What’s the point of rovers?

[LordFerret]

5 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Depends on where you go. I collected five biomes on a 20 km drive from Eve's highlands to the sea.

Agreed, there are many places you can land and do a short circle/circuit and hit multiple biomes on just about every body in the game.

[eddiew]

4 hours ago, Just Jim said:

I like driving... The Mun is so treacherous, I don't trust auto-pilot. One second everything is fine, next thing you know, you've driven over the side of a deep crater! Plus the scenery is amazing!

Well the Bon Voyage autopilot works on rails, so it's only really the returning to the scene that holds any danger. I'm fairly sure World Stabilizer helps out with that too (and of course you can F5/F9 and try a slightly different target in a very short space of time)  

On the whole, BV gets me within a few hundred metres of a waypoint, then I tool around for a few minutes getting samples etc, then let it drive to the next one. Once you're bored of the terrain, it's very nice to have, imho ^^

[Radiatin]

21 hours ago, Renegrade said:

 

If it's in drive-able range, it's in hop-able range.  Plus you can be completely done with the science tree before the first Duna window opens.  The only real solid use I've ever gotten out of rovers is as little fuel trucks for mining operations.  Easier to trundle a load of fuel back and forth between a landed craft and the miner than land the landing craft ON the miner.   Getting the docking ports to the right level is a bit fiddly in stock, but doable.  KAS/KIS makes it very easy (and quite cool) for fuel rovers to do their jobs, of course.

(NB: I don't use claws for fuel trucks as I try to avoid unlocking them, as they change the rescue missions)

Well like in real life the difference is that driving is fuel free in space. You can’t hop without fuel, but wheels will spin as long as the sun exists.

[Temeter]

I've done everything from high speed travel on low grav plants for fun and science, to moving refineries, tanks, colonization mod transports, jet driven world speed records, speed cars, rescue missions, etc.

There is a lot of stuff you can do with wheels in a sandbox like KSP, which is why they're IMO ultra valuable to have. But I'd agree in that there is little vanilla limited gameplay reason to have rovers.

 

Maybe the new missions system can set up more complex contracts that make you do more on other planets.

Edited March 14, 2018 by Temeter

[RizzoTheRat]

On ‎13‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 7:13 PM, LordFerret said:

Agreed, there are many places you can land and do a short circle/circuit and hit multiple biomes on just about every body in the game.

Yeah, I always send a ScanSat mission first to map the surface, and then try and land near the border of a few biomes so I can gather science from at least 3 biomes in one landing.  I never bother with science labs so don't' complete the tech tree until I've have a rove around Duna.

My Science rover carries full set of experiments, a scientist to reset them, and an engineer in case they break anything.  I find Mechjeb useful as you can set a heading and speed rather than keep hitting keys, although I plan to have a go at kOS script that will use torque to ensure it stays level over jumps, it's fine over small stuff (shown here bouncing over the raised track to the launch pad at a decent speed), but big jumps can mean it lands too nose down and flips.

[KerikBalm]

Rovers are great for surface base assembly.

Surface base assembly, in the stock game... I guess its useful for mining, and getting the absolute best mass fraction possible out of a fuel tanker (since the ISRU equipment stays behind)