Sticky Brakes & other ground based SSTO issues

[Rocket Farmer]

Hi

Before anything please note I play totally stock. I have nothing against those that do but I haven't explored the limit of the game as is and enjoy some of the inherent challenges (ie. never used mechjeb ever).

Just about to launch my first large mission to Laythe. Almost everything is set to go. The Laythe space station, 2 landing probes, the Laythe landing base, 2 fuel depots, the return ship and the Nuclear push phase are already all hooked up in orbit. The only issue I have left is making a SSTO that's decent enough on the ground to pull up to and away from the fuel depots to allow uninhibited Laythe exploration.

My issues with the landing gear:

1. Steering. They just turn way to slow. Currently my only truly ugly solution has been a set of buggy wheels off the front that when I lower the front gear I can steer with them lowrider style.

2. When braking it seems to be all or nothing (no tapping the brakes). This I can live with. The really annoying item is however after I turn off the brakes they stay on for a period of time. Anybody know how to fix this?

Thank-you

[Murph]

The brakes just do that on the stock landing gear, although I find they only stick on for a bit if they have been active for a while â€â€*a short tap or 2 or 3 doesn't usually cause them to stick on. The B9 landing gear, on the other hand, the brakes come off instantly, regardless.

There is no steering with stock gear, that's why it's so slow, as it's not steering at all, but being unwillingly dragged sideways by your plane's rudder force (or any other yaw force generator, such as vectored thrust, reaction wheels, etc). The B9 gear does have steering, which works fairly nicely. It also has motors, for electrically powered taxiing, which you may find useful.

In short, the stock landing gear is just about ok for use on the KSC runway, but pretty poor for any significantly advanced usage.

Edit: I believe that they may be adding steering to it in 0.23, but not sure if that's confirmed or a hope-to-do.

[Specialist290]

According to the latest Developer Notes:

The landing gear are now steerable and tweakable in the editor. So you’ll be able to steer and taxi aircraft.

At the very least, the tone seems to indicate that it's already implemented in one of the development builds, so it's entirely likely that we'll see it in 0.23, though I can't say anything for sure since I'm not a developer myself. Fingers crossed, of course

[Taki117]

Talk to Brotoro, he has a very nice rover/plane combo he used on his Laythe mission. (Also totally stock)

Link to his Laythe Mission

[Zephram Kerman]

I borrowed Brotoro's "Bird Dog" style nose wheel trick for my Laythe exploration plane. Basically, put a pair of rover wheels on the aircraft nose wheel. When you want to drive around, retract only the nose wheel. The changing height also helps for station docking.

Here's the amateurish video I made while exploring Laythe. In some ways it is similar to what you have in mind. Except I succumbed to installing MechJeb and Kethane mods. Perhaps it will give you some ideas for your program.

You can kinda see the rover gear arrangement at 2:58. This design is from version 0.19, I think. So a lot of things are different now. I'm sure yours will be even cooler!

Edited December 7, 2013 by Zephram Kerman