disable braking on the rover wheels

[goldenpeach]

The tittle say it all!

This suggestion suggest that we should be able to toggle braking(wich mean:decide wheter or not a wheel will break when we press "B") with the rover wheels.

Why?

If you made a rover,you should have noticed that you can tip over when you break,this is because the front wheel apply break at the same time the rear wheel do.

If we were able to toggle the brake,we could disable the brake of the front wheel,wich mean:no more tip over(at least,tips over caused by braking).

[Supernovy]

You can already do this by removing the "Brake" action for the wheels from the "Brake" action group during construction.

[boomerdog2000]

Or you could just tap the brakes as well. Instead of just turning them on and leaving them. Cycle them on and off. Like anti-lock brakes.

[LeadMagnet]

or...as I have seen in dozens of other posts.....remove the front wheels from the brake action group.

[Dunbaratu]

or...as I have seen in dozens of other posts.....remove the front wheels from the brake action group.

So which side of the symetrical rover is the "front"? And when you do want to use all four brakes later on, for example when parking, how do you do that? While the suggestion to remove wheels from the brake action group has been made before it's an inadequate solution to the problem because it's decided up front during vessel creation and from then on is permanently stuck that way. Other things that are in the action group setups are also changeable on the fly from the rightclick menus on parts so why not this too?

Of course, if the oft-made suggestion to make action groups editable after liftoff is ever implemented in the future, then my complaint would become moot and then controlling this by editing the brake action group would be adequate on its own.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Anything can tip over if you try to break(sic) it hard enough.

Yeah, editable action groups would seem to be the way to go, although I mostly prefer to have extra braking power to having not enough braking power to tip over. It's a question of control.

I think that adding the action to the rover wheels themselves will be superfluous. There are already quite a few buttons in their context menu, and when action groups can be edited - and it's a question of when and not "if", since there's already a plugin that does it - controlling the brakes from there would be best.

Alternatively, just add your non-parking brakes to a different action group.

[LeadMagnet]

Anything can tip over if you try to break(sic) it hard enough. *snip*

Yup, something you learn very early on while riding motorcycles!

So which side of the symetrical rover is the "front"?

The side that has the sticker "My other rover is a Ferrari", is the back. The side that crosses the "finish line" first, is the front. Relax dude, partially disabling the action group is usually required for extremely top heavy designs in lower gravity. I believe they call this "a design flaw".

My Mun rover turns into an Olympic gymnast on Minmus. It is a flawed design for Minmus deployment, but works great disabling the action group for the "globally symmetric" front wheels.

M2CW

[Van Disaster]

Of course, if the oft-made suggestion to make action groups editable after liftoff is ever implemented in the future, then my complaint would become moot and then controlling this by editing the brake action group would be adequate on its own.

There's a rather old plugin called "Actions on the fly" which still works happily in 0.21; I don't however know if you can edit the default AGs with it and not in a position to check right now.

[Dunbaratu]

Yup, something you learn very early on while riding motorcycles!

The side that has the sticker "My other rover is a Ferrari", is the back. The side that crosses the "finish line" first, is the front. Relax dude, partially disabling the action group is usually required for extremely top heavy designs in lower gravity. I believe they call this "a design flaw".

You completely misunderstood what I was saying. The point is that which wheels to disable is a decision that varies during flight, but the action group solution doesn't allow you to vary it during flight. You can't decide to switch which end is the front after launch (well you can, but then you've got brakes only on the front because you can't change which wheels have braking power after the launch, which is the point.) This is a thing it would be useful to be able to change during flight. Most everything else that's done with action groups can also be accessed during flight with the rightclick on parts. The point of action groups is to provide a hotkey to do several of the things on the rightclick menus in groups all at once, but this one is missing from the wheel rightclick menu so action groups end up being the ONLY way and that seems like an exception that doesn't need to be there.

[Dunbaratu]

Anything can tip over if you try to break(sic) it hard enough.

Yeah, editable action groups would seem to be the way to go, although I mostly prefer to have extra braking power to having not enough braking power to tip over. It's a question of control.

I think you misunderstand why using only the rear wheels for braking makes flipping over less likely. You seem to be thinking it's just because it has half the braking power. That's not why. It's not about how MUCH braking power, but about WHERE the braking power is being applied to the vehicle. When your rear brakes are dragging and decelerating the vehicle, the rotation fulcrum is on the back wheels, which rotates the front end down (good). But when the front wheels are doing it, then the fulcrum of rotation is on the front wheels, rotating the back end up (thus causing flipping).

[Van Disaster]

And having checked it, AG on the fly *does* let you edit default groups.

Note: take the brakes off *before* you remove them from the group!

Edited September 6, 2013 by Van Disaster

[Sean Mirrsen]

I think you misunderstand why using only the rear wheels for braking makes flipping over less likely. You seem to be thinking it's just because it has half the braking power. That's not why. It's not about how MUCH braking power, but about WHERE the braking power is being applied to the vehicle. When your rear brakes are dragging and decelerating the vehicle, the rotation fulcrum is on the back wheels, which rotates the front end down (good). But when the front wheels are doing it, then the fulcrum of rotation is on the front wheels, rotating the back end up (thus causing flipping).

I am well aware of what causes flipping, but I did mean that not having front brakes means significantly less braking power - less than half, even, for precisely the reason you described. As the vehicle stops it shifts more of its weight to the front suspension, unloading the rear - and if the only brakes are in the rear, you end up with significantly less braking power than you'd otherwise have.

As far as braking is concerned, using front brakes is preferable. It lets you stop faster, as long as you don't overdo it and flip.

[Dunbaratu]

I am well aware of what causes flipping, but I did mean that not having front brakes means significantly less braking power - less than half, even, for precisely the reason you described. As the vehicle stops it shifts more of its weight to the front suspension, unloading the rear - and if the only brakes are in the rear, you end up with significantly less braking power than you'd otherwise have.

As far as braking is concerned, using front brakes is preferable. It lets you stop faster, as long as you don't overdo it and flip.

Given that keyboards aren't equipped with analog sensors to detect how hard you press a key, this isn't really workable unless you're doing it with a game controller of some sort. Brakes are bololean in KSP. They are either ON or OFF. When you try to go tap-tap-tap to tell the computer that you mean to press the brakes gently, it does not get interpreted that way. It get interpreted as pumping the brakes full on full off full on full off.

[Dunbaratu]

And having checked it, AG on the fly *does* let you edit default groups.

Note: take the brakes off *before* you remove them from the group!

This is a useful mod as a stopgap measure for now. But the existence of a mod to fix a problem shouldn't be an excuse for the problem to remain unfixed in the base game. The inability to alter wheel braking arrangements once you lift off is still a problem in the stock game.

[goldenpeach]

When I said disable the brakes,I meant that you would use the GUI to do it;in the same way you disable steering/engine/inverse steering of the wheel.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Given that keyboards aren't equipped with analog sensors to detect how hard you press a key, this isn't really workable unless you're doing it with a game controller of some sort. Brakes are bololean in KSP. They are either ON or OFF. When you try to go tap-tap-tap to tell the computer that you mean to press the brakes gently, it does not get interpreted that way. It get interpreted as pumping the brakes full on full off full on full off.

It seems that KSP controls that can be bound to an axis, use a virtual axis that smooths out digital input, much in the same way flight and RCS controls do. If brakes were boolean, your rover would topple over pretty much as soon as you pressed the key. The landing gear on your aircraft would tear off from over-strain, because KSP uses a simplified friction model. Call me delusional, but I see no such sharp deceleration. I've yet to actually perform !!SCIENCE!! on it, but so far that was the impression I got.

Should probably do some experiments on that front.

[Scoundrel]

Not to bash on anyone's ideas, but wouldn't a less controversial solution be to have SAS - when it's turned on - provide ABS braking as well as some sort of anti-flipping-while-cornering control? I'm just throwing it out there.

[Van Disaster]

Yeah, I've wanted RoverSAS for a while, even if it's just as simple as disabling any yaw reaction ( which is not exactly ideal for going over terrain, but at least it wouldn't be fighting your rover changing direction anymore ).