New Landing Legs

[ZedNova]

Did you try it on the mun? The gravity is lower there...

[Oznerol256]

Did you try it on the mun? The gravity is lower there...

No i didnt. However, i can't rely on mun's lower gravity because my base intended to be used on Eeloo. However, the system was working so good that i also intended to use it on bigger targets. If i want to deploy my base on Duna or Eve, i certainly need working legs.

[Aragosnat]

Does not Eeloo have even lower gravity then Mün? Also have you reached the point where you get the plane landing gears? As I remember people used those before. Plus they have the nice advantage of being on wheels.

[Brotoro]

Yes, this problem with the landing legs was the first thing I ran into when I tried updating to 0.22. Ships that are only moderately heavy can no longer be supported by the heavy-duty landing legs, and will end up leaning or squished down sitting on their engines. Any designs you had that used surface docking sitting on these legs will no longer work because the ship can end up at any height or angle.

PLUS, if you open up an old save file, all the landing legs on all your ships will appear in closed state, so your bases and landers will fall to the ground and possibly topple over and break when you focus on them. And the landing legs may be insufficiently strong to lift them back up.

Workarounds for the lack of leg strength include putting truss or girder segments under your ships to protect your engines and get a fixed height once your retract your legs (great...we get to add even more parts to our ships). Or you can mess with the config file...but if I wanted to play with modded parts, I'd be doing that already.

I like the shock absorbing feature, but I really wish the legs were stiffer (so my engines won't get crunched) AND that the hydraulics would push the legs back out to maximum extension after landing so we could know what height they'll end up at.

[TMS]

You should be able to force the shocks into a fully-extended and locked position.

[Cydonian Monk]

It's going to require design changes for most of us. My primary landing craft design now has about a half centimeter clearance (on Duna) between the bottom of the engine and the ground.... A kerbal could walk under it before.

To me, the biggest issue is with imported saves. The new landing legs use a "LadingLegModule" element in persistence files that doesn't exist in older vessels, but is generated when the ship loads. If you have bases that are being destroyed by retracted legs, you /might/ be able to copy and paste that element in. Tedious, a bit. I like the "Hack Gravity / Extend Legs / Unhack Gravity" solution. Too bad that doesn't work for dead craft (like Lunar descent stage debris).

[paleorob]

Edit: Just noticed that the kerbal can't raise the legs. If you click on the button, nothing happens.

I have this problem as well. My Kerbal on Eve can't get back into his capsule because I sent him there without research the extendable ladders. If I could collapse the legs I could get him back onboard but clicking the button does nothing.

[MadHorse]

You can use a Kerbal as a Landing Leg.

I ran into the Landing Leg and this happend:

[Scarecrow88]

You should be able to force the shocks into a fully-extended and locked position.

Yes you can, but the point is that you shouldn't have to. At the moment all the missions I had planned involving landers have been put on hold until this problem is fixed.

[Oznerol256]

Does not Eeloo have even lower gravity then Mün? Also have you reached the point where you get the plane landing gears? As I remember people used those before. Plus they have the nice advantage of being on wheels.

No it doesn't. Eeloo's gravity is higher than Mun's but lower than Kerbin's. I can tell that because i have Jeb sitting on Eeloo in my main save.

I have the plane landing gears (remember, this is sandbox!) but i don't want to use them for my base. They look ugly and its meant to be a base after all. No wheels on bases.

I like the shock absorbing feature, but I really wish the legs were stiffer (so my engines won't get crunched) AND that the hydraulics would push the legs back out to maximum extension after landing so we could know what height they'll end up at.

+1

You can use a Kerbal as a Landing Leg.

I ran into the Landing Leg and this happend:

I noticed that too.

[JebidiahsBigSister]

I also have the landing leg issue. Several issues actually :

1 - the "g" key now has to be pressed twice in order to extend the gear.

2 - The gear now "break" - and break imho way too easily so that they will not retract if broken - and that happens a lot There is no easy way to tell a broken gear from a very compressed gear so at present you are forced to have your kerbal EVA and check each gear prior to liftoff. You're just SOL with unmanned ships.

3 - The suspension is WAY too soft as the OP stated - ships end up at weird angles. On slopes the downhill side tends to compress and the uphill side tends to extend (exactly the OPPOSITE of what you want) so that ships tend to topple more on slopes.

4 - On minimus I had a kerbal topple the ship just by running into the gear a couple times

5 - Because they are extra springy the gear no longer protect the engines like they used to do. heavier ships are much more prone to getting their landing engines smushed.

6. The ends of the landing gear now seem to sink below the planet surface texture. I've experienced this on Kerbin, Mun Minimus and Eve. (no I'm not using any mods)

This is not a "feature" of new gear. It's a bug that needs to be fixed - especially if you have to resort to girders instead of gear . Adding "spring" to landing gear is a feature - having the "spring" always work to your disadvantage is a bug.

Edited October 18, 2013 by JebidiahsBigSister

[Aragosnat]

No it doesn't. Eeloo's gravity is higher than Mun's but lower than Kerbin's. I can tell that because i have Jeb sitting on Eeloo in my main save.

I have the plane landing gears (remember, this is sandbox!) but i don't want to use them for my base. They look ugly and its meant to be a base after all. No wheels on bases.

To bad then. Yeah. From the sounds of it we need a way to re-extend them to full length. Would not mind it if it costs electricity. After all we barely have enough uses for it as is.

Edit: Or we could always use what people did before gears where available. Use winglets.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Aragosnat

[Catullus]

Setting suspensionSpring = 10 worked well for me.

[kiwi1960]

None of you have a .... leg.... to stand on, sorry.

[spikeyhat09]

its supposed to be that way. if you want stronger legs, get the "advanced landing" or w/e parts

[JebidiahsBigSister]

FWIW - my bug reports above were with the "stronger" legacy version of the landing legs. I predict this will be fixed in a soon to be released patch. As it stands now - the legs are pretty much unusable/unreliable for medium to heavy weight landers.

[Whackjob]

For the truly big things, it's always better to make your own legs.

[Jeb Kerm�an]

Or just use the larger, heavy lander legs? They are quite far up the tech tree though.

[malkuth]

Or just use the larger, heavy lander legs? They are quite far up the tech tree though.

Pretty sure he has said a few times hes in sandbox mode. And the legs in the OP are the Heavy Lander legs.

[MadHorse]

For the truly big things, it's always better to make your own legs.

*snip*

Must be the Wild Wild West Spider.

Looks great btw.

[Whackjob]

Must be the Wild Wild West Spider.

Looks great btw.

[Jeb Kerm�an]

Pretty sure he has said a few times hes in sandbox mode. And the legs in the OP are the Heavy Lander legs.

Ah, my mistake. Apologies to the OP, didn't bother to read beyond the first post.. I'd had this problem with the smaller landing legs myself, so assumed the heavier ones would be the solution.

^Epic. Nature's had hundreds of millions of years to perfect her designs, no shame in taking a few pointers.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Jeb Kerm�an

[Oznerol256]

For the truly big things, it's always better to make your own legs.

While that may be true, i can't build my own retractable landing legs without using a mod.

I need retractable landing legs or i can't move my base modules using a rover.

Edit: Or we could always use what people did before gears where available. Use winglets.

Same. I need retractable legs.

Additionally, there were a few very good ideas. For example i like the idea of electricity costs when the legs operate. But what happens if there is no electriccharge? At least it should be possible to lock the gear to full length.

[RocketPilot573]

Um, cant you just edit the config file to make the legs stronger?

[Brotoro]

Um, cant you just edit the config file to make the legs stronger?

If I wanted to play with mod parts, I'd play with mod parts.