Rover Part Suggestions (togglable navball facing, walkers)

[Spheniscine]

Part-types that will come in really handy for rovers:

1. A probe core that has a front-facing camera, and a manned pod with a front-facing windshield. When you "control from here" for these parts, you can toggle the navball between topward facing, and frontward facing, to better view your current heading. Currently the only options to get a frontward facing navball are to rotate the core/pod (awkward for some designs, and loses topward facing for lifting off), or to stick a control point, like a docking port, to the front (unbalances the CoM slightly, is in a distant node on the tech tree, and ugly [though I pretend it's a camera])

2. Clawed walker legs as an alternative to wheels. For balance, these shouldn't be as fast as wheels on flat terrain, but claws with grip force will come in really handy for exploring mountainous terrain, or low-gravity/traction environments like Minmus or Gilly. Also unlike wheels, they work when attached radially.

Edited November 25, 2014 by Spheniscine

[prophet_01]

Why don't you use a hopper for minmus or gilly? I use an rcs powered hopper with a single or two seats and a range of roughly 100km(at 0.3g) it's rly handy and prevents me from killing my kerbals due to the low twr of the eva jetpacks

I would like the klaw to work properly on terrain (if it doesn't already in this version), but appart from that all my claw needs are satisfied.

Yes on the change for the rover navball. A setting for orientation or at least a new standart setting for some parts wouldn't hurt. One or two new parts would be nice, too

[Spheniscine]

Why don't you use a hopper for minmus or gilly? I use an rcs powered hopper with a single or two seats and a range of roughly 100km(at 0.3g) it's rly handy and prevents me from killing my kerbals due to the low twr of the eva jetpacks

That is one option. Another option I've used is to use RCS thrusters to provide artificial gravity (downward translation, assign a convenient secondary key to it) when accelerating or braking. Walkers would be a nice additional option though, especially since it would also be good for mountainous terrain.

The klaw doesn't work on terrain I think... besides, it doesn't move, unlike a walker.

Edited November 25, 2014 by Spheniscine

[Sasami_TN]

Why not a few more science-y instruments. Like a ground penetrating radar box which attaches to the bottom of the rover so that you can detect buried caverns, ancient artifacts, or skeleton burial tombs from some long lost civilization. Think we should have an archaeology science package made since we have science packages representing other science fields. Is there even a biology science package which detects microbial life?