Why do rovers suck so much?

[Corw]

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?

Not having to press key all the time would help. And a throttle.

[John FX]

I'd just like to be able to see what speed I am doing in MPH (preferred) or KPH. Most of my problems would go away at that point because I would see I was doing 30-40mph and slow down. As it is I see I am doing 15-20m/s and speed up.

After living in the real world for a while I am very familiar with what I should be able to do at certain MPH speeds and I have trouble relating that to m/s.

EDIT : Hadn't read the thread, I can see other people have suggested this already, which is nice.

I suggested this a while ago in the suggestions forum.

Edited February 20, 2015 by John FX

[Red Iron Crown]

I'd just like to be able to see what speed I am doing in MPH (preferred) or KPH. Most of my problems would go away at that point because I would see I was doing 30-40mph and slow down. As it is I see I am doing 15-20m/s and speed up.

After living in the real world for a while I am very familiar with what I should be able to do at certain MPH speeds and I have trouble relating that to m/s.

EDIT : Hadn't read the thread, I can see other people have suggested this already, which is nice.

I suggested this a while ago in the suggestions forum.

A bit rough, but a rule of thumb for mph is 2x m/s. E.g. 10m/s is ~20mph.

[Kerba Fett]

Ever notice that there's lots of mods for most features of KSP but very few focused on rovers?

It's probably because as others have mentioned rovers are mostly pointless. If you want to travel short distances, the vastly overpowered jet pack is faster and easier. If you want to travel long distances, it's easier to just take your lander. (at least on low gravity bodies)

Compared to either option the rover is a slow clumsy alternative.

If the jet pack were nerfed and your short range option were walking or a rover then rovers would get more attention.

The fact that the standard rovemate is a giant block of nothing doesn't help either. It's huge but has no battery, no reaction wheels, no fuel and no storage space. As near as I can tell its only purpose is to make the COM higher.

[Renegrade]

I'd just like to be able to see what speed I am doing in MPH (preferred) or KPH. Most of my problems would go away at that point because I would see I was doing 30-40mph and slow down. As it is I see I am doing 15-20m/s and speed up.

FAR can do m/s, knots, mph, and km/h. FAR icon->Airspd Settings->click on your favorite unit (only applies to surface measurement I believe). I"ve seen some small-scale standalone mods that offer similar functionality.

(The conversion to km/h is exactly *3.6 to extend RIC's rule-of-thumb conversion)

The fact that the standard rovemate is a giant block of nothing doesn't help either. It's huge but has no battery, no reaction wheels, no fuel and no storage space. As near as I can tell its only purpose is to make the COM higher.

Actually it does have a tiny battery, but it really is..tiny. I think I'll address that in my Horrible Nerf. Thanks for the idea (yoink!)

(might also see about lowering it's CoM. Would be a bit fake, but given the limitations involved with the parts we have, fair enough)

[GeorgeG]

The old DEMV-5 rovers worked BEAUTIFULLY! Like Dune Buggies! Driving on Gilly was fun! Wish the rovers using stock game parts would behave the same way. Or that the old DEMV-5's could be brought back to life.

BTW - it is not just any little obstacle that flips rovers. Sometimes, no obstacle at all. I was driving around on Duna with a rover made of stock parts, specifically custom made with a very low CG, HARD to flip, driving along at maybe 8 m/s on a very slight slope, going uphill. But it kept running into some invisible something that flipped it. Not a single invisible object, more like an invisible wall. Probably where one bock of terrain ended and the next block began, since I tried going some different ways but always flipped over when I finally turned and started going back in the original direction I wanted to go, far away horizontally from the earlier flips. Did a small Hyperedit jump to get past that zone, then it happened AGAIN somewhere else. Out of total frustration I used HyperEdit to "land" it at the object I was trying to drive to 2 kilometers away. Maybe not 100% fair, but then flipping 6 times in a row due to the same terrain BUG in the game felt fair for the frustration of the situation (this is supposed be FUN...).

- GeorgeG

Edited February 20, 2015 by GeorgeG

[Renegrade]

Probodobodyne RoveMate 2.0!

Initial draft!

// Probodobodyne RoveMate :: Squad/Parts/Utility/roverBody/roverBody.cfg
@PART[roverBody]
{
	//@TechRequired = fieldScience
	//@category = Structural
	//mass = 0.15
	//cost = 800

	CoMOffset = 0, -0.1, 0.0 // (SHOULD) lower the CoM in default orientation

	@RESOURCE[ElectricCharge]
	{
		// a battery of 0.15 mass should have 3k charge, but I'm leaving some out.
		@amount = 2000
		@maxAmount = 2000
	}

	// can store science results:
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleScienceContainer

		reviewActionName = Review Stored Data
		storeActionName = Store Experiments
		evaOnlyStorage = True
		storageRange = 2.0
	}
}

Would that make the RoveMate suck less?

[SpenSpaceCorp]

In my opinion, I use rovers as refueling vessels and utility vehicles. For instance, if I have a base on the surface of the Mun, I may have a fuel source on the surface and a lander that ferries Kerbals to and from the surface to orbit. Rovers are great to transfer fuel from a deposit to a vessel.

[cpast]

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.

I think you used autopilot wrong. With Mechjeb, the part you're controlling from needs to face forwards -- if the navbal is all blue when the rover is flat on the ground, it thinks your rover is facing vertically. On a flat surface, the dot in the middle of the navball should be on the line between the blue and brown halves of the navball. Autopilot used to work really badly for me, but once I changed that (and turned off torque, as stability control was being annoying), it works really well (I let it run a rover on Minmus with 10 m/s top speed, and while I checked in from time to time, it never had issues except when it reached and inevitably overshot the destination).

Edited February 20, 2015 by cpast

[Nikolai]

And a throttle.

How about some kind of cruise control that attempts to keep the rover within a band around a speed that you set, applying throttle and brakes as necessary?

[Wjolcz]

The old DEMV-5 rovers worked BEAUTIFULLY! Like Dune Buggies! Driving on Gilly was fun! Wish the rovers using stock game parts would behave the same way. Or that the old DEMV-5's could be brought back to life.

They did! And the stock wheels are rubbish compared to DEMV. As I said about one million times: Suspension slider would fix them all.

[RatchetinSpace]

Whenever I build my rovers (or planes for that matter) I just set up the action groups so the brake button only activates the back breaks. Anyone who has ever ridden a bike will tell you its next to impossible to tip your vehicle end over end if only the back breaks are firing.

[Commander Zoom]

I think you used autopilot wrong. With Mechjeb, the part you're controlling from needs to face forwards -- if the navbal is all blue when the rover is flat on the ground, it thinks your rover is facing vertically. On a flat surface, the dot in the middle of the navball should be on the line between the blue and brown halves of the navball. Autopilot used to work really badly for me, but once I changed that (and turned off torque, as stability control was being annoying), it works really well (I let it run a rover on Minmus with 10 m/s top speed, and while I checked in from time to time, it never had issues except when it reached and inevitably overshot the destination).

It's not just him. I've done a LOT of roving on Duna with a decent-sized rover (cupola + hitchhiker + large SAS and other stuff, eight wheels on side-mounted rails) and while MechJeb is great for holding speed over flat land, it's very touchy when it comes to braking. It'll sometimes let the speed creep up on downslopes and then hit the brakes, just as described, often resulting in an accident and the need to quickload. I run along flats at 15-20 m/s, but have to reduce to 10 or even 5 m/s for rougher ground or steep descents.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

They're a pain to build, a pain to transport and don't do anything that walking with timewarp on won't fix already.

You only put them there on principle alone.

[FleshJeb]

It's not just him. I've done a LOT of roving on Duna with a decent-sized rover (cupola + hitchhiker + large SAS and other stuff, eight wheels on side-mounted rails) and while MechJeb is great for holding speed over flat land, it's very touchy when it comes to braking. It'll sometimes let the speed creep up on downslopes and then hit the brakes, just as described, often resulting in an accident and the need to quickload. I run along flats at 15-20 m/s, but have to reduce to 10 or even 5 m/s for rougher ground or steep descents.

I just started playing with the Rover Autopilot myself. I built a similar rover to yours (2.5m, 8 rail-mounted wheels, 15 tons). I installed some very low-slung skidplates/bumpers on the ends. When the brakes or terrain tip it forward, the skidplate catches and pops the nose back up. It's scary as hell, but I have enough SAS on it that the Stability Control flattens it out in mid-air. It'll safely sustain 23m/s in moderate terrain on Kerbin, and 12m/s on the Mun.

Just rebuilt a simplified version:

[John FX]

Whenever I build my rovers (or planes for that matter) I just set up the action groups so the brake button only activates the back breaks. Anyone who has ever ridden a bike will tell you its next to impossible to tip your vehicle end over end if only the back breaks are firing.

To me this suggests a tweakable braking amount (0-100%) for each wheel would be the best solution, like a real car, then you could set your front brakes to something like 30-50% and your rear ones to 100%.

Should be easy to set up and would help no end.

[Spatzimaus]

They're a pain to build, a pain to transport and don't do anything that walking with timewarp on won't fix already.

You only put them there on principle alone.

In stock maybe, but add mods and they can do many things that you want, and that walking just can't do. (The same is true of space stations, unmanned probes, and so on... if you're not using mods, you're going to be VERY limited in what you build.)

The most obvious mods for this discussion are Kethane and Karbonite; add resource generation through drilling and refining, and you'll want a mobile platform to do this. These rovers can refuel anything that lands even remotely near them, which makes things a LOT easier than a static base. You won't often be traveling to other biomes with this sort of design, but you'll still need them to be able to drive to wherever your nearby landed/crashed ships are.

Not to toot my own horn, but here are a couple of my own designs from 0.25 that illustrate some of these issues:

The smaller design in front is the Iguana, a 30-ton rover with eight wheels. Due to its height (necessitated by the 2.5m kethane tanks) it was unfortunately unstable at high speeds, so I'm redesigning it now that I've switched from Kethane to Karbonite to be a much flatter design. You can't really see in that shot, but the rover has VTOL rocket engines (originally on the sides, which I've had to use several times when the rover hit a bump and started to tumble. It's a fast design, easily going 50m/s on flat terrain, but since the wheels are stock there's no cruise control and the tires had a tendency to rip at even the slightest bump. Still, it was a great design for refueling or emergency recovery, along with any "plant flag" missions I wanted to do before I had a real base in place.

The design in back is Mun Unit Zappa, my 600-ton mobile base. While it's designed along the same basic principle (cylindrical body with rows of wheels along the lower sides), it was far more stable in practice and so didn't need any kind of vertical engines. It uses 22 caterpillar tracks (from a mod, obviously); its top speed is only ~11m/s, but those tracks DO include a cruise control, so it can maintain that speed pretty much indefinitely and eight of the tracks (four each at the front and back) are raised a bit so it can even handle slope transitions without problems. Plus, the tracks don't break like rover wheels do, so you didn't even need to pay much attention to it. Like the smaller Iguana, the Zappa included Kethane drills (albeit much larger ones) and all the power generation and such necessary for a refinery, and the two were designed to connect to each other (with the Iguana pulling under the front of the Zappa to link up with the docking ports there).

Because of its sheer mass and the characteristics of the tracks, stability wasn't really an issue. Braking, on the other hand... not only was it slow to accelerate and brake, but turning was really iffy unless you were either at top speed (where it'd just stop driving the wheels on one side) or at rest (where it could pivot by reversing the drive on one side). There wasn't much in between, and that's a problem.

------------------------------------

But back to the original discussion: it'd be nice if the stock rover wheels included all the extra bits that mods have added (adjustable suspensions, cruise control, intelligent throttles, etc.). And it'd be nice if things like braking were handled more intelligently by the game engine, with the equivalent of ABS being standard on all wheels. We had the same complaints about SAS, with it needing a more intelligent algorithm than just "I want to rotate that direction", and we got it in a recent version, so why not expect something similar for wheels in the future?

But, a lot of the headaches we have can be avoided with just a bit of intelligent design, even without a change in the code. It took me a while to realize that I could disable the brakes on certain wheels/gears, which was a tremendous improvement in general, but even the defaults work well if your designs are done well. I mean, look at that Iguana design above; the wheel base just isn't nearly wide enough for a design of that height and mass, and I knew it, but it took a complete invalidation of the existing design (the 0.25->0.90 transition) to make me fix the issue.

[Azimech]

Your rovers suck? Aw ...

[Overland]

Not having to press key all the time would help. And a throttle.

I generally set the rovers wheels to my joystick throttle in the game settings.. used as a reverser then just use the generators to control speed with the turbines alternators.. no holding anything really.. its heavily modded but it can be done the same with any rover stock in the same way.. although using a xbox360 pad vs a proper joystick you'd still need to hold a trigger..

I agree in some way that stock rover components do suck..

it might seem like a sidestep of sorts but having learnt to modify things to meet my needs given that its a single player game as of yet..

ive had some great successes... I just finished a 60km round trip 30km outside of KSC with a 4 car fuel train

I will say though.. the default steering is terrible.. the auto steering gets it completely wrong alot of times.. when coupled upto a train and light engine.. ive set a button in the actions to reverse steering on the rear bogeys so the locomotive turns within 2-3 of her lengths.. by default they seem to be set to steer opposite way despite being in automatic steering mode on the config file

(proper steering enabled on rear bogeys KS-3)

Edited February 22, 2015 by Overland

[Commander Zoom]

http://i.imgur.com/txyXR28l.png

Nice design. And yeah, rather similar to mine (which was, of course, inspired by ones I'd seen here on the forums), though I don't have the lab in the middle. I'll have to consider that, and the skidplate, for my next game.

To add a little more to this post, here's an anecdote from my own roving, illustrating both the perils and the rewards:

During a drive on Duna, the rover hits a long down slope. Having taken the autopilot offline to let the rover free-wheel, and now past the speed where passive braking (holding down the reverse key) has any effect, the driver has no choice but to take heading control offline as well (as even touching the steering at this point will surely flip them*) and pray that stability control keeps the rover upright. This it does, and after a wild ride of at least five klicks - with a maximum speed of 40.6 m/s, perilously close to wheel failure - a convenient hill finally slows them down and ends the excitement without having to resort to a quickload.

* and may have; memory is fuzzy after all that white-knuckled excitement, but I seem to recall a full barrel-roll that ended up with the rover back on its wheels, early on (at a mere 25 m/s or so). No doubt the guys in back thought that was great fun!

[Aragosnat]

They're a pain to build, a pain to transport and don't do anything that walking with timewarp on won't fix already.

You only put them there on principle alone.

Walking cannot get you goo science from every new biome. Excpecially if you add the science lab to clean the science parts. Collected all my Mun science just using 2 rovers. Would have been just one if I went slower on my first one.

Also is a pain to move 1 Kerbal at a time.

[Gerandar]

Walking cannot get you goo science from every new biome. Excpecially if you add the science lab to clean the science parts. Collected all my Mun science just using 2 rovers. Would have been just one if I went slower on my first one.

Also is a pain to move 1 Kerbal at a time.

its much faster (with or without mods) to just set up a small refueling station around the mun and send a lander to ever biome.(hell with some mods you dont even need a refuling station the mun can be used to get fuel.)

[tater]

Transport is the biggest PITA to me. I'd like some ability to construct items in situ that is less extensive than Extraplanetary Launch Pads. Like a few containers that have a dry mass, plus an allowance for "cargo" that can be assembled after landing, perhaps by an engineer kerbal. Item must be below some part count, and not more than a certain mass for the container. You could have 1.25m versions that hold some fraction of a ton of craft, and then some 2.5m versions. Maybe the engineer uses a mechanism like flag planting within X meters of the landed container, and the craft is built on that spot.

[ShadowZone]

I actually managed to make a rover that doesn't suck but rock! Manages 23 m/s and sustained 4x time acceleration (at least on Kerbin) without a problem. Landed it on Eve to scout out possible return launch sites. And it can swim with its ion engines as (slow) propulsion.

http://i.imgur.com/oIh4jlk.png

And it looks like an evil bull when entering the atmosphere backwards

http://i.imgur.com/AMviJao.png

[Barefoot Friar]

Temstar is a genius when it comes to rover designs. I downloaded and began using his Modular Base Kit, and have been especially impressed with the Base Crawler. Not only is it great for moving base modules around, but it is also a great chassis for other uses as well. I took one and modified it into a rover for gravitational and temperature scans on Minmus and the Mun, adding lights, a "roll cage", a command chair, and the appropriate scientific instruments. I then built a sky crane that looks a bit like a four-legged spider that will take the rover to the location and wait while I rove around and get my data before rolling back and docking back up to be taken back into orbit.

I've found that disabling power on the front and back wheels and locking steering on the middle wheels is the best option. I've learned something about probe core orientation on this thread, so I'm going to work it in to the design. Other than that, I can't ask for much more.

Rovers are slow, but they do have their uses. I just really stink and designing them from scratch.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Barefoot Friar
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