Rover Place - Share Your Rovers and Rover Journeys Here

[CalMacDa]

This is a thread to share rovers. Though rovers are mainly used in career and science due to their infinite mobility, they just add a sense of accomplishment to your missions in sandbox. Its great being able to go around the surface freely. Rovers are great! This is the place to share your routes and your rovers. Now, lets share our rovers! GG!

Here are some rover challenges:

- Get to the highest point on Kerbin without going airborne

- Make a rover that can go across small bodies of water (radial intakes float)

- Take a journey from the KSC to an anomaly all in a rover (I got really bored half way through)

- Make a rover that can climb 90 degrees

- Make a rover that can convert to a plane and fly!

These challenges are just for fun. No strict rules, just use common sense. Its okay to use mods, but lets not get cheaty

Thanks, and lets see those rovers!

[Stratzenblitz75]

I once had an Eve rover:

I landed it at sea-level, then drove it inland ~120 km so that I could launch it from a mountain. Took about 5 hours of driving. But that isn't much considering the other crazy rover drivers on this forum (I'm looking at you, Wooks and Fengist!)

[CalMacDa]

I logged 12 hours on a trip to the pyramid anomaly. Didn't get all the way there

[DSKY]

One of my Landmasters. Mostly stock except for the end tubes and some KAS containers & winches. The two pods it's dragging are the landing propulsion. I've landed the predecessor on the Mun but the big one has only run on Kerbin so far.

Edited January 10, 2015 by DSKY

[CalMacDa]

Whats with the fuel tanks in all of your rovers?

[Aragosnat]

Did a nice drive on Mün over 12 hours worth of driving. Did some driving on Duna and Eve. Tried Minmus even. Just not so good fur rovers.

[CalMacDa]

Low Gravity areas are hard. On gilly, I once got my Apoapsis in a safe orbital height

[Reactordrone]

I've run Rovers on Kerbin, the Mun, Minmus, Ike, Duna and Eve. Most tend to be variations on a theme e.g 4x4 structural panel with medium wheels or a science lab with larger wheels and a nose gear to avoid stoppies.

Here's a few of mine from various saves. south pole mission, Pyramid mission, Minmus Ion downforce rover, small minmus rover, small Mun rover, 4 Man Mun rover, Mun and Minmus lab rovers, Mun refuel rescue mission, Ike rover and Eve lab rover.

I've got a couple on Duna as well but no photos.

Longest mission was probably the Eve rover. I overshot my landing and had to drive about 300km to the base before driving to the Explodium sea. driving on Eve is almost as easy as driving on the ice caps though so lots of time warping to get through it.

[CalMacDa]

I know boosts might be nice with rovers, but fuel tanks just add weight and make things hard! why?!

[RocketPilot573]

I believe the only places I have not put a rover on are Eeloo, Ike, Gilly, and Vall.

[Renegrade]

I've done Mun and Minmus rovering a tiny bit (plus Kerbin), and I think I sent one to Duna once..but aside from the uh, "direct" fun factor of driving around, I find that their practical usage for in-game goals is kinda...lacking?

Generally speaking, contract destinations are too far apart for rovery use. Even if you pick up a contract with tightly clustered destinations, you'll still need to fly the rover there..so might as well just do some micro-suborbital-hops with the rover-carrier itself. The science in KSP really doesn't lend itself very well to rover use compared to real world science.

The circumference of the Mun is 1,256 kilometers - to drive from your current location to the antipodal location would cover about 628km - or about 5.8 hours worth of driving at a rather optimistic 30m/sec. By comparison, a hill-skimming orbital craft could do that in about 19 minutes - with on-rails warp available.

I really wish they had more practical game-oriented uses. And folding/retractable wheels. And round cargo bays for them to fit in.

One of my Landmasters. Mostly stock except for the end tubes and some KAS containers & winches. The two pods it's dragging are the landing propulsion. I've laded the predecessor on the Mum but the big one has only run on Kerbin so far.

I have to say, that's a neat looking rover.

I haven't kept many screenshots of my rovers, but here's a little contract-filling one from the days when Fine Print wasn't stock:

Edited January 9, 2015 by Renegrade

[TokiTech]

I focus on one low gravity moon and a slight more gravity planet in sandbox for rover design and test drive, Mun and Duna.

[percyPrune]

Do Land Rovers count?

[Spatzimaus]

Here are three of my favorite rovers, posted previously. All are from career mode on Hard, not sandbox:

Iguana 1b is a 2-man, 30-ton VTOL rover with two small Kethane drills and a small refinery. It's designed to do emergency recovery and refueling of landed vessels on pretty much any body. In various career modes, I've put these on Mun, Minmus, Duna, Eve, Laythe, and Vall; they're very handy. I've driven them pretty far, including one trip about a third of the way around Mun, but their VTOL engines (on the sides) allow them to jump crater walls as well as recover if a tire blows and they start to tumble so it wasn't ENTIRELY along the ground.

Mun Unit Zappa is a 7-man, 600-ton tracked rover with large Kethane drills, a big refinery, and pretty much everything else I could think of. It lands by way of a skyhook (not shown). I've only landed this latest design on Mun, but an earlier ~300-ton version landed a few places. It's shown with an Iguana next to it for scale; also note the Kerbonaut sitting on the external seat on top. It's so huge that refilling its tanks after landing emptied the entire local Kethane deposit. It can cruise at about 10m/s pretty much indefinitely, but I've never taken it very far.

Pteracuda uses electric propellers, so it can stay in the air indefinitely on Kerbin. But it's also a boat and a rover; the screenshot was taken after sailing to the other site without ever leaving the ground. Several custom parts are used, and it also has a Kethane drill (deployed with a KAS winch from inside an upside-down cargo bay) for all of the usual refueling needs. It was designed to be my primary vehicle on Laythe and, to a lesser extent, Eve. I've done a bit of ocean cruising (at ~45m/s) for testing purposes, but I was holding off on the actual trip to Laythe before doing any more.

I'm redesigning all of these to work with Karbonite for 0.90, but the basic designs are solid.

[Slam_Jones]

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Khaos Mk I

[KotDemopan]

I have got a rover on Minmus, although it is not really a Rover, its more like an Alfa Romeo.

[Starhawk]

This is the unmanned version of my Rugged Rover. It can flip itself over with the landing strut, and takes a lot of punishment. RTG's for power, so you can drive in the dark if you dare.

I love that the surface survey missions from the new contracts (Fine Print) make rovers actually useful now.

[kookoo_gr]

I have taken rovers to Kerbin (duh!), Mun, Minmus, Moho, Eve, Gilly, Duna, Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop and Poll. Where do i fit in the poll?

[LordFjord]

This is quite an old pic, but I like it

[CalMacDa]

The trick with Rogers is a wide wheel span

[Grover]

The trick with Rogers is a wide wheel span

I find that Roger is a fine fellow regardless of where his wheels are. Most recently when he waved at me as he rode past on a unicycle!

[cantab]

I've done a few. My ultralight Mun rover was a fiasco, I failed to set the handbrake before decoupling it and it tumbled down a hill for over 4 km with my Kerbal running after it, sustaining some damage. It was then unable to drive back up the hill and had to be abandoned.

My much later Mun probe rover was more successful, thanks to landing on better terrain and remembering the handbrake. I mainly built it to test out AntennaRange - it relies on the lander or an orbiter to relay its signals to Kerbin. I drove it for a few km, it did well and with the old .25 version of the QBE it had the torque to right itself when it tipped.

On a much larger scale is my Duna lander-rover, here seen not on Duna. I took a copy to Gilly which was interesting, I covered a few kilometres mostly with the wheels not touching the ground and could only reach a top speed of 7 m/s. On Eve it performed admirably, having no trouble with the gravity and reaching speeds of 25-30 m/s even up 25-degree slopes, taking a dip in the sea then backing out using RCS, and covering around 60 km in total.

On Duna it did rather less admirably. My first landing attempt in stock aerodynamics resulted in disintegration on chute opening. My second in FAR+DRE landed safely and covered around 20 km. I built it to cope with crashes and tested it extensively on Kerbin, and on Duna it survived a 70 mph rollover and used its SRIMEC engines to get back on its wheels, only to then be heavily damaged in an 85 mph tumble. The Kerbal survived but he wasn't going any further. Which all means I've never actually seen if it can launch back into Duna orbit like it's designed to.

And, arguably, there was my Laythe Boat. It's capable of land travel but driving it is seriously hairy - the thing is unstable, wobbly, and thanks to using propellers lacks the power to climb steep slopes. Really it's unwise to do much more than beach it. On the ocean it's much better, capable of a steady 20 m/s and stable at 4x warp, just don't try and turn it too hard.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I used a E-Propeller-powered Rover to gather all the science from Duna.

Right now it is waiting for a manned salvaging Mission which is on the way

The Prop is from the Mod KAX

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76668-0-90-Kerbal-Aircraft-Expansion-(KAX)-v2-3-3

[Dirty Bob]

This thread made me remember my ridiculous rover from the science career update. I decided I wanted to get as much science on rover as I could. I had 8 of everything placed on it. Looks goofy but it worked.

[klesh]

For .90 I created a new utility truck for the KSC. It has a probe core of course, so its technically a rover and can be operated remotely. I keep the basic model saved, then fill the cargo area with whatever the mission requires. The back gate can be lowered like a pickup truck for access to the cargo. I've actually done a bunch of stuff around the space center with several variations of it. Shown below is just a basic model which I threw a spare antenna in the back for demo purposes. It's 99% stock, save for the lights in front, the divider between the crew cabin and the cargo area, and the IR hinge in the back for the gate. Its mostly hardpoints placed on a 2-RoveMate chasis. The SPH gizmos came in super handy here.

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Edited January 9, 2015 by klesh