Wallaby XL Landing Gear is too heavy.

[CiberX15]

I feel like I need something the size of the Wallaby XL Landing Gear to land anything with a large sized engine. Just to have the vertical clearance alone, never mind weight. But each Wallaby literally weighs a ton. The next smallest landing gear, the Wombat, only weighs a tenth of a ton, and only appears to be about half the size? Maybe a third? Accounting for the square cubed law, technically being a ton might make sense scientifically. except that the Wallaby is not a solid mass. It's mostly an empty casing for a still fairly skeletal leg. 

Arguably more importantly, from a pure gameplay point of view, it makes me just not want to use what is kind of a critical piece of the game. At it's current mass the Wallaby always loses the cost benefit analysis for me. I'll always just fiddle with adding more Wombats and figuring out how to get them low enough to protect the engine then ever use the Wallaby in it's current state.

[betaking]

they need to add procedural/adjustable landing gear, something that can "stretch";

 

there should obviously be some limits, it shouldn't just be "one type of landing gear", rather multiple procedural models differentiated by "optimal size"/"sweet spot"; 

[Bej Kerman]

The problem isn't the Wallaby, it's clearly oriented at heavy craft. The problem is not having a lightweight alternative, something that parallels for example the landing gear on the Falcon 9 and serves to fill the gap between the Wallaby and the next smaller gear.

[CiberX15]

3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

The problem isn't the Wallaby, it's clearly oriented at heavy craft. The problem is not having a lightweight alternative, something that parallels for example the landing gear on the Falcon 9 and serves to fill the gap between the Wallaby and the next smaller gear.

Yes I would support this completely. 

[HephaistosFnord]

Yep, lots of parts have weird weights.
 

 

[dansiegel30]

I rarely have the need for heavy landing gear, because I land at most with 2m/sec (they key is to lower your engine thrust limit on final approach and while dusting, because at 100% thrust even the lowest levels of throttle often keep you from landing).  Now If I wanted to land a vehicle with large honkin' Booster engine on it, I wouldn't just grab the large landing gear I can find due to the length of the nozzle (another reason why the extended nozzle engines aren't supposed to be landing engines).  I'd continue to use light or medium gear, but put a shroud around the engine (just like SpaceX does).  You'll have to be creative, like using a tube or hollow structural ring, and then slide the engine inside, or even have to slide the landing gear down onto the tube (havent checked in KSP2, but IIRC you can't connect anything to the outside of a tube).  Then it looks pretty and accomplishes what you want.  The huge landing gear is for people that like to do HARD landings....which I dont.

[Bej Kerman]

4 minutes ago, dansiegel30 said:

another reason why the extended nozzle engines aren't supposed to be landing engines

Engines aren't categorized by "meant for landing". They're categorized by thrust and how they perform in vacuum vs atmosphere. There ARE obvious types of landing gear though, and none of them have the aerodynamic profile you want for reusable boosters. The Wallaby is massive and its shell has an angular profile. Meant for vacuum use for ships that would overstress smaller gear. The next smaller gears from the Wallaby are also meant for vacuum use judging from the lack of aerodynamic shell or profile, and realistically probably would crumple under a Falcon 9 sized booster. So the problem isn't people not being creative. It's a gap in the parts list that needs filling out.

Since we got grid fins I'm confident the gap here'll be filled by something in due course.