broken wheels/landing struts: has it ever happened?

[king of nowhere]

ok, so the description of the engineer says that he can repair broken wheels or landing struts, when they happen. and i thought, neat, i want always one around just in case.

and i made this rover, and it has both parts (wheels on the bottom to drive, landing struts on top to survive accidents), and it's one of my favourite vehicles and i used it a lot. And i really mean a lot. I did drive halfwaty across the Mun, starting on northwest crater, the going to darkside crater, north inside the canyon up to the poles, then southward to farside basin. and then i did drive it around Minmus, again going from the equator close enough to the poles and back to the equator again. and now I did a half circumnavigation of Vall. Plus a few tests on other planets. That's around 5000 km total.

And I broke stuff countless times. the rover is rugged and it survives most mishaps, but if i insist cruising around 30-40 m/s on rugged terrain, i can't get lucky every time. I got exploded, and mangled, and i lost pieces.

But I never, ever, EVER broke a wheel or landing strut. Destroied, yes. Exploded, countless times. warped around the attachment so they point in the wrong direction, for certain.

But given the "broken" condition so that an engineer could fix? Not once. As far as my experience goes, that "fix parts" ability may as well not exhist.

So I'm asking the forum, does it ever happen to have the kind of malfunction you can fix with an engineer? did it happen to you? if so, why i've never seen it despite so many opportunities?

 

Edited December 1, 2020 by king of nowhere

[pandaman]

Yes.  I've had it hapoen quite a bit.  Not so much recently though, but I've learned to be more careful. 

Mostly, nowadays with rovers I do tend to destroy rather than damage because I either go carrfully or lose patience and go mad.  So I just don't hit things in the right speed ranges to just damage wheels. 

[vv3k70r]

12 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

But given the "broken" condition so that an engineer could fix? Not once.

Turn on reaction wheels and press vehicle on front wheels until they wear. It is easier on Kerbin or Eve.

12 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

So I'm asking the forum, does it ever happen to have the kind of malfunction you can fix with an engineer? did it happen to you? if so, why i've never seen it despite so many opportunities?

On low gravity there is either no damage or complete destruction. I've seen broken wheel on da Mun once. And of course I had an engineer as You have for this.

Engineers are much more usefull for mining - there You gonna need them for sure.

 

[foamyesque]

I've busted a lot of wheels on Eve or trying to haul things too big for 'em. Surface docking particularly can produce unexpected forces that just pop the suckers. So can jet-assisted roving on Kerbin.

[vv3k70r]

3 hours ago, foamyesque said:

Surface docking particularly can produce unexpected forces that just pop the suckers.

Turn down damper and spring.

 

[Mikenike]

On 12/1/2020 at 4:01 PM, king of nowhere said:

So I'm asking the forum, does it ever happen to have the kind of malfunction you can fix with an engineer? did it happen to you? if so, why i've never seen it despite so many opportunities?

I do it constantly, mostly on Kerbin though, I pop them all the time. It happens when you go too fast and do crazy stuff, and another way is to put too much weight on it

 

[king of nowhere]

25 minutes ago, Mikenike said:

I do it constantly, mostly on Kerbin though, I pop them all the time. It happens when you go too fast and do crazy stuff, and another way is to put too much weight on it

 

i go too fast and do crazy stuff all the time. now i'm roving on tylo, and due to good gravity, lack of atmospheric drag and smooth terrain, i reached 100 m/s several times. i exploded the rover when i lost control, but again, never happened to break a wheel.

as for putting too much wheight, i have no idea how much would be too much, but with 8 ruggedized wheels i can barely move upslope. i cannot climb more than 5 degrees of incline without help. that would make me think the weight is too much. but then, sometimes i lose control and the rover capsize and slams violently on the ground with a single wheel, and the wheel stays whole. i also did drive over 100 km on kerbin to go scan giant quartz, and i exploded wheels, but never broke them

[The rocket exploder]

I have had my landing struts and/or my wheels to ever break so an engineer could fix them. I had a robotic rover on eve and i never needed to fix even going 10m/s-20m/s. But I also had was very careful too.

[DerkyJerkyWreaksHavoc]

48 minutes ago, The rocket exploder said:

I have had my landing struts and/or my wheels to ever break so an engineer could fix them. I had a robotic rover on eve and i never needed to fix even going 10m/s-20m/s. But I also had was very careful too.

Careful smareful... These robot parts r free ya know. they dont cost real life money

Plus KSP has the habit of reinforcing Quick saves.

All ya gotta do is SMASH F9 or for PS4 & PS5 just press Option and go to load and spam click the "X" button until it loads or the button breaks

[Yellowburn10]

I would say for me, whenever they released the update where wheels would now break based on relative speed and sudden impacts rather than breaking via exceeding a certain surface velocity, I started to get a lot less broken wheels. Still had them from time to time, but a lot less.

[vv3k70r]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

as for putting too much wheight, i have no idea how much would be too much, but with 8 ruggedized wheels i can barely move upslope. i cannot climb more than 5 degrees of incline without help. that would make me think the weight is too much

How did You set traction?

1 hour ago, DAFATRONALDO2007 IN SPACE said:

Plus KSP has the habit of reinforcing Quick saves.

Easy in phy. Coordinates stored in saves are not real time acurate to celestial body rotation. I'm not sure about unity engine, but I guess it dosent store quaternion describing round space coordinates for such use, it is flat 3d posiston + 3drotation. Engines on such coordinates system are intrestant but there will be more issues with moding, tools for transfering models to such a format and with high complexity on phy it provide sligtly diference on to flat 3d with some workarounds and patching expected situations.

[Cavscout74]

Had it happen more than once.  I feel like they've made the wheels a little tougher at some point, because it hardly ever happens now.  Most memorable wheel breakage was my first ever landing on Laythe, found a reasonably flat area to set a spaceplane down on  - it was a modified version of  @XLjedi's Star Ranger - and it turned out to not be as flat as I thought on the fly over.  I broke all three landing gear, but I had an engineer on board so it wasn't a problem.  I was just thrilled I finally landed on Laythe without explosions

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, vv3k70r said:

How did You set traction?

 

no limitation, 100%.

it consumes more electricity, but it has a bit more power when going uphill

[The rocket exploder]

6 hours ago, DAFATRONALDO2007 IN SPACE said:

Careful smareful... These robot parts r free ya know. they dont cost real life money

Plus KSP has the habit of reinforcing Quick saves.

All ya gotta do is SMASH F9 or for PS4 & PS5 just press Option and go to load and spam click the "X" button until it loads or the button breaks

I know that, I sometimes forget to quicksave the mission I'm doing, then I smash F9 then I go back to a save that I have before I had a lot of my crafts.  Then I have to redo everything I had up to the rover. I hated doing all of it again.