Aircraft landing gear should have height variants

[Vectura]

Currently, we have several sizes of retractable gear with different numbers of wheels and strengths. However, they all share a problematic design flaw: the bigger ones are longer. This almost exclusively means you can only use the bigger gear mounted high up (eg, underneath a high wing) if you are using a shorter steerable gear as a nose gear. As KSP has part variant options now, each of the gear should have 3 or 4 variants, which all conform to a standard set of heights. This way, you could use the different gear types all mounted at the same height on an aircraft, which would make design easier and would improve visuals too.

Just as an example, here's the landing gear on an airliner. Notice how short the whole thing is compared to the bigger multi-wheel gear we have in KSP:

Edited March 6, 2020 by Vectura

[Shadowmage]

I know this is in the 'stock suggestions' thread, but if mods are an option, the Adjustable Landing Gear in the Kerbal Foundries mod include exactly this feature (adjustable static height, + adjustable sprung height)....

 

[Vectura]

I won't use any part based mods so that my vehicles are always compatible, but I did use a mod for it back in around the 0.25 era. It's quite silly that it isn't a stock option anyway. Aircraft on stilts look so odd.

[Mikenike]

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

I know this is in the 'stock suggestions' thread, but if mods are an option, the Adjustable Landing Gear in the Kerbal Foundries mod include exactly this feature (adjustable static height, + adjustable sprung height)....

 

Not mentioning us console losers.

1 hour ago, Vectura said:

I won't use any part based mods so that my vehicles are always compatible, but I did use a mod for it back in around the 0.25 era. It's quite silly that it isn't a stock option anyway. Aircraft on stilts look so odd.

 

[Cavscout74]

It would be SOOO nice in stock.  Currently, this is the primary thing I use TweakScale for - fine tuning landing gear.  Typically, I'm only using a range of 90% to 110% scale to get my aircraft to sit just right. 

[Pds314]

Literally just let us preset the suspension to a slider-controlled target height. It would take no new parts or models and we could have landing gears significantly longer or shorter than current ones for the same model.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Pds314