RollKage

[zitronen]

Guys, the mod still works fine for 0.21. I am still waiting on electronicfox to make a proper model for the hoverwheel. Meanwhile if you want to test out, get the file here: https://sites.google.com/site/zitronfiles/RKHoverWheel.zip

Remember it's very experimental with place holder model, does not come with any warranties.

[Lucchese]

Hi guys, I may have somewhat of a stupid question but I'm new to modding and I'm currently building a air defense buggy with the Kerchelin Extreme wheels.

Because it's a bit heavy I would like to know if there is a way I could stiffen up the suspension on these wheels?

[Greys]

Currently KSP stores the attributes defining a wheel's suspension and stuff like that is stored exclusively in the .mu file, and KSP has put forth no means to alter these values from the cfg file.

so at the moment you kinda just can't mess with wheels unless you have the assets that went into the .mu

[Lucchese]

Too bad.

Oh well, thats what i get for making a 11t buggy

Here are some screenshots:

I also made 3 other version, one 3x3 and tried cambering the wheels with both the 2x2 and 3x3 models.

It helps with body height but not with stability, in order to keep the 3x3 version from doing wheelies I had to increase the weight to 15.33t.

[Greys]

Try disabling the motor on the middle wheels, and it'll probably help to disable steering on them too (for 3x3)

[zitronen]

Currently KSP stores the attributes defining a wheel's suspension and stuff like that is stored exclusively in the .mu file, and KSP has put forth no means to alter these values from the cfg file.

so at the moment you kinda just can't mess with wheels unless you have the assets that went into the .mu

It is possible to do with plugins though...

[Lucchese]

Please zitronen, please enlighten me

[Tiron]

I've been playing with this pack, and I love the suspension on the wheels...but why do they have so little grip? It can barely climb any kind of slope because the wheels slip. I can turn in place with my reaction wheels with the brakes on. Every design I've made with the rollkage wheels has been prone to fishtailing, frequently uncorrectably (steering in either direction does nothing and it continues to fishtail, until you basically come to a stop.) and I just now got this shot of it sliding down a hill with the brakes on:

If they had just a bit better grip, or something like multiwheels does where they only start to skid when the force gets high enough, they'd be all but perfect.

The fact they don't send my rovers tumbling out of control and then end up snapped off is a big, big plus though.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Tiron

[megatarre]

This is neat will it work with current game version>?

[taniwha]

Yes, they work just fine in 0.21.

[angusmcbeth]

This pack has been neglected a while, but it should work just fine. Any problems let me know and I'll have a look.

I don't do wheels though....Zitronens the man for the wheels.

[Kenobi McCormick]

I've been playing with this pack, and I love the suspension on the wheels...but why do they have so little grip? It can barely climb any kind of slope because the wheels slip. I can turn in place with my reaction wheels with the brakes on. Every design I've made with the rollkage wheels has been prone to fishtailing, frequently uncorrectably (steering in either direction does nothing and it continues to fishtail, until you basically come to a stop.) and I just now got this shot of it sliding down a hill with the brakes on:

If they had just a bit better grip, or something like multiwheels does where they only start to skid when the force gets high enough, they'd be all but perfect.

The fact they don't send my rovers tumbling out of control and then end up snapped off is a big, big plus though.

Yeah that's what they're built to do. They're designed so that you can slide around, a side effect of KSP's wheel model is that allowing you to drift around the space center also means you can't really sit still/climb steep hills.

Some rocket boosters solve the climbing issue nicely, and some landing legs will help greatly with parking. That's what I usually do.

[Tiron]

Yeah that's what they're built to do. They're designed so that you can slide around, a side effect of KSP's wheel model is that allowing you to drift around the space center also means you can't really sit still/climb steep hills.

Some rocket boosters solve the climbing issue nicely, and some landing legs will help greatly with parking. That's what I usually do.

Well I'm trying to limit damageability and weight, and make it look halfway decentish, in roughly that order. Rockets and landing legs don't work very well for any of those. Sliding and fishtailing ARE realistic at speed/with enough power, but only after a certain point. That's the bit I mentioned with multiwheels: TT did something through his plugin that not only has the wheels powered by separate engines (Liquidfuel/Intakeair, Monopropellant, or Electric), with the power and speed scaling according to how many/what size you added, he got them to have a more realistic grip model that only slides if the lateral force gets too high (and makes smoke when it happens, too.)

Unfortunately he's got the same suspension bug that the stock wheels have which is constantly sending my rovers out of control. The rollkage wheels are literally the ONLY wheels I've seen that have a suspension that actually works mostly properly (The bug is still there, but they've mitigated it somehow to such an extent that it almost never actually causes a problem.)

What I'd really like is a combination of the multiwheels grip characteristics (and maybe the engine use) with the rollkage suspension, but there isn't a mod that offers that. Or anywhere close to it.

The rollkage wheels are the closest to useable I've seen yet, though.

And there's presently no way to edit the grip on wheels, either, so I can't really do anything on my end. Thus the post.

[Kenobi McCormick]

Well I'm trying to limit damageability and weight, and make it look halfway decentish, in roughly that order. Rockets and landing legs don't work very well for any of those. Sliding and fishtailing ARE realistic at speed/with enough power, but only after a certain point. That's the bit I mentioned with multiwheels: TT did something through his plugin that not only has the wheels powered by separate engines (Liquidfuel/Intakeair, Monopropellant, or Electric), with the power and speed scaling according to how many/what size you added, he got them to have a more realistic grip model that only slides if the lateral force gets too high (and makes smoke when it happens, too.)

Unfortunately he's got the same suspension bug that the stock wheels have which is constantly sending my rovers out of control. The rollkage wheels are literally the ONLY wheels I've seen that have a suspension that actually works mostly properly (The bug is still there, but they've mitigated it somehow to such an extent that it almost never actually causes a problem.)

What I'd really like is a combination of the multiwheels grip characteristics (and maybe the engine use) with the rollkage suspension, but there isn't a mod that offers that. Or anywhere close to it.

The rollkage wheels are the closest to useable I've seen yet, though.

And there's presently no way to edit the grip on wheels, either, so I can't really do anything on my end. Thus the post.

And thus lies the inherent issue with KSP's wheel model. I want a proper traction model too, but until the devs figure out a better way to model wheels this will be the tradeoff we have to deal with.

I suppose a workaround would be a CFG setting for forward grip and lateral grip, but that requires dev intervention as right now the traction settings are stored in the model itself.

[Tiron]

And thus lies the inherent issue with KSP's wheel model. I want a proper traction model too, but until the devs figure out a better way to model wheels this will be the tradeoff we have to deal with.

I suppose a workaround would be a CFG setting for forward grip and lateral grip, but that requires dev intervention as right now the traction settings are stored in the model itself.

I've mentioned TWICE now that Multiwheels have a much better traction model than the stock game already. As such it's apparently possible to do via plugins. I've actually debated trying to modify the rollkage wheels to work with the multiwheels system, in hopes of getting the benefits of both, but I have some lingering doubts as to if I could pull it off and if it would actually help. I have no idea what a lot of multiwheels' extra stats do.

[zitronen]

Which suspension bug are you talking about? These wheels are the same as stock, just with more realistic parameters. The Unity default wheel model is pretty simplistic. With a plugin like the mutiwheel they can create stability by changing grip depending on speed, or add forces to make things stable. I feel that's a bit fake.

If you are on the Mun or something, remember you only have 1/6 the traction, so it's not surprising at all that you can turn your rover with torque.

I can look into making a plugin to let you tweak the suspension parameters, but I'm not really sure if it's worth the effort. If you just want more grip, I can make a set for you with more grip, that's easy enough.

[Neutrinovore]

I find that the RollKage wheels are the only ones that work on my rover designs, mainly because with every other wheel I've tried, be it stock or Wayland or TT Multiwheels (when I can even get those to work AT ALL), they have TOO MUCH grip, and no matter how low I get my center of mass, the rover will flip if I turn too sharply at high speed (on Kerbin), or will endo and then flip when I hit the brakes, or will wheelie and then flip when I accelerate, or will either get damaged or flat-out break off when driving off of the freakin' RUNWAY at 10 m/s! The RollKage wheels don't do any of those things, and they'll do 40 m/s on level ground on Kerbin. I'd prefer 50 m/s myself, but that's just me.

Anyway, yes, I think that they could stand to have slightly more traction, but not so much more that it compromises their current forgiveness of sharp maneuvers. And DEFINITELY not if it causes any of the negative behavior listed above.

I would also like to see more sizes and wheel styles, though, I don't know if you're working on anything like that. And the hover 'wheels' were pretty cool, but I don't really want to use rockets or jets or RCS to accelerate/brake/steer, so ultimately I found them kind of useless. If you could have them work like real wheels, i.e. accelerate, brake and steer normally, but still look and function like hoverpads with the variable height above ground, that would be totally cool. Just sayin', and I don't even know if that's possible.

Here's what I envision: First, they'd look and sound like 'Matrix' hoverpads. One could set the height above ground to anywhere between .1 meter to, say, 5 meters. Maybe more, as much as 10 m, perhaps? Anyway, the higher you are above the ground, the more cushion or damping the 'suspension' provides, so you could be cranking along at maybe 100 m/s, and even over fairly rough terrain you'd have a nice smooth ride. But if you tried that at 1 m height, it'd be just like regular wheels, you'd be bouncing and jarring all over the place, and probably wreck. Anyway, you get the idea, I hope.

Again, I don't know if any of this is even possible, I'm just wishing out loud, as it were.

Back to topic, I think the wheels are pretty good the way they are, but agree that they could perhaps use a skoshie bit more traction.

Neutrinovore out.

[Wrench Head]

Nice parts!!!! I love to bogg!

[Tiron]

Which suspension bug are you talking about? These wheels are the same as stock, just with more realistic parameters. The Unity default wheel model is pretty simplistic. With a plugin like the mutiwheel they can create stability by changing grip depending on speed, or add forces to make things stable. I feel that's a bit fake.

If you are on the Mun or something, remember you only have 1/6 the traction, so it's not surprising at all that you can turn your rover with torque.

I can look into making a plugin to let you tweak the suspension parameters, but I'm not really sure if it's worth the effort. If you just want more grip, I can make a set for you with more grip, that's easy enough.

Haven't gotten it to the Mun yet, because my attempts to build a transport for my rover design have been stymied thus far. In fact, I've never had any non-downloaded Rover on any body but Kerbin, out of sheer frustration with the suspension bug.

The bug is as follows: Certain terrain segments apparently aren't read correctly by the Unity wheel system. Specifically, they get read as being slightly lower or slightly higher than they actually are. This causes the suspension on the wheels to either slowly compress or slowly extend as you drive across the segment. Speed doesn't matter. It DOES stop and reset to neutral if you stop moving entirely, but ANY movement, no matter how slow, triggers the bug.

It'd be an entirely visual problem if not for one thing: If, on one of the segments that causes the suspension to extend, it actually reaches full extension... it doesn't stop there. It continues to pull upward on the rover even with the suspension at the stops, in essence trying to pull it off the ground. It obviously can't completely do so, but it does PARTIALLY do so. This results in traction and steering authority going very nearly to zero, as well as inducing extreme lateral instability. Some people call it 'wobbly wheels'. The problem isn't the wheels, it's the suspension basically pulling the rover almost out of contact with the ground. It's caused nearly every single rover accident of significance I've had since I started trying to use built rovers instead of downloaded ones when the command seats got added in 0.20.

The Rollkage wheels are for whatever reason resistant to it. The suspension still drifts towards the stops, but it does so quite slowly, and I've yet to see it actually hit the stops in either direction while doing so. The only time I've had the suspension-induced instability occur with Rollkage wheels was when I'd just gone over the crest of a hill and was going down the slope on the other side. Even then, it's rare.

This bug is one of the major reasons for some of the weirder things people do to try to keep their rovers stable. Rockets pushing the rover onto the ground. Driving around in docking mode with the SAS. It's also pushed rover designs towards greater stability than is strictly necessary, because the lateral instability has a tendency to flip rovers if they're even remotely prone to it (which makes it massively worse on sloped terrain.)

As it stands, with Rollkage wheels I was (barely) able to drive my rover design clear up to the top of the one of the tallest peaks in the range west of KSC without having a single suspension-induced crash. That's never happened with any other set of wheels I've ever tried.

Just a tad bit more grip (not too much, we don't need another TR-2L, where the grip causes as many problems as it solves, and most of them are worse than the ones it solves), and they'll be, by FAR the best wheels made for the game. Heck, in a lot of ways, they already are. But it'd be all but indisputable then.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Tiron

[zitronen]

It's easy to add more grip, but how much more? 20% more? 10% more? Let me know which wheel you are using to test, I will make a new version with more grip.

[Neutrinovore]

I know Tiron started this line of inquiry, but I'd like to add my 2 cents' worth. For myself, I would say that adding 20% more grip should be perfectly fine. I don't know that I'd want to go much more than that. Tiron may have a different view, however, so I'll defer to his preference.

[Tiron]

It's easy to add more grip, but how much more? 20% more? 10% more? Let me know which wheel you are using to test, I will make a new version with more grip.

I know Tiron started this line of inquiry, but I'd like to add my 2 cents' worth. For myself, I would say that adding 20% more grip should be perfectly fine. I don't know that I'd want to go much more than that. Tiron may have a different view, however, so I'll defer to his preference.

The Kerchlin Extremes, my rovers tend to be right around 2 tons (this version is just a tad bit less) and the wider wheelbase on the extremes versus the sports helps a bit.

As for how much...I don't really know. I'd have to agree that 20% would be the ABSOLUTE maximum. I don't mind it slipping SOME, I mostly just want the hillclimbing ability a tad bit better. I'd say go conversativish and try 10%?

Thanks for even bothering though. Not having an acceptable Rover Wheel has stopped most of my KSP gameplay since 0.20 came out. :|

Edit: Unless you'd prefer to just go for it with a 20% increase. I'd be inclined to do 10%, try it, and if it's not enough bump it to 20%, but since I'm not the one editing it I can't hardly ask you to do that now can I, since you're already doing me a huge favor just to do it at all? 20% would probably be fine too, if you'd rather just do it once for sure and be done.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Tiron

[zitronen]

OK here's +20% grip. I have also increased the sliding friction so rovers should be more controllable in a slide.

Of course with more grip it is easier to flip your rover, especially at high speeds with high centre of mass.

https://sites.google.com/site/zitronfiles/Extreme120.zip

Just replace the original model file.

Also I think I know what you mean by the suspension bug. I think it's just a graphical problem, probably caused by something like how the wheelcollider checks the terrain collision mesh, I donno. But the instability of stock wheels are definitely caused by ridiculous parameters for friction, spring and damper, which can be orders of magnitudes off from what should behave realistically. It's a unity physx problem. The parameters are not explained correctly and don't do what they should.

[Tiron]

Also I think I know what you mean by the suspension bug. I think it's just a graphical problem, probably caused by something like how the wheelcollider checks the terrain collision mesh, I donno. But the instability of stock wheels are definitely caused by ridiculous parameters for friction, spring and damper, which can be orders of magnitudes off from what should behave realistically. It's a unity physx problem. The parameters are not explained correctly and don't do what they should.

It's not ENTIRELY graphical, because when it goes upwards it kills the traction too(But only after it hits the stops, like it's still pulling upwards). Seems like the suspension actually exerts force on the rover, pulling it upwards and ruining your ground contact. Multiwheels do it too.

In theory if that's the case the version that compresses the suspension should be pushing you down into the ground when it happens. Which should increase your traction, if it was realistic. I haven't noticed any particular effect from it.

Edit:

OK here's +20% grip. I have also increased the sliding friction so rovers should be more controllable in a slide.

Of course with more grip it is easier to flip your rover, especially at high speeds with high centre of mass.

Didn't want to reply to this till I tried it. It's quite good. Just going around the space center for now, they still slide all over the place, but it's much more controlled. Instead of just spinning out or whatever, it's more like a drift. Can't wait to see what it can do up a hill when I get it into the mountains in a bit.

Edit2:

Some other side effects: They're faster and accelerate harder, topping out around 39 m/s on the runway. They also lose most of their turning ability above 18 m/s or so. Granted the steering and torque curves are both adjustable via .cfg, so I may play around with those.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Tiron

[Kenobi McCormick]

They also lose most of their turning ability above 18 m/s or so. Granted the steering and torque curves are both adjustable via .cfg, so I may play around with those.

Yeah that's a good idea. The current settings are a bit overly aggressive with damping steering input, and just in general steering lock. Here's the steering curve I use:

    steeringCurve
     {
        key = 0 35
     key = 15 25
     key = 30 25
         key = 55 25

     }

Keep in mind I also drive with a 360 pad, so I can command as much or as little steering as I wish, but using that section I have enough control to throw my rovers into an on-command powerslide pretty much at any speed they're controllable at.