Mun rover tips

[Cordeos]

I'm having trouble with my Mun rovers, they keep flipping over and are in general being a pain to control and keep in one piece. This is my current design, pretty basic, four generators, two batteries, six wheels.

Any tips would be much appreciated.

[stupid_chris]

Well you might've want to put your RTGs on the side to lower your CoM, but that's too late. Well you can always lock the steering on the four rear wheels. Trust me it helps a lot. And how exactly does it flip? On the side? Front/rear? Disabling some of the wheel's motors depending on how it flips over could help. Else all I can tell you is to be careful

[Cordeos]

Mostly tipping forward, it took me a while to get the handling down and it does flip side to side. The most recent issue was when it started moving too quickly, flipped forward and exploded.

[stupid_chris]

Well what you can do is turn off motors as I said. you must have a rather high CoM for your rover and it tends to flip if you accelerate too fast. So maybe turn off the steering on all wheels but the front ones and turn off the motors on the front ones. Then just break by pressing backwards and you should see some major improvement

[Cordeos]

Your tips were quite helpful, I've been able to keep it under control better if I stay below 7 m/s. I would still love tips on better rover design. Lower center of mass seems a good target, but some kind of anti-roll or self correction feature would be great.

[capi3101]

Low center of mass is key, of course. As far as a self-correction feature goes, my rover design incorporates a toroidal fuel tank slung onto the underside and a pair of 24-77s sticking out the front and facing up. When my rovers flip (provided they survive, of course), I light up these rockets and give it the rover a little bit of a kick. It's usually enough to tip it back over, though it's easy to overdo it.

Might also think about adding a roll-cage for the RTGs and your probe core; that'll reduce the chance of them blowing up.

One other thing you should do is drive around using the docking controls (i.e. translational controls), not the staging controls (rotational). On low-gravity worlds like Minmus, you'll have to do this just so you don't flip your design from your probe core's torque thrust.

[Robbii6]

If you click the docking button situated in the bottom left it is much better