots. I don't know what it is, but even the juno's are too fast for my wheel/car setup. I guess I'll just use the ODR-5 since I'm lazy and don't want to deal with the problem of building, testing, re-designing, etc. etc.

[Madrias]

It got that name after flipping the original Dead Bug and causing both Jeb and Bill to be flung out of their seats, collided with Kerbin, and both poofed while the rover proceeded to smash into pieces down the hill.  If you catch Stage 3's hill going too fast... You've got a rover full of dead kerbals.  Hence the name I gave it.

[Triop]

Found a old muscle car mod:

[DarkOwl57]

36 minutes ago, Triop said:

Found a old muscle car mod:

#WhatMod?

[Triop]

24 minutes ago, DarkOwl57 said:

#WhatMod?

 

[Azimech]

6 hours ago, Triop said:

Found a old muscle car mod:

 

That's ... looking very cool!

 

[Triop]

[Azimech]

3 minutes ago, Triop said:

 

Shall I put your Charger in the drag race against mine?

[Triop]

3 minutes ago, Azimech said:

 

Shall I put your Charger in the drag race against mine?

Not yet, still tweaking the wheels config, takes a lot of time because I have no idea what I'm doing....

Tweaked topspeed for these wheels now: (tweakscale 80%) = 37.2 m/s.

p.s, WHAT DRAGRACE ???    I'm in !

Edited January 6, 2017 by Triop

[Azimech]

1 minute ago, Triop said:

Not yet, still tweaking the wheels config, takes a lot of time because Ihave no idea what I'm doing.

Tweaked topspeed for these wheels (tweakscale 80%) = 37.2 m/s.

p.s, WHAT DRAGRACE ???    I'm in !

I'll upload the contraption tonight, anyone can play with it then.

Edited January 6, 2017 by Azimech