Suggestions on rolling my rover?

[troyn123]

Hey folks! I've been tooling around on Duna with my latest rover design. I tried to make sure it had as low a center of gravity as I could without problems bottoming out. When I drive, I try to keep the speed down... But it still tends to lose control and flip when hitting even the smallest bumps. Sometimes it's recoverable with the RCS I attached specifically for that reason, but sometimes even the smallest bump while inverted and it blows up in fairly spectacular fashion! Any suggestions on design changes? I've got a decent 2-rover delivery rocket, provided the updated design is similar in mass. Here's a picture, .craft file available on request:

Edited July 2, 2013 by troyn123
Answered.

[NoMrBond]

It looks pretty wide and low already?

Do you drive in docking mode or have you shifted your rover driving keys off the normal keys to remove the torque which the probe core applies?

[Tex_NL]

A rover like that should be stable enough to drive a reasonable high speed even in low gravity as long as you take a few things into account:

Make sure you set 'control from here' to your command seat. (Your probe core is at 90 degrees to driving direction. When controlling from here it will mess up your controls.)

Either remap your control keys from WASD to something like IJKL or switch to docking mode to control the rover without control-node torque.

Toggle precision control with [CAPS LOCK] (Pitch,roll, yaw markers blue instead of orange.) and lock steering on the rear wheels making your rover respond less instantly to control input.

[troyn123]

I'm thinking it might have been the control module torque, as I didn't change any keys, and I was just driving in normal staging mode with WASD. Thank's folks, I'll give that a try!

For laughs, my other idea was to just stick an ion engine on top, to fake some extra mass while it's pushing down! :-D

[Motokid600]

I haven't remapped nor do I drive in docking mode and I've yet to have any problems. So.. what am I missing? Granted I run asas on all my rovers, but even with it off I have no problems

O and fyi id say u have too many lights. Just one of those round lights are far too bright ( they need to be fixed ) 6 of them will be glare city.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Motokid600

[MBobrik]

I would also replace all the RCS stuff with one SAS. far more efficient at keeping the rover straight than anything else.

[troyn123]

O and fyi id say u have too many lights.

Done partially just for symmetrical looks, and partly hoping the light rendering improves in the engine down the road. But yes, definitely...

I would also replace all the RCS stuff with one SAS. far more efficient at keeping the rover straight than anything else.

I'll give the SAS a try, doesn't currently have any. The RCS was originally added so the rover could be flipped back right side up if it didn't explode when it inevitably rolled over. :-) If the SAS works, I'll ditch that stuff.

[Vanamonde]

The shape looks pretty good. How fast were you going when you rolled?

[troyn123]

The shape looks pretty good. How fast were you going when you rolled?

Last roll-over was probably around 8 m/s. Faster than I can run, but not terribly fast. It seems to not really have any suspension give. First tiny bump and it would chatter around, and if it got partly sideways at all, boom, flip. First roll-over was at almost 25 m/s, that one was definitely understandable. ;-)