How to build a better rover?

[Delusional Poet]

So an early contract I accepted involved 3 surface temp measurements about 1/4 of the way around Kerbin.  Figured as I just made my first manned Mun landing, it might be good to develop a rover for this task.

The plan was to strap an unmanned rover to the front of a ballistic missile, so that close would count.

After several trials and errors on getting the payload (rover) built (make sure to have plenty of batteries if doing a night landing, and headlights are nice and never ever warp), I finally got my mission accomplished.

Just one weird thing.  My rover was wired backwards.  The steering was reversed and I had to drive in reverse (s key) to go with my headlights.  Is there a good way to know which way the wheels are going to go before I launch the rocket ?

Also, I found the Nav ball almost useless on the ground.  Is there a setting for just a basic compass or something, so I don’t have to wait for the Mun to rise to know directions?

[Scarecrow71]

For starters, I'd recommend remapping the driving controls to the arrow keys for the rover.  Using the default flying keys that are mapped for driving a rover is just trouble waiting to happen.  Can't tell you how many rovers I flipped before remapping the controls.

As far as which way is up/forward on the rover, simply testing the controls on the launchpad before you even build the rocket will help there.  Even a simple turning of the wheels will tell you if you are flipped or not.

With the nav ball, did you make sure you were in surface mode and not orbit?

[Delusional Poet]

You know, I think I was in orbit mode now that you mentioned it…

And yes, one thing I learned was set reaction wheel to 0 before driving.

[18Watt]

Rovers?  Did somebody say rovers?  You might want to check out this thread:

It's chock full of folks who have an insane amount of rover experience.

 

[Vanamonde]

Did you build your rover with the control part facing forward or up? That will change how the controls respond.  The good news is that you can click on another part while driving and choose it as the "control from here," which may make it easier to drive. 

[king of nowhere]

On 1/25/2023 at 11:55 PM, Scarecrow71 said:

For starters, I'd recommend remapping the driving controls to the arrow keys for the rover.  Using the default flying keys that are mapped for driving a rover is just trouble waiting to happen.  Can't tell you how many rovers I flipped before remapping the controls.

for the sake of completeness, there are two school of thought there. one says, like you did, to remap the controls.

the other says to use an action group to deactivate all reaction wheels on the rover - so that they won't try to flip your rover while you're accelerating.

Both are viable strategies.