Why do rovers suck so much?

[Martijn404]

Ohw how I wish the Rovers were better in KSP. There are hundreds of driving / racing games around, its just a very nice thing to do.

But KSP is not a good driving game yet. It could be, and should be, for a few small changes:

1: Camera viewpoint connected to the car, not to the compass. I wanne see where i'm going. First-Person EVA might help there.

2: Better driving model. The tyre grip is so very wrong. The most basic traction circle does not seem to be implemented.

3: Better suspension model. Suspensions are shocks and springs, and both need to be changable for surface and gravity levels.

I'm not asking for iRacing-like 4-dimensional tyre-grip formulae and dynamic tyre wear and heating here, but just the basics to make driving fun.

Oh and why do wings never work in KSP to improve the tyre grip? Downforce should increase the grip of a tyre on the road, but in KSP the grip of the tyre doesnt seem to be affected.

Edited February 18, 2015 by Martijn404

[Tank Buddy]

I don't like to compare KSP to real life, but rovers don't go fast at all. Curiosity tops off at an impressive 0.04 m/s. So when you complain (I don't mean to be aggressive) about a rover having a top speed of 20 m/s (45 mph) it is far surpassing reality. (That is pretty fast for a small electric motor).

Also, you should map the rover controls to the arrow keys. It should be that way buy default, but I guess SQUAD didn't think of that. That way torque and steering are separate.

[Renegrade]

So when you complain (I don't mean to be aggressive) about a rover having a top speed of 20 m/s (45 mph) it is far surpassing reality. (That is pretty fast for a small electric motor).

Small quibble here, but it's usually the batteries or power source that's the problem with electric motors. For turning stuff that isn't movement into stuff that is movement, they're way more efficient and powerful per mass than any reciprocating heat-expansion engine.

As an example, my old 540-sized engine (roughly a D-cell in shape and size, less than 200 grams) was a fairly aggressive "modified" class engine - with a toothy pinion gear, it could drive my 1/10th scale offroader above 14m/s in what amounts to first gear (there aren't any other gears, at least, not back then). Of course this changed the runtime down from 8 minutes (a racing heat) to about 90-120s. And it would shoot out of controller range in very short order...and that was about 22-25 years ago. I imagine the insane li-poly cars of today reach escape velocity and end up hanging around near Ceres, assuming they don't explode when you plug 'em in.

TL;DR: you mean 'running on solar power'.

[tater]

I don't like to compare KSP to real life, but rovers don't go fast at all. Curiosity tops off at an impressive 0.04 m/s. So when you complain (I don't mean to be aggressive) about a rover having a top speed of 20 m/s (45 mph) it is far surpassing reality. (That is pretty fast for a small electric motor).

Also, you should map the rover controls to the arrow keys. It should be that way buy default, but I guess SQUAD didn't think of that. That way torque and steering are separate.

I think many of are discussing manned rovers. The Apollo rover was designed to max out at ~3.6 m/s as a reality check for people (13 kph).

[Tank Buddy]

I think many of are discussing manned rovers. The Apollo rover was designed to max out at ~3.6 m/s as a reality check for people (13 kph).

Considering the terrain these rovers are operating on, I just wanted to let the OP know that rover speed is far from F1 or NASCAR. As I said, I don't really like comparing or modeling KSP after real life, but super fast and maneuverable rovers don't really exist or make sense. Not that I'm against fast rovers or anything.

[Gerandar]

There's many more things to do than get science.

like what waste my time driving a slow(in comparison) rover for hours on end to get the same results I'd get with a planned manned mission with multiple landings?

[keeper]

I like building big heavy things, i dont move them around much, but when i have done, they have been real "missions" like any other flight, full of surprises, and totally unpredictable in different gravitys

[Aragosnat]

Geez - I'd call that a 'quality of life' problem and abort the mission. While reasonably cash-efficient, that would be very time-inefficient. An antipodal target would be like 1,256 and change km to drive to and from... :/

I grant you +1 internets for extreme patience~

You should talk to Wook. He did a round trip around Kerbin with several diffrent rovers and boats.

[Wjolcz]

Yeah, the rover wheels are really trash. They always work good only on Kerbin. Just like they were tested there only. Tweakeble suspension would help a lot.

I think it also depends on the terrain detail settings. The wheels seem to be more slippery and bbouncy when its set to lowest. I play with the lowest terrain settings, but seriously! Tweakable suspension would fix so many rovers! Adding more weight to get grip is just dumb.

Also, probably said many times in this thread, but for those who use AWSD to steer: better remap it to JKIL. Helps a lot.

E: Brakes on those things are the reason I use the reverse gear. VRRRRRRRR! Shredding that gearbox!

Edited February 19, 2015 by Veeltch

[Red Iron Crown]

E: Brakes on those things are the reason I use the reverse gear. VRRRRRRRR! Shredding that gearbox!

Given that the wheels are electrically powered, that is likely not all that hard on the hardware.

Maybe we should have regenerative braking like in hybrid cars, where the wheels drive the motors under braking to charge the battery.

[Caelib]

I think the issue with Rovers in KSP is that there just isn't much to do with them until we get smaller/micro-biomes. It's currently not practical to move a rover to a different biome by simply driving it there -- compared this to real-world rovers that travel very slow and do experiments based on different types of surfaces, such as rocks vs sand, etc. These rovers move so slow and might travel several kilometers per YEAR.

So, eventually KSP might be able to have this, but until this concept is implemented, I don't see probe-based rovers ever being useful. Or giving some sort of autopilot to rovers so they can move autonomous and you can time-warp move them safely.

[Renegrade]

You should talk to Wook. He did a round trip around Kerbin with several diffrent rovers and boats.

Yeah, I recall his post. I gave him +1 internets or cookies or such too for persistence if I recall correctly (or rep or something).

It's still crazy though~ heh

Given that the wheels are electrically powered, that is likely not all that hard on the hardware.

The RC cars I used to race did that. Typically, they'd just put a load across the motor wires, with reducing resistance for harder braking (non-regenerative though).

I think the issue with Rovers in KSP is that there just isn't much to do with them until we get smaller/micro-biomes. It's currently not practical to move a rover to a different biome by simply driving it there -- compared this to real-world rovers that travel very slow and do experiments based on different types of surfaces, such as rocks vs sand, etc. These rovers move so slow and might travel several kilometers per YEAR.

Agreed - the usage falls short aside from player-designed missions. I've done some where my mission is "drive on Minmus" (for example) .. for the sole purpose of driving on Minmus for fun. Which is fine, but I'd also like rovers to have some sort of use within the actual career game too :/

[keeper]

it would be nice to be able to leave my rover on a low speed and direction and go manage something else for a few days while it drives past where i wanted to be.

I've used rover autopilot on mechjeb and some other mod. Now then, unless i've done it wrong, the thing will usually blow itself up very shortly after i engage autopilot.

Seems the steering direction, throttle control and BRAKES are a bit - all or nothing. Auto pilot for rovers are WORSE at stopping, slowing down, keeping the thing level, climbing hills, moving accross gradients. etc. without constant adult supervision. Once a wheel leaves the ground, that autopilot goes into ... mode and guarentees disaster. Unless your doing 2m/s or less. Then if you go 0.1 over the designated speed, it slams on brakes full so your doing cartwheels in the bloody rover, i wouldn't recomend autopilot.

I did find using waypoints made driving a bit easier, it helps to navigate around terrain, and end up exactly where you want but not actually letting the autopilot take control of anything and i'm 100% more likely to live.

Rovers dont suck I think they're brilliant!

Not easy and not much point for the time being but STILL. I see this thread, i think you should re-name to "why rovers kick ass" All points are still valid.

Most of my ground rover missions have turned out to be 100% manually controlled full on missions from A to B.

The longest drive i've done was in a kethane mining lorry thing on minmus, i did 90km. Quicksaved every 5-10km, few hiccups more or less should have been a first time success. WAsn't easy driving, controlling, (landing again) but the hardest part was the patience. The gamble on weather to go faster sometimes paid off, other times cost me to re-load :/

That Idea about using the motors as regenerative brakes is good, i'd like to see that. Maybe as a customisable, I wouldn't want that on all the time.

[Greenfire32]

Deactivating breaks on front wheels saves sooo much headache it's criminal.

The biggest contributor to "rover suckage" is surface speed. Maybe there should be a "Rover Speed" category in addition to the "Surface Speed" category. I see a lot of people driving rovers at 30m/s and higher and that like....really fast (like 100 km/h and greater!)

So maybe there should be an option to display surface speed in terms of miles per hour and kilometers per hour so that people have a better idea of how fast they're actually going, because lets face it, we've all looked at the speed indicator and said to ourselves, "30 m/s isn't that fast, I need moar powa!"

[Gerandar]

Deactivating breaks on front wheels saves sooo much headache it's criminal.

The biggest contributor to "rover suckage" is surface speed. Maybe there should be a "Rover Speed" category in addition to the "Surface Speed" category. I see a lot of people driving rovers at 30m/s and higher and that like....really fast (like 100 km/h and greater!)

So maybe there should be an option to display surface speed in terms of miles per hour and kilometers per hour so that people have a better idea of how fast they're actually going, because lets face it, we've all looked at the speed indicator and said to ourselves, "30 m/s isn't that fast, I need moar powa!"

That wont stop people from saying its slow just because your driving at 100km/h doesn't mean its not going to take you 2-3 hours to get across the planet or moon that you are driving on and that makes it feel much to "slow" when compared to just landing at the target locations with manned missions.

[Xannari Ferrows]

Optimal rovers are tough to build. Especially if you want them compact. But building rovers is far better in the long run. You save cash, no worry about a piloting mistake, and in a way, it's much more enjoyable [if you're a patient person]. Building my first rover, it sucked. It wanted to flip all around, in never steered quite right, and it was just a mess. Now, rovers are easy for me. Of course, I don't build them for speed, I build them for results. If it works, use it.

You don't need a dragster to go around and do your science. Although, I do have a Laythe dragster somewhere...

[Greenfire32]

That wont stop people from saying its slow just because your driving at 100km/h

What I mean to say is that there's a disconnect with the majority of players in terms of how surface speed is conveyed. Most players don't really know how fast 30 m/s is other than it's... 30 meters per second.

If rovers could have their speed displayed in the much more common/understood/accepted format of miles/kilometers per hour, I feel that many people would "slow down" and much (if not all) of the rover "problems" would go away.

Flipping is the biggest challenge for rovers. Most people will assume that it's due to lighter gravity, and that's certainly part of it, but a huge contributor to flippage is going too fast and slowing down too quickly.

I feel that simply conveying surface speed in Miles or Kilometers per hour would help curve this. Not saying it won't solve the problem. But it'll let players know that going 400 miles per hour on the Munar surface isn't probably in their best interest.

[Temeter]

Flipping is often caused by a high center of mass. Just look at real cars, they are usually relatively flat designs with a low center of mass (this matters even more for sports cars). The m/s =! kmh point is also important. 100m/s are 360kmh.

The one thing bothering me about rovers is the way traction is handled. Always feels like you're driving on ice, even more so under time acceleration. Also, i want faster ones without silly safety precautions (in stock). It's not like my rockets have any.

Edited February 19, 2015 by Temeter

[Roflcopterkklol]

Flipping is often caused by a high center of mass. Just look at real cars, they are usually relatively flat designs with a low center of mass (this matters even more for sports cars). The m/s =! kmh point is also important. 100m/s are 360kmh.

The one thing bothering me about rovers is the way traction is handled. Always feels like you're driving on ice, even more so under time acceleration. Also, i want faster ones without silly safety precautions (in stock). It's not like my rockets have any.

Only problem with keeping the CoM low on a "rover" is you also need suspension to absorb the impacts, remember 100m/s = 360kmh, that is a pretty high speed to be doing jumps at. Anywho.. Rovers in KSP do have to be over designed, heck this one here took 6 tries to get right.

[tater]

The larger issue going forward is perhaps getting rovers, particularly specialized varieties, to the destination. I manage now with FAR, and larger than stock worlds, but I intentionally make rovers mostly pretty small.

I would like to be able to move habs around to create larger bases, but the task of making sufficiently large rovers/cranes/etc to maneuver them around is daunting if I do not wish to make really absurd looking rockets. Yeah, I can put the habs on their own wheels, but it's not my favorite aesthetic.

[SaturnV]

Pitch and brake sucks but I can live with them, not a big problem.

What really disappointed me is the lack of suspension.

[Semmel]

The problem with rovers is, that there is no where to go with them. Before Beta, there were no targets at all for rovers, the whole surface of a body was equal everywhere. Since bioms are now a thing, rovers have some uses, but not much because the distances between bioms are so great that a rover is not a good idea. And you have to micromanage the rover much much more than a hopper or a one-point lander. So the problem with rovers is not so much that they are hard to drive, the problem is that they are so useless.

[eddiew]

The problem with rovers is, that there is no where to go with them....

I'd argue that a seismic survey on Eve is ideally suited for a rover mission You seriously do not want to be making an Eve hopper.

That said, I would like to see more support for roving experiments, such as a science instrument that (without contracts) would require multiple readings at least 1km apart. Any geological survey would want datapoints from several places, so it's not too much to ask, really.

[Red Iron Crown]

You seriously do not want to be making an Eve hopper.

Ion planes work very nicely as Eve hoppers. That thick atmo means lots of lift.

[Xannari Ferrows]

The problem with rovers is, that there is no where to go with them. Before Beta, there were no targets at all for rovers, the whole surface of a body was equal everywhere. Since bioms are now a thing, rovers have some uses, but not much because the distances between bioms are so great that a rover is not a good idea. And you have to micromanage the rover much much more than a hopper or a one-point lander. So the problem with rovers is not so much that they are hard to drive, the problem is that they are so useless.

The distance between the biomes is not an issue. If you build a rover, or play this game in fact, you need patience, and a lot of it. These things take time. I myself have spent hours of time roving around alone, but I get the leisure of saying it was all worth it. Would you rather waste money on fuel for a hopper that you really don't even need?