Another MechJeb Tutorial! Keep your Rover upright automatically

[HoY]

Okay, time for another tutorial finally.

I took a vacation, got engaged, and generally haven't had time to really work on another tutorial.

I still play the game for more hours a day than is healthy and still have a lot to share, but its taken me a while to decide on what I wanted to share next.

This tip will save you many many quickloads during your wheeled (or tracked) adventures on any planetary body!

Requirements:

-MechJeb 2.0 (works with the old one too, but upgrade!!)

-A probe or docking port on your rover that will be facing UP towards the sky while your wheels are on the ground

-RotPower. This doesn't mean SAS, it means command pod torque or probe core torque. The bigger the rover the more torque you may need. (Especially on higher gravity bodies like Kerbin)

Here's the actual tutorial part:

Right click on your probe or docking port that's facing the sky.

Click "Control from here"

The NavBall should now be completely blue, pointed at the sky.

Open S.A.S.S and click on Advanced

Now there are 4 arrows on the bottom of the SASS window, click the Right arrow beside "Internal" once

It should now read "Orbit"

Now click the Lower Arrow that points right (2) times until it reads "UP" (it could be 1 or 3 times not 2 I will correct it when I double check)

Lastly click Exocute.

This will attempt to keep your rover in this orientation All The Time. Even when your dune hopping or even climbing a hill.

Even jumping off a cliff into a deep valley on the Mun, your rover won't tumble... So long as its built sturdily enough to survive the landing...

I'll be doing a video tutorial of this tomorrow I think, tonight I'm making a Kethane scanning rig that will do all 5 Joolian moons in one launch

Edited July 18, 2013 by HoY

[DerekL1963]

I'll be doing a video tutorial of this tomorrow I think, tonight I'm making a Kethane scanning rig that will do all 5 Joolian moons in one launch

I should make a dropbox account and send you mine.... six nuclear propelled ISAMapsat/Kethane probes on decouplers around a larger fuel tank.

[HoY]

I dont need it for me, I'm making it to publish on the Kethane thread. I actually enjoy doing 5 launches 20 mins apart then sending 5 seprate flights and catching them all at Jool one after the other. I enjoy the challenge. Did it yesterday and I am getting quite good at BARE minimum burns from extremely far out to adjust my intercepts to be exactly the right inclination and altitude.

Anyway, I have it mostly done now, just need to strut it a little more and do another test launch.

it can still be slimmed down. the 6000 dV on the interplanetary stage is a bit much.

[DerekL1963]

I'll grab a pic of mine just for fun later... But I do have a question on your tutorial, can you still use the navball as a compass for surface navigation? (I.E. will MechJeb's rover nav still steer the rover in the correct direction?)

[HoY]

It should as long as the probe core was installed in the proper orientation on the rover. So "down" would be forward on the NavBall. It could work if it was installed the other way but I'm not sure I don't use the rover auto pilot.

The problem with trying to use this technique while controlling from a forward facing rover seat is that currently MechJeb doesn't have the option to keep oriented in the "Forward" direction at the same time as holding its "Roll" at zero. So yes it can keep you pointed forward, ie; the horizon, but if your rover rolls a little left or right it will keep that new roll value as if you intended to do it.

About the satellite rig, I think it's still more than twice the size it needs to be. Got it all strutted properly this morning and all in it was 180 parts and 460ish tonnes. I can probably cut that down to about 70% sticking with conventional rockets and no jet engines. The design is purpose built to capture directly at Laythe instead of Jool, and then send the 4 outer probes to the remaining moons from an elliptical Laythe orbit before the inclination and circularization. Did a test of the fl-t400 sized probes which has 3300m/s of dV, it had enough fuel to easily get to all the other moons from a 150km circular Laythe orbit. The half sized ones have 2300 each but I may dump those for 4x fl-t400's due to non optimal inclination changes some people may want to do. The t200 on the nose will left as is and used for Laythe since its already there, and the nuclear stage will have enough fuel left to put it in the proper orbit and inclination before it splashes down.

[Benie]

This seems cool. What about for Speed Rovers that can go over 50m/s? Would Smart A.S.S work for them?

Thing is, this rover uses a Command Pod, not a Probe. But it can handle most hills fine without flipping. I use a Micro-ASAS from KSPX to keep the rover heading in one direction.

Also, MechJeb what I've seen for me, when it comes to speed control, doesn't see the aerospike rocket in the back giving it all of that boost.

Edited July 18, 2013 by Benie

[HoY]

Speed doesn't matter, you've got the torque it should use it just the same. The difference between using mechjeb for this and using ASAS is that you can still steer your rover with MJ in charge. I think with .21 this may actually be obsolete but who knows.

What command pod are you using? When you use it for controling what is the navball pointed at? The only reason I say probe core is to ensure you have some torque on rovers that use EVA seats instead of capsules. Adding a probe core oriented in the proper direction on a rover large enough to have an actual capsule on it won't effect it's performance one bit. Alternatively use a docking port pointed up to use this method.

[Benie]

I'm using the Mk-1 Cockpit, made for Spaceplanes, but it has that really cool IVA, so I used it for my rover.

[HoY]

Ok so it points at the horizon on the navball when controlling from it. You'll need a docking port or probe core facing up to use this in that case

[DerekL1963]

It should as long as the probe core was installed in the proper orientation on the rover. So "down" would be forward on the NavBall. It could work if it was installed the other way but I'm not sure I don't use the rover auto pilot.

It would be worth testing, just for completeness sake. You're probably going to be asked when you release it, so letting people know up front how it interacts with the rover autopilot might be a good thing.

Mine clocks in at 900 tons and 553 parts including an uprated version of one of Temstar's Nova boosters. It's designed to enter Joolian orbit just outside of Tylo and dispatch it's probes from there. There's no propulsion on the central core, that's just a fuel tank. All propulsion come from the probe's engines. You end up with a spare probe, I use it to grab the Jool impactor badge. (There isn't one on my ribbon bar because it hasn't got there yet in my main save file, only in my separate "test & simulation" file.) Note that it was designed before I knew about speed scanning.

Edited July 19, 2013 by DerekL1963

[HoY]

I rebuilt it nearly from scratch again last night and its much much lighter with more dV and fewer parts. Extremely user and CPU friendly now

And yes, at some point ill double check with the rover autopilot but I've purposely been steering away from using it due to the pending update for it that will allow you to drive to different waypoints towards an end target.