Why do rovers suck so much?

[klgraham1013]

Most of your concerns have already been addressed, but since we're speaking about rovers...

- ABS brakes and cruise control would make driving with a keyboard much more tolerable. Not having throttle control on movement can be a pain.

- Wheels need to work at all angles. If the wheel is touching the ground, it should work just as well as if it's pointing straight down.

- Can we get some small dedicated rover parts? I'm tired of building rovers "the Kerbal way."

[Red Iron Crown]

I rarely rove for any distance. They're great for maneuvering base pieces together, but if I'm going any significant distance I prefer to fly (suborbital hops on airless bodies, planes on Eve/Kerbin/Laythe).

[Renegrade]

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

I'll have to try that out, thanks.

[boxman]

I find rover to be pretty stable overall if they have wide enough wheelbase and you turn of things like torque from sas/reaction wheels.

You can also be creative and improve suspension by using parts that are flexible. I for example made some really nice handling rovers that handle rough terrain by using radial decouplers for extra suspension.

[pincushionman]

I keep my reaction wheels on. But I don't brake unless I reeeally have to; applying backwards wheel power works better for me. And then the reaction wheels counter the overturning moment.

But I agree with another poster earlier - the problem with rovers isn't really the rovers; the surfaces of the workds really aren't that interesting.

[PB666]

They suck because they have secret lives as robotic vacuum cleaners

[Madrias]

Kerbal Foundaries solved 98% of my rover problems. Now if Squad could neaten up the terrain seams, I'd have 99% of the problems solved. There's still no places to go that would make using rovers more fun. Even if the simple thing on Kerbin would be to dot the landscape with towns, cities, and villages, it'd give something to do when we're not blasting Kerbals halfway across orbit because we forgot the parachutes again.

As for breaking, let's see you get in your car/truck/van/whatever and go barreling across dirt roads and fields at 45 m/s (100 mph or 162 k/ph) and see how long the vehicle holds up. If you don't burst all of your tires after the first rough bump, you're sure to either total your suspension, bend the frame, or flip the vehicle.

Sure, 22 m/s seems painfully slow (and yes, it does, even for me) when you're traveling over a featureless surface with no reference marks as to how fast you're going. It's the same as driving down a dirt or gravel road with short cut grass on either side and dirt and fields for miles.

If you're insistant on running stock rover wheels, get Wheel Sounds. They'll give you some form of reference mark as to your speed without needing to stare at the numbers when driving. That, and drive with your rover commands remapped so you can have SAS and Drive active at both times.

[Torquemadus]

It's Megarover! She's gone from suck to blow!!!

What are those things coming out of it's cabin?

KERBALS?!!!

Oh ****, there goes the planetoid!

Edited February 17, 2015 by Torquemadus

[Randazzo]

I used to hate rovers too, then I started creating them with low and balanced CoM. Now they're actually fun, but I have no use for them other than to send them somewhere and go "Ooooo, Aaaaah"

[zekes]

Here's my solution to making a fast reliable rover.

-Low COM

-SAS stabilization (this helps a LOT - it keeps the rover from flipping or anything)

-Many wheels - four is often not enough, i'd say 6 or 8 for up hills and enough torque. ALso, the more weight on the rover the better traction you get.

[Stargate525]

-Many wheels - four is often not enough, i'd say 6 or 8 for up hills and enough torque. ALso, the more weight on the rover the better traction you get.

And that is counter-intuitive to the extreme; to get up hills and obstacles, you want to be HEAVIER. Only in KSP.

[SkyRender]

The biggest problem with rovers is the bug that causes suspension to vanish for about 15 seconds when you cross between two polygons. I'm not kidding, you can even see it in action: the rover wheels will suddenly push the vehicle up to maximum height and refuse to adjust at all for several seconds. In the process, the vehicle becomes extremely unstable, wobbling easily and potentially flipping at any speed under any gravitational pull. Fixing this is definitely something that needs to happen before 1.0 hits.

[smjjames]

I keep my reaction wheels on. But I don't brake unless I reeeally have to; applying backwards wheel power works better for me. And then the reaction wheels counter the overturning moment.

But I agree with another poster earlier - the problem with rovers isn't really the rovers; the surfaces of the workds really aren't that interesting.

Yeah, theres not much reason to make a rover if you don't have something interesting to rove towards.

Earlier, I made a six wheeled rugged rover to traverse the mountains to try and get at an anomaly that was at the peak. The rover handled the terrain very well, and some tips for slopes, when going down them, GO SLOW. MJs rover autopilot was of help here. And when going up slopes, oftentimes it's easier to go along the slope at an angle than directly attack it.

My main gripe with rovers before I got the hangar mod is that you can't put them in a box and land that box, so to speak.

[TimePeriod]

If I have to build a rover in its conventional sense I build it with two layers of wheels, top and bottom. It may look freaky but I quite honestly cba to deal with flip overs.

Rovers are rubbish enough as it is, no need to turn masochistic.

[zekes]

And that is counter-intuitive to the extreme; to get up hills and obstacles, you want to be HEAVIER. Only in KSP.

It's true in real life too - you need traction not speed to go upwards. In KSP rovers are so ultralight for their axels they cause hardly any friction, but if they're heavier the wheels are pushed into the ground more, and so they grip better.

[FlyingPete]

I have this contraption on Eve as part of the colony mission there:

It's useful for carrying the colonists around and is pretty sturdy. The trick is to make it low and wide for stability. Rovers are pretty useless on places like Minmus though- there's just not enough traction on the wheels. Adding more mass increases traction but at the same time increases momentum so is a pointless exercise. On places like this it's best to have a lander that can make short hops around to explore, or alternatively something with RCS thrusters or ion engines to push itself around. Electric rovers are definitely better suited to higher-gravity environments.

I never bother with docking mode, so instead I remapped the rover controls to the arrow keys. When I'm using my gamepad I set it to the same controls (d-pad) as the rcs translation controls.

[Renegrade]

It's true in real life too - you need traction not speed to go upwards.

Traction, yes. Mass, no.

Mass is on both sides of the traction/friction equation, and tends cancels itself out. (Traction is basically static friction in most situations, and that's like Cf*Mass. the force it fights is something like sin(incline)*mass)

Otherwise R/C cars couldn't climb hills. And trust me, they do.

I very much suspect that Squad's made a math booboo when it comes to wheels... wouldn't be the first time

Edited February 17, 2015 by Renegrade

[Slam_Jones]

I personally love rovers. I kinda wish they had internal combustion engines for better speed and electricity generation, though.

As far as handling, it's not too bad. As others have undoubtedly pointed out, driving in Docking Mode means you won't be using the reaction wheels and flipping your rover.

I've had success when seperating the steering/accelerating controls from the reaction wheel controls. Using them seperately, I can drive across Mun, adjusting trim and not flipping quite effectively.

[ShadowZone]

Thanks to everyone mentioning the remapping of the controls. I will try that the next time!

Regarding the comments about speed in game compared to real life. One of you nailed it: This is a problem of realism vs. fun... the fun is cut short by the need to drive less than 10m/s. Thankfully at least with MechJeb you get some kind of waypoint and autopilot system.

There should be some kind of "procedural anomalies"... things that just suddenly appear on your radar (if there were any) and if you check them out you get loads of science. Also: Cave systems and the like would be another way to make rovers more interesting.

[Renegrade]

There should be some kind of "procedural anomalies"... things that just suddenly appear on your radar (if there were any) and if you check them out you get loads of science. Also: Cave systems and the like would be another way to make rovers more interesting.

Well, ideally they'd be something you'd find while wheeling along on the ground (and they'd probably have to be small for that to make sense)... otherwise, we're back to the problem that a suborbital hopper really doesn't take that much fuel to go places. That being said, I wouldn't mind having some small procedural anomalies that can be investigated for science.

(I'm actually working up a math suite in my <sarcasm>copious free time</sarcasm> to calculate delta-v requirements for sub-orbital hoppers...)

[LethalDose]

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.

As an addendum to this, rover's need their own throttle control. We don't need to hold down Shift to keep the engines firing, so we shouldn't need to hold down any key to keep the wheels rolling. Rovers should just have a throttle that work like main engines do, because they work like main engines.

If there's an issue with between main throttle control and a more "docking style" approach (holding down a key to fire RCS engines), then let us toggle between them. Basically, There should be a dedicated rover control mode.

Actually, thinking about it more, I think having a rover throttle than set wheel speed would go a long way to end problems with rovers going too fast, because you wouldn't have to control speed by how frequently you press the key, or how long you hold it.

[cpast]

Second the throttle control. Having to hold down something to make it go works really, really, really well...but only if it's not a binary switch. Given that keyboards are binary, and binary motion control doesn't really work so well, we need a throttle. Particularly because it takes a while to rove somewhere; I'm not normally firing rocket engines on a trip, but if I'm roving the engine is always running (which is why I tend to control rovers via Mechjeb for actual trips: it lets me set it and do something else for a while while it roves, because I don't have time nor patience to spend 20 minutes or more holding 'W' while staring at perfectly monotonous scenery).

[Randazzo]

Rovers are pretty useless on places like Minmus though- there's just not enough traction on the wheels.

Au contraire mon frere!

[micr0wave]

i really like my rover, can cruise pretty fast even on minmus, you can always flip back in case you should land on the roof, which also has some sort of suspension, and always brought all my kerbals back home.

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[EdFred]

As an addendum to this, rover's need their own throttle control. We don't need to hold down Shift to keep the engines firing, so we shouldn't need to hold down any key to keep the wheels rolling. Rovers should just have a throttle that work like main engines do, because they work like main engines.

Odd, because in my truck and my car I have to hold the gas pedal down.