Rover wheels are broken

[allanp11]

There is an old topic on this but it advised me to start a new thread so here it is. The rover wheels are not good at all. They just don't feel well suited/balanced to the game.

The main issue for me is they lack torque. I don't need or expect them to go 45m/s in every scenario (which would be 100mph!), only on perfectly flat ground might they eventually reach 30ish m/s, but I do really think they should be able to move a heavy load faster than a Kerbal can sprint (lets say 3m/s) up a very steep slope, such that a very heavy rover might tip over backwards from the torque of the wheels if the slope gets too steep.

Yes, I know that might not be realistic but this is meant to be a fun game is it not? I had a roughly 20 ton rover/lander on 4 ruggedized wheels and when I landed at Eeloo they did basically nothing, the craft just rolled down into the center of the very shallow valley I landed in.  From the very rugged look of them, I would have expected them to move heavy loads, not very fast put with a bunch of power. As it is, they acted like roller skate wheels, completely unpowered. I get that with low gravity there would be less traction while the vehicle has the same inertia, but still I think the wheels need to be buffed to make them less frustrating, more fun and way more usable in more situations, maybe at the expense of some realism, but even then they seem to be broken far beyond what would be realistic. They just aren't suited to the hilly terrain found in the game. They work okay on the runway though.

I don't know why they would be geared to go so fast when they can't move much of anything. They need to be buffed with more power and grip, but maybe there should also be a slider which allows the player to adjust the gear ratio from a crazy fast 50m/s but low torque to 3m/s but with massive torque. I think that would be a great improvement that allows for the fact that the player can build such a wide variety of things that the rover wheels need such a wide variety of performance characteristics to suit.

The brakes are also broken. They did nothing on Eeloo, until I did eventually stop they was able to stop me rolling as long as I kept my finger on the B key. Testing them beforehand on kerbin was totally different. After a short pause after pressing the B key they stopped the rover so hard that it flipped the 20 ton roving lander thing end over end! Turning the brake force down from 100% to 98% made them not seem to work at all.

[Urus28]

I think you are referring to RoveMax TR4 wheels, I've tested them, and I agree with you these wheels lack torque and the break is not working well. For Kerbin and Eve I can't use them.

I tested them with some success and Duna and other low gravity bodies with a 6 wheels 12 tons rover, but I tweaked a lot the wheels settings.

I've not tested them on Eeloo, so perhaps there are other problems with this particular body.

In general, I'm not happy on how wheels work and I don't expect this to change in a near future since the dev are focusing on bringing new functionality to the game.

[allanp11]

Thank you for the reply. I am talking about the TR-2L ruggedized vehicular wheels. I couldn't find a TR4, is there another wheel I don't know about?

The TR-2L wheels really are useless at the moment for moving around anything other than a tiny rover. I really hope they get this sorted for the colony's update. We will surely want to move around some heavy things on the surface, and most of the terrain you find is not flat. I don't want to dock my parts together at 58m/s (the top speed of a TR-2L, which is 130mph!), but I want to move heavy things over hills and valleys at say 5...ish m/s. But also having the ability to move small rovers at a good speed is also fun, so being able to change a gear ratio setting like you can change some other settings would be very helpful. They also should just be more powerful to begin with. Maybe have another new setting which sets their power level. You can set it much higher but at the cost of increased electricity consumption.

There are workarounds, like using rockets pointing side ways, but that is very imprecise and waste of extra weight and fuel when you should be able to just use the wheels. Or maybe trying those really massive XL3 wheels which I have yet to unlock, but those really are huge and hard to incorporate. The RoveMax TR4 wheels are already pretty big, they are bigger than a Kerbal. 4 of those bad boys should move more than 20 tons slowly up the side of a hill no problem!

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Rover

 

[Urus28]

I used the TR-2L for a 4.3t rover on Mun without any problem and tested it on Kerbin without problems. But I had 6 wheels.

For 20t you need a lot of wheels or the XL3, and well, these wheels have a lot of problems at present time... I just can't use them as I did in KSP 1.

I like your idea for a kind of gearbox, but I don't expect to see such kind of thing in the game or perhaps with a mod.

Edit :

I made some test with the TR-2L with a 4 wheels 20t rover on Mun I had no real problem to make it work, my top speed was 8.5m/s on rather flat terrain. I suggest you check the friction setting of your wheels and the traction control level also. I did not make the test on Eeloo because I plan a mission to it this week so I want to keep the surprise =)

 

Edited March 24 by Urus28

[allanp11]

25 minutes ago, Urus28 said:

I used the TR-2L for a 4.3t rover on Mun without any problem and tested it on Kerbin without problems. But I had 6 wheels.

For 20t you need a lot of wheels or the XL3, and well, these wheels have a lot of problems at present time... I just can't use them as I did in KSP 1.

I like your idea for a kind of gearbox, but I don't expect to see such kind of thing in the game or perhaps with a mod.

 

These wheels, if they were real wheels, would already have a single speed gearbox to convert the many 1000s of RPMs from the electric motor to the 10s or 100s of RPMs of the wheel, likely a planetary gear reduction inside the hub as with a lot of heavy machinery. The gear ratio slider would allow the player to select different ratios, from fast and weak (like now) to slow and powerful. I wouldn't expect the ratio to change automatically as it reaches an incline or anything, like the multispeed gearboxes you find in a car. But if you want you can leave it on a low reduction ratio as it is now, then if you find you get to your destination and it's not enough torque, you can change it to a higher reduction ratio. If this is seen as being OP, then maybe you can easily select the ratio in the VAB but is only changeable after that via a kerbal on EVA, and they must use up a repair kit or something.