Best wheels for Mun rovering?

[antiquark]

Which wheels work best for Mun rovers? Due to the pain of getting there, I haven't done much testing on the actual Mun itself.

The "balloon tires" seem OK, they aren't as grippy, but this has the advantage of not flipping over so much.

The "curiosity rover" wheels seem really grippy, but they bite into the ground a lot, and if you brake too sharply or turn too fast you'll flip over.

Do the "curiosity rover" wheels work better when climbing steep hills?

So many questions...

[aven17]

Regardless of which wheels you settle on, you can improve handling using downward RCS or engines to keep your rover firmly attached to the ground.

[Taki117]

You can also improve handling by switching to docking mode, and them hitting space to get you into linear mode. This will prevent you from applying rotational acceleration with the reaction wheels when you press "A" or "D" to turn left or right respectively.

[capi3101]

Largely it depends on mass; the heavier your rover, the bigger the wheels you want on it. Even the little castor wheels are good if your load is light enough.

Build it low, build it wide, add reaction wheels, use docking mode: my advice for all rovers in a nutshell.

[jwilhite]

You probably already know this, but the single biggest thing you can do to improve the handling of your rover is to make sure you are using front-wheel drive. Use action groups to toggle the motor and the steering on the back wheels. You can always toggle it back on again whenever you need 4-wheel drive. Also, set up the "Brakes" action group to only engage the brakes on the back wheels. This will allow you to come to a quick stop without flipping over.

I have also experimented with making 6-wheel rovers where the middle set of wheels (with motors and steering off) is set up a bit higher than the other four so that the wheels don't actually touch the ground. They just serve as outriggers to keep you from rolling over and to bear some the the weight of the landing. I like to use ruggedized rover wheels instead of landing struts whenever possible because they make such great landing gear. They allow you to land with some horizontal velocity without the craft tipping over, and you can easily send a Kerbal out on an EVA to repair the broken wheels. Also, if you are trying to land near another craft on the planet, it is way easier to just drive your wheeled lander the final distance to the rendezvous point instead of nailing a perfect landing.

[Wallace]

My way of deciding which wheels to use is simple, I just try the different types and pick the one that doesn't look ridiculously under or oversized.

The dinkiest wheels are best kept for very small rovers, although 6 or 8 on a rovemax body is quite a good set up, very grippy. the teeny wheels on just a probecore and battery make a very good teeny rover, not fast, but very good at climbing if it doesn't run out of power too quickly. I dropped 8 micro rovers with the teeny wheels all over the mun to search for anomalies and they could climb any hill they came across, even up out of very steep craters.

[merlinux]

I find myself using the rovemax model 1 and 2 a lot more than ruggedized wheels for small rovers. In my experience the size of your rover needs to be quite large and heavy to start using the ruggedized wheels.

[HoustonWeHaveAProblem]

I've made quite a few rovers, even one with 32 wheels on it. It was an enormous mobile Kethane drilling rig that rolled from one patch of Kethane to the next. Needed all the wheels to handle the huge fuel tank and drills, converters and power units.

The salient points are those above

- flat, long and wide is always good

- RCS to keep it planted

- RCS to power up steep slopes or just fly up them

- drive in docking mode with skinny wheel SAS units

- lights, good lights, or you'll be doing Evil Knievel across some huge craters and canyons and come down in flames (I built scaffold rigs with lights at the top to get a good forward view)

- Place heavier items down low to keep your centre of gravity down low

- I even tried crash proofing rovers - place scaffold with struts in strategic locations so if you do flip the thing or jump a canyon by mistake they take the brunt and the main bits stay intact. And then you need RCS to right yourself. But that's just cause I like to race things.

[magnemoe]

My first advice for a rover is to keep the weight down. Second is to use an reaction wheel.

I made an rover for Mun use and drove it full throttle while looking for the largest crater edges and most air time I could get.

one 2x2 plate, two 1x1 plates front and back, the off road wheels at the corners, seats, reaction wheel, probe core for unmanned use, docking port, solar cells and batteries.

Its rock solid, you have to turn on and off to adjust for the terrain. Two problems kerbals tend to fall off at hard landings like jumping 300 meter down and this damage the tires so the kerbals has to repair them.

[LtHeckard]

The "Balloon Tires" will work just fine. You might even attach some fuel tanks on the sides to weigh it down so it won't flip over. if you attach fuel tanks, maybe you can attach small thrusters in the event of you needing to get somewhere faster or simply cushioning your fall.