I hate rovers SO MUCH!

[Wjolcz]

I just put a rover on the Mun. How frustrated I was after realising I can't get farther than 150 meters away from the base! The way the wheels slip is sooooo ridiculous! 11 m/s and it feels like instead on regolith you drive on ice! Although I wouldn't call the thing that happens after hitting the speed 'driving'. And it's not the first time I notice this behaviour. On Duna: Same thing. Already lost 2 rovers there.

I remember I once installed Bobcat mod. The wheels there behaved WAY better than the stock ones. Though the slippy behaviour might be due the fact I use medium terrain detail, I still feel like they were tested on Kerbin in 1G behaviour only, while in developement. The rovers work fine only there.

What am I doing wrong? Am I the only one pissed off here?

[Tex_NL]

If you use WASD in regular flight mode your SAS will be fighting your wheel traction. Switch to docking mode or remap your rover controls to something like IJKL.

[Camacha]

Do you realize that 11 m/s is already 40 kilometres / 25 miles an hour? Not a small speed for something like a rover

Edited September 15, 2014 by Camacha

[Linear]

Do you realise that 11 m/s is already 40 kilometres / 25 miles an hour? Not a small speed for something like a rover

This, 11m/s is way too high for a low wheel-base rover.

[HafCoJoe]

I find that the best way to go places on low gravity planets with rovers is to pack a crap ton of extra weight on them. The added mass keeps the wheels on the ground more. The very first rover I landed EVER was eternally doomed to be stuck in a 1km crater . More mass definitely helps.

(got stuck rolling sideways going up the crater side)

vs.

(more weight and could hill climb like crazy when I used it)

[Duke23]

Maybe the weight is the key, Avera9eJoe. My lighter rovers tend to have problems even on Kerbin when outside KSC's general area. Start to slide sideways for no apparent reason, then when they regain traction they flip over.

[Thomas988]

For me, having weight is key. A rover won't work very well at all if it's too light. I also avoid going too fast. I lost one rover doing so and almost lost another. Finally, if you make it so the motor is disabled for the front wheels and turning is disabled for the back wheels the chances of flipping over is much smaller.

EDIT: 600 posts! Yay!

[Wjolcz]

If you use WASD in regular flight mode your SAS will be fighting your wheel traction. Switch to docking mode or remap your rover controls to something like IJKL.

I use IJKL.

In response to "go slower or add more weight": I appreciate those tips, but if SQUAD devs made the suspension softer it would fix many things wrong with low-gee driving. And it doesn't make much sense to add ballast decreasing dV of the craft carrying the rover.

Also those little, grey wheels seem to behave differently(better than the rest).

Edited September 14, 2014 by Veeltch

[TMS]

Try: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93205-0-24-2-TT-s-Modular-MultiWheels-7-2-Update-to-resolve-mass-bug-get-Roverpilot

[mike9606]

I find the wheels to grip just fine for me, atleast on the Black wheels added in .20, those things have insane grip compared to the yellow oness. Infact, the grip of the black ones is actually dangerous on Minmus and low gravity moons/planets, as braking too hard can flip the rover quite easily with those wheels. The yellow ones however, have very bad grip on low gravity worlds, they slide around on Minmus and stopping takes quite a long distance with them.

[Fiddlestyx]

I just wish we could limit the top speed of the wheels.

[Jon Tash]

I just wish we could limit the top speed of the wheels.

With Mechjeb you can, I usually use it so I don't go faster than 10 m/s with my rovers.

[juanml82]

This, 11m/s is way too high for a low wheel-base rover.

Depending on the terrain, I often aim at driving at 20 m/s. I think the problem is turning, either because you have to turn or because the terrain makes you turn. Turning off the torque of all wheels and probes and using docking mode helps a lot. But the torque should be assigned to an action group, because you might need that and rcs to turn if you flip over and end up flying - and straightening the rover then also requires switching back to the normal staging mode.

You can land this, without engines, after speeding off the edge of a crater breaking only one or two wheels, as long as you have time to line up the rover's inclination with the slope below.

Better grip would definitely be appreciated, though.

[Kasuha]

Rover wheels are not flexible so mass of the rover does not improve your grip. The lighter you make the rover, the more controllable it will be. Not just acceleration and deceleration, but also turns are much easier with light rover, especially in low gravity. Wide base, low center of mass, and reaction wheel with controls decoupled from rover steering (sometimes you need to fix your orientation in mid-air) all improve the driving experience. And most importantly, don't expect miracles. If you turn too sharply, it will slip or even start rolling. And you can't just stop in place.

There are also places with "bad terrain". Rovers simply fail on it. They behave as if they're on a steep slope even though you're on perfectly flat surface. I am pretty sure this is caused by bugs and that these bugs will be fixed eventually. At present, though, the only thing that can be done about it is going elsewhere.

[magnemoe]

Maybe the weight is the key, Avera9eJoe. My lighter rovers tend to have problems even on Kerbin when outside KSC's general area. Start to slide sideways for no apparent reason, then when they regain traction they flip over.

Weight kills fast rovers, my solution is to cut the weight to the bone, as this makes the rover pretty much impossible to destroy, standard is 3 1x1 plates with wheels at edges.

An heavier rover tend to break up if you jump or even drive down a steep hill, the light ones you can jump on the crater ridges on Mun,

standard speed is 20-30 m/s, I have reached 60 m/s downhill.

On minmus and other places with low gravity even the high friction wheels might not be enough so here I would add rcs, both for friction and for movent.

[Levelord]

This, 11m/s is way too high for a low wheel-base rover.

The keyboard only gives a binary input for the rover wheels, so it either goes at full speed or not. If you want to control a rover's speed, you'd better be prepared to tediously tap the keys and brake just to control the speed at a reasonable level where it's not too slow for travel, but also not too fast to flip over.

This is why I think it's important to implement a speed limiter on rover wheels much like thrust limiters on rocket engines. It'll solve a lot of issues with rover wheels traveling beyond the design speeds of a craft.

P.S Although 11m/s being too fast or slow depends on the design goals of the rover. If it's designed for high speeds then by all means it should be possible. However I find that for high speeds having a bike-like design (where there is only 2 points of contact with the terrain) is best because you reduce the possibility for sudden asymmetrical wheel traction where one wheel suddenly grips the ground and flips the rover.

Edited September 14, 2014 by Levelord

[Duke23]

Weight kills fast rovers, my solution is to cut the weight to the bone, as this makes the rover pretty much impossible to destroy, standard is 3 1x1 plates with wheels at edges.

An heavier rover tend to break up if you jump or even drive down a steep hill, the light ones you can jump on the crater ridges on Mun,

standard speed is 20-30 m/s, I have reached 60 m/s downhill.

On minmus and other places with low gravity even the high friction wheels might not be enough so here I would add rcs, both for friction and for movent.

I can't argue with most of that. It is fun to jump Mun ridges without a slow motion explosion, and my light models have gone for a tumble down a crater wall only to be fine if I can manage to flip it back over. I understand low traction but sometimes it switches to no traction and gets really frustrating. I'll be trying the rover wheel mod mentioned earlier.

[HafCoJoe]

Do note that that Duna "rover base" is quite tall so I did have to be careful going up hills but it had enough SAS to handle fine. Better to build with the SOM close to the ground and with a wide base. It is possible to build great rovers with small mass, it just takes extra skill and patience .

[HafCoJoe]

Weight kills fast rovers,

You'd be surprised...

Here's an old (and dark and laggy and hard to see but also funny) video of my mountain climbing Gekko. You where saying?

http://www.twitch.tv/avera9ejoe/c/4250657

Yes it is using jet engines but that doesn't really effect it's mass to thrust. I could build one of these for the moon easily provided I had an efficient number of SAS units.

[Stratzenblitz75]

Rover wheels in KSP are weird... Sometimes they slide around, unable to control or gain speed (like you described). Other times they take your 10+ ton mobile Eve lander up a slope at 30+ m/s:

I can't even go that fast on a flat surface! But here, these wizard wheels are able to move it at that speed up a slope on EVE! EVE! We are talking 16.7 m/s surface gravity here!

I'll never understand these wheels...

[Pecan]

Which way are your rovers facing?

In Veeltch's and Avera9eJoe's pictures you can clearly see from the navball that KSP thinks they are pointing up/down. Do you think that helps? Do you think it helps SAS, steering and control-orientation? If you're using standard WASDQE controls and want to turn 'left' when KSP thinks you're facing up which key do you press?

Do yourselves a favour and at least put a control-core facing in the right direction so the buttons operate in the way you expect them to. This is especially important for those that use MJ or some other mod, otherwise they'll get direction hopelessly wrong.

[EnderSpace]

You hate rovers , THEN DONT BUILD IT

here some tips that I use

in planets have atmosphere

1. Make sure you have more than 6 parachutes for full safety

2. Don't have a big rover try to make it small ( especially eve )

3. Don't go faster than 6.5 m/s

planets don't have atmosphere ( I never put rover on planets and moon don't have atmosphere but here some few tips )

1. Make sure you have enough fuel in the small thrusters

2. Try to make speed lower than 2.0 m/s in gilly make it higher than when you so near lower

3. Make the rover huger in every stronger gravity like in gilly make a truck so you make sure the rover will not be a roverplane , lol

wish I was helpful

[HafCoJoe]

Which way are your rovers facing?

In Veeltch's and Avera9eJoe's pictures you can clearly see from the navball that KSP thinks they are pointing up/down. Do you think that helps? Do you think it helps SAS, steering and control-orientation? If you're using standard WASDQE controls and want to turn 'left' when KSP thinks you're facing up which key do you press?

Do yourselves a favour and at least put a control-core facing in the right direction so the buttons operate in the way you expect them to. This is especially important for those that use MJ or some other mod, otherwise they'll get direction hopelessly wrong.

FOR SURE. Having your control pointing "straight up" like it would be if you where landing a ship on the surface of a planet makes your SAS try and angle you the opposite way of your turning. Like how the corners of a high speed race track are tilted in, the SAS tries to tilt your ship the same way if your control is straight up. If your control is forwards, it tries and makes the front of your car/plane spin flat - which could help with turning. Does this make sense?

[Spatzimaus]

Weight kills fast rovers

Nah, it all depends on the design. Having a larger number of wheels gives you the turning and braking abilities you need to survive at higher speeds, even with a high mass.

Take my old Kethane miner/mobile base, mass ~200 tons:

The thing handled surprisingly well, mainly because of the number of wheels. Its acceleration was pretty slow, but I'd regularly cruise along at ~20m/s on Mun. The only real headache was when it'd throw a tire, but since it was a manned rover it wasn't hard to fix. I could drive it all over Mun, and use it to refill landed vessels; this isn't really necessary for Mun, but I'd intended it for use on places like Pol.

These days, I have two different rovers. One is a 500-ton behemoth version of the above rover (Mun Unit Zappa), but I'm in the process of switching it to caterpillar treads since it was destroying tires constantly. The other is a much smaller 25-ton rover (the Iguana 1b), shown here leaving Kerbin orbit:

Again, the fact that it's got more than four wheels makes a big difference. (The VTOL engine pods on the side means it can fly itself to Mun if need be, but I mainly use them for jumping crater walls and such.)

So again, you don't need to keep it small if you don't want to.

[Pecan]

...Does this make sense?

With three dimensions of freedom it does, but not when SAS can't do much except, maybe, lift some wheels off the ground in two dimensions.

Try pointing the right way; you'll find everything not only makes more sense but also works almost like you'd want it to. The greatest advantage I've found is simply when driving forward - towards the horizon that is - but traversing a slope. Navball points at horizon, not the sky or the centre of the planet. Heading stays steady, not bouncing 180-degrees while I'm still moving the same way.

Try it, without SAS, and I'd be very surprised if you still want to complain as much about rover control. What part of facing the wrong way should make sense?