Why do rovers suck so much?

[ShadowZone]

I like the concept of rovers. I like driving in the real world, I like driving games in general. But somehow rovers and how they work in KSP don't really resonate with me.

Let me just list a few points:

- throttle response. Pressing W and S to control forwards and backwards movement is okay, but when at the same time it also pitches the vehicle, this can cause problems. Also the response is laggy in my opinion.

- brakes are deadly. going too fast? just brake, right? wrong! breaking is more likely, because unless the CoM is somehow unter the axis (plural), the craft is very likely to topple forwards (especially if you use rovers with the 60m/s wheels)

- beware of obstacles. even the tiniest of obstacles can turn a rover in to a deadly ball of fire. hit that inclination wrong and somehow your wheel breaks or the entire rover flips.

Honestly? I rather produce some kind of biome hopper lander vehicle with a lot of dV instead of driving across the surface in a snail pace biting my fingernails at every bump because every rover is likely to start flipping uncontrollably if you exceed a certain velocity.

It's sad, because I would really like to use rovers more often.

What's your take on this subject?

[Axelord FTW]

Docking mode will alleviate this. Disabling torque on any SAS units/command modules will also help.

Sadly, KSP doesn't have ABS brakes nor if friction modeled accurately/thoroughly.

Well, space rovers are finicky things, alright. It takes a long time for a rover to move a few meters but players don't exactly want to wait around for that.

I use the wheels (and tracks) from lo-fi's Kerbal Foundries mod. Certainly make rover less horrible.

[Renegrade]

There is some weird lag involved with brakes (if you set them and leave 'em on for a while, they seem to take forever to disengage). Some of the other things are a little unrelated though:

- The pitching is likely due to reaction wheels responding to the same controls. You can use docking mode to overcome this (translate to drive, and rotate to use the wheels if the rover becomes airborne), or remap the rovering keys to something else. (I think the numpad might have some default rovering stuff?) Disabling the wheel will also help, although that means you'll have to re-enable it if you end if flying through the air..

- I've not had much problem with brakes, although I usually design as wide and low as I can (aside from aforementioned forever-to-disengage problem)

- I've not had much problem with wheel breakage either (only really had any issues there when I was playing pre-stock FinePrint and doing Kerbin surface missions with the tiny wheels... it's all too easy to end up rolling down a steep incline at insane speeds). Are your rovers really heavy or on high-grav worlds? Don't forget that inertia doesn't care about gravity, if you smack the ground at 60m/s (216km/h), it'll hurt as much on Minmus as on Eve. The only difference is that takes jumping off a cliff in Minmus, vs a short drop on Eve

I do agree however with using a biome hopper. It doesn't take much delta-v at all to make a small suborbital hopper able to hit adjacent biomes, and it's significantly faster and safer and not stymied by things like steep inclines, which makes rovers kinda useless at the moment.

They do have other problems as well:

- they're hard to stow, as the wheels don't fold up or anything.

- I'm not sure the wheel progression makes any sense from wheel to wheel, and they're located kinda high in the tree.

[Moonfrog]

there are many threads on this, the throttle response i can help with. If you choose docking mode next to the staging controls u can prevent the tipping from pressing w and s. Removing breaks on any forward wheels can help with braking issuses. You can press Alt+> to force increase of timewarp up to warp 4. Think many see the problem is light weight enviroment, nothing holding u down, no grip between wheels and the ground, also no air to use as a downward force to keep the car down. All of these things exist on earth but not on the mun. I created a rover which used RCS to increase and decrease its speed, worked rather well, tiny sas module to help balance it out. You do have to switch between docking controls and such, lets u control it at much higher speeds. At one point i as driving with 4 broken wheels cos it shot up into the sky and came down too hard.

Rovers are tricky, i think the devs are working on aerodynamics, probaboly after that they will address rovers, maybe with the rebalancing of all the parts they may have already fixed this issue, gameplay wise for us. Really looking forward to the entire rebalancing of parts.

Acursed ninjas

[Linear]

Use the docking-interface, this will help with control.

Don't go too fast - remember you're driving a rover not a Honda on a motorway, in real life rovers travel around 30 meters per hour, not 30 meters per second.

Again, you're thinking about going too fast with your design. If you want something more rugged, build something more rugged.

[ColourOfFire]

I like the concept of rovers. I like driving in the real world, I like driving games in general. But somehow rovers and how they work in KSP don't really resonate with me.

Let me just list a few points:

- throttle response. Pressing W and S to control forwards and backwards movement is okay, but when at the same time it also pitches the vehicle, this can cause problems. Also the response is laggy in my opinion.

- brakes are deadly. going too fast? just brake, right? wrong! breaking is more likely, because unless the CoM is somehow unter the axis (plural), the craft is very likely to topple forwards (especially if you use rovers with the 60m/s wheels)

- beware of obstacles. even the tiniest of obstacles can turn a rover in to a deadly ball of fire. hit that inclination wrong and somehow your wheel breaks or the entire rover flips.

Honestly? I rather produce some kind of biome hopper lander vehicle with a lot of dV instead of driving across the surface in a snail pace biting my fingernails at every bump because every rover is likely to start flipping uncontrollably if you exceed a certain velocity.

It's sad, because I would really like to use rovers more often.

What's your take on this subject?

It's best to drive rovers in docking mode so they don't pitch over. If you find your rover flipping forwards when braking, disable the brakes on the front wheels. Also, take into account that the m/s value makes things that are quite fast seem really slow. 15 m/s is over 50 km/h. Solid obstacles are not pleasant to collide with at that speed. Also, they are rovers, not cars.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

1. Switch to docking mode controls. Forward and backward don't do pitch then.

2. Lower your COG and widen the wheel track.

3. Tap your breaks.

4. Slow down! 60 m/s is 134 mph, do you drive offroad at 134 mph?)

5. Add SAS. enough gyros can roll a vehicle back onto its wheels (esp in low G)

[Cupcake...]

I've enjoyed rovering a lot more since I've started using the Mk2 Drone Core as a chasis. It gives you heaps of torque to right yourself if things do go pear shaped and it's tough as old boots. Best used with the docking interface.

Cupcake... Edited February 17, 2015 by Cupcake...

[KerikBalm]

I like the concept of rovers. I like driving in the real world, I like driving games in general. But somehow rovers and how they work in KSP don't really resonate with me.

Let me just list a few points:

- throttle response. Pressing W and S to control forwards and backwards movement is okay, but when at the same time it also pitches the vehicle, this can cause problems. Also the response is laggy in my opinion.

Throttle would be good, not just full throttle or nothing. The pitching is due to too much torque... like popping a wheelie on a motorcycle...

The solution is to disable the motors on your rear wheels, have your wheels pull you, not push you.

- brakes are deadly. going too fast? just brake, right? wrong! breaking is more likely, because unless the CoM is somehow unter the axis (plural), the craft is very likely to topple forwards (especially if you use rovers with the 60m/s wheels)

Brakes... again, could use a "throttle" instead of binary on/off. You know what is also deadly? slamming on the front breaks at 60 m/s on a motorcycle....

Like the above suggestion, the solution is to disable your front brakes, and use your rear brakes.

- beware of obstacles. even the tiniest of obstacles can turn a rover in to a deadly ball of fire. hit that inclination wrong and somehow your wheel breaks or the entire rover flips.

Show me an offforad vehicle that travels around at 60 m/s... then show me one that does it in reduced gravity....

Honestly? I rather produce some kind of biome hopper lander vehicle with a lot of dV instead of driving across the surface in a snail pace biting my fingernails at every bump because every rover is likely to start flipping uncontrollably if you exceed a certain velocity.

It's sad, because I would really like to use rovers more often.

What's your take on this subject?

[magnemoe]

There is some weird lag involved with brakes (if you set them and leave 'em on for a while, they seem to take forever to disengage). Some of the other things are a little unrelated though:

- The pitching is likely due to reaction wheels responding to the same controls. You can use docking mode to overcome this (translate to drive, and rotate to use the wheels if the rover becomes airborne), or remap the rovering keys to something else. (I think the numpad might have some default rovering stuff?) Disabling the wheel will also help, although that means you'll have to re-enable it if you end if flying through the air..

- I've not had much problem with brakes, although I usually design as wide and low as I can (aside from aforementioned forever-to-disengage problem)

- I've not had much problem with wheel breakage either (only really had any issues there when I was playing pre-stock FinePrint and doing Kerbin surface missions with the tiny wheels... it's all too easy to end up rolling down a steep incline at insane speeds). Are your rovers really heavy or on high-grav worlds? Don't forget that inertia doesn't care about gravity, if you smack the ground at 60m/s (216km/h), it'll hurt as much on Minmus as on Eve. The only difference is that takes jumping off a cliff in Minmus, vs a short drop on Eve

I do agree however with using a biome hopper. It doesn't take much delta-v at all to make a small suborbital hopper able to hit adjacent biomes, and it's significantly faster and safer and not stymied by things like steep inclines, which makes rovers kinda useless at the moment.

They do have other problems as well:

- they're hard to stow, as the wheels don't fold up or anything.

- I'm not sure the wheel progression makes any sense from wheel to wheel, and they're located kinda high in the tree.

Yes, one option is to bind rover movement keys to the rcs keys, this let you accelerate and turn while having reaction wheel control if you get a spin.

Reaction wheels help keep you stable but might also work against you.

Build low and wide, keep the weight down, remember that 30 m/s is more than 100 km/h you don't do that with an truck, its plausible with an light ATV.

Forget rovers on on minmus and other low gravity worlds, here suborbital or even flying low on the rocket engine works well enough.

They are nive for doing the alpha, beta and gamma site measurements.

[basic.syntax]

Action groups can help: in the VAB / SPH you can assign a group to activate brakes, or toggle the motor, for any set(s) of wheels.

Then when driving, just press the appropriate number key that you pre-set, when you want brakes or motor control - front or back.

Even if driving was "easy," It would take more time than most are willing to spend, to visit every biome on a planet or moon.

[Varsi]

I usually have front wheels powered and rear wheels for braking, makes rovers a lot safer. Making any sort of changes in direction is still quite dangerous.

I rarely drive around in rovers tho. My rovers are usually also capable of "jumping" long distances (or going to orbit on smaller moons). Don't have the patience to crawl around.

[Remkeau]

Rovers are definitely at the crossroad where fun/realism is a problem. While it is true that real rovers maybe only drive a few meters per hour, this would be incredibly boring gameplay wise. While curiosity has been spending 2 years driving to mt. Sharp, I intend to invest nowhere near as much time to drive to a target zone for a contract.

[cicatrix]

Rovers suck if they are poorly designed.

4 wheeled rovers - no go. I mean 4 wheeled will have all the problems you have described. Still something can be done - make only 2 of 4 powered and you'll see the result.

6-8 wheels - ok

Leave your forward and backward pairs of wheels unpowered. This means when you accelerate or brake they help you not to turn over.

+ Add landing legs to help you to flip back.

+ Use girders to form a protective skeleton around sensitive equipment onboard so that even if you hit something hard it will be girders that take the impact.

What really makes me upset about rovers are fragile wheels. They tend to break on everything and if your rover is unmanned this is usually end of it since a repair mission is more expensive than a replacement rover.

[Overfloater]

Im not having any trouble...

Rovers suck if you dont put any effort into designing them.

Make a wide, long chassis and low mass center. If low enough, even the grey wheel brakes won't tip you over.

If you dont wanna control the SAS with the same keys as the wheels, remap your keys. I control wheels with numpad, SAS with wasdqe.

Like cicatrix said, if you're using the grey wheels you might wanna disable front brakes

Sorry its just about the 1000th post that i read about bad rovers...

Edited February 17, 2015 by Overfloater

[pizzaoverhead]

The stock wheels are poorly tuned in terms of suspension, traction and response times. Use Modular Multiwheels instead. The Muscle Car mod is a great example of what can be done with it. Try doing this in stock without flipping over:

[Majorjim!]

Yup another rovers suck thread..

Perhaps you should spend a little time actually developing one and less time moaning.

Experiment, test, repeat.

Oh yes, grumpyJim is back!!

[Beale]

In my experience, it's always a speed problem.

What feels like a very boring 20m/s is already over 70km/h!

Drive a rover at a more realistic 8m/s-ish and all the described problems go away.

It would just be much nicer if wheels behaved well under time-warp, then slower speeds would be more agreeable.

[Van Disaster]

"Slow", was it?

"Break easily"?

( that was still usable when it landed! )

"Don't use them on Minmus"

Probably the main reason they're so bad is the same as a lot of KSP gameplay faults - there's nothing much to do when you land. Even ISRU mods only give you the opportunity to keep going places a bit more cheaply/efficiently.

[Yukon0009]

I dropped a rover off the VAB once.

Long story short: they are tough.

Therefore, useful.

[cantab]

Squad should provide better default rover controls, but for the time being you can remap them. I like to use the number pad.

You have no ABS and no analogue brake control, so you'll have to pump the brakes as needed, like we did in racing games before analogue controllers came along. Alternatively use reverse drive to slow down more gently.

KSP's planets are big and empty and metres per second are unfamiliar units. The result is we tend to hoon it around at 70 miles an hour off-road on other planets and moons. Crashes are what we deserve for that.

And on a final note, if you want to enjoy driving in KSP, set up a controller and use chase cam. The combination is so much more engaging, it's like an actual driving game then.

[Renegrade]

"Don't use them on Minmus"

BAH! That Minmus rover is WAY TOO SENSIBLE!

Let me show you how CRAZY is done:

This:

Docked to form this:

After 45 minutes of driving like 100m. Very slowly and tippily.

All for the Minmus Paper Airplane League.

Not doing that again.

[zarakon]

Build an old-school rover like this one

Landing gear wheels are indestructible. Put them on some flexy parts for a bit of suspension. Rocket engine for acceleration, RCS for braking, turning, and aerial maneuvering, because it WILL go off the ground. It goes fast and it's durable. On bodies with little or no atmosphere, it can cover a large amount of ground because you hardly ever need to use fuel. Driving with IVA view is a blast, and makes it feel even faster.

[boxman]

There is some weird lag involved with brakes (if you set them and leave 'em on for a while, they seem to take forever to disengage).

If you steer either left or right after turning of brakes they should disengage much faster.

[Norpo]

Rocket engine for acceleration

I like the way you think.

In any case, I don't bother much with rovers anymore. Every single rover mission so far has gone wrong, so I don't have much to add.