anyone having problems with vessels sliding down shallow slopes in 1.12.2? Here's a fix.

[TimKerbin]

Ever since playing 1.12.2 I've noticed that vessels slide down slopes, even shallow gradients.  Whether it's a 5-man vessel or a 100-tonne mining ship it would slide down a slope at maybe 0.1, 0.2 m/s. Duna, Ike, Mun, Minmus, it didn't matter. It was like the legs had no friction. So I opened up the part file for the LT-2 landing legs and looked for anything friction related. I had no idea what I was doing. 

I changed a few values (in bold) but the one that seemed to work was "autoFrictionAvailable = false".  If you set it to "True", a friction slider control becomes available for the legs on your vessel (I'm talking about the heavy LT-2 legs but the other legs might be the same).

I then tested a vessel by landing it on Minmus on a heavy slope. With the friction slider set to 0, the vessel kept sliding. With the slider set to 1, 1.5 or 2, the vessel eventually stopped completely.

FYI Here is the section where I made the edit/s.

MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleWheelBase
        
        wheelColliderTransformName = wheelCollider        
        useNewFrictionModel = true
        wheelType = LEG
        adherentStart = 0.01
        frictionAdherent = 0.5
        peakStart = 2
        frictionPeak = 1.0
        limitStart = 7.0
        frictionLimit = 1.5
        // setting this to true will override the radius and center parameters
        FitWheelColliderToMesh = False        
        radius = 0.12
        center = 0,0,0
        mass = 0.040
        autoFrictionAvailable = True
        clipObject = piston_collider
        TooltipTitle = #autoLOC_502076 //#autoLOC_502076 = Landing Leg
        TooltipPrimaryField = 
        
        groundHeightOffset = 1.37
    }
I was reading the patch notes for 1.12.2 and Squad claims they've finally fixed the landing legs. Well, they haven't. By fixing one thing they seem to have introduced another issue. In all my time playing KSP I've never had this persisent sliding problem until now. All they had to do was turn this value on by default and there wouldn't have been a problem. Yes I know this setting is meant for wheels but in the part file it treats wheels and legs the same. Both wheels and legs still need friction! In 1.12.2 they (at least the LT-2 legs) don't have friction!

Anyway I hope this helps anyone else having this issue.  

Come on Squad, add this part edit to the next final patch. Prettty please!  Was this an oversight? Did you miss it? Did you intend to fix this and forgot?
    

[miklkit]

Yes!  Sliding after landing is a big problem for me as the lander can slide for hundreds of meters before finally stopping.  I've been raising the landing gear to stop it.  

[Sixer]

attach a new part with wheels and you can drag the base on legs around to the most flat spot 

 

i use it as a 'feature'   hehehe