Overview
In this guide I will give some tips to help you to create rovers, Land it and the most exiting, Drive it !
Introduction
Hi ! This guide is for beginners and players who have any idea about how to build a rover. I will give you some tips on how to build/improve a rover then land it. I am not expert in rover building but here is some tips that I think can help you to have a good rover experience, hope it will help you in your rover quest !
Tips to improve a rover
Here is some tips to improve your rover if you already have one or if you want to build one by yourself
- Keep the center of mass horizontally centered and as low as possible. It will help to stabilize your rover and prevent fliping when braking
- Know the max speed of the wheel you used and stay a bit under
- Wide base means better stability
- You can put landing legs on the top of your rover, as this can help to place it on its wheels again if you flip it
- Disable braking on wheels that are in front of the center of mass to prevent flipping when braking, you can increase the braking value of the other wheels if braking isn’t strong enouth
Build a rover step by step
In this section I will show you how to build a simple rover for those who have any clues on how to build it, it’s just an exemple and it looks like the stock rover but with this instruction you can build what you want
to start put your symmetry to mirror and don’t forget the construction gizmos
- start by build a wide base or your rover will flip at the first brake :
- Then, put wheels and look at the max speed (Motor Max Speed, here 12m/s)
- Next, put a command pod and a reaction wheel:
- Then, battery banks:
- Science devices for those who play in carrer mod:
- Antenna are essential for rover who are controlled by probe cores, and for transmiting science to kerbal space center:
- Solar panel for generating electical charge:
If you are far away from the sun (in jool system or eeloo), solar panel won’t be very useful and might not generate enought electrical charge to keep your rover alive.RTGs are a good solution because they don’t need to be facing the sun to work , and are alot more efficient than fuel cells but they are VERY expensive in carrer mode - For big rovers or those with a lots of wheels, it can help to disable steering on all but not the front wheels:
- Disable the break on the wheels that are in front of the Center of mass:(center of mass is, well the center of all the mass of the craft. On my rover the center of mass is in the middle. ) 100 is the braking value by default, turn it to 0 turn it off.
Now you have your rover, it is fast finish ! You now have to decide where you want to land it !
some Celestials bodies have atmosphere other don’t. Depending on whether or not there is an atmosphere, our rover design might be changed.For non-Atmospheric Landings
Non-atmospheric landing mean that on the planet there is no atmosphere to slow you, parachute don’t work and you will need to use boosters to brake. So I will use a “skycrane”it’s the skycrane from the stock rover, I just add more fuel.
then I attach it to the rover and add an airstream protective shell for the liftoff.
For Atmospheric landings
remove fuel tanks and booster from the skycrane and remplace them by parachutes then add an attachment part with an Heat shield
Your rover is now ready ! all you need to do is to build a craft with enought thrust and fuel to reach the planet you want
Land it
Let’s get the show on the road ! Once you build a rocket with enough fuel and power launch it and go to the desired planet.
Non-atmospheric landing
Once you’re in orbit around the desired planet (I took Moho because there already was a rover in orbit around it in my game. It works fine too with Mun, Minmus and all other non atmospheric bodies that are in kerbol system.)
Look at the ground and try to find a good place to land.(on the mun, try to land in craters)
When you picked your landing spot burn retrograde to slow down.
That’s it you break your obit and you start to fall turn off your engines, don’t panic, wait a bit now, when your rover is at ~45.000m start to burn retrograde again so you will continue to slown down
When your transfert stage run out of fuel, uncouple it and wait. Don’t bur, fuel when you don’t need to; otherwise you’re just wasting fuel.
At 12.500m start to burn retrograde again with the skycrane engines and keep 50-75 m/s of velocity.
Keep in mind that ground are not always at 0m! It depend of where you land
When you’re close to the ground (50-100m) burn retrograde and keep your velocity under 10m/s. When you’re about to touchdown, throttle up even more untils you’re going at about 5m/s or slower if you want. This prevent bouncing like a ball and at this speed you can’t flat your tire or break them.
that’s it you landed ? decouple your skycrane (on this pic I send it in space again by pressing at the same time max trust + decouple).
Once it’s done extend your antena/solar panel if you had some
atmospheric landing
Atmospheric landing is slighlty easier because you can use the atmosphere to slow down. A Heat shield is a needed when you’re going over 1000m/s, because when you’re going at those speeds inside the atmosphere, the induced friction will create heating which can destroy your craft, including your rover.
For the atmospheric landing demonstration I took Eve because it have a dense atmosphere so aerobraking is efficient and parachute too.
[iFfor those who don’t know what aerobraking is, it’s when you use the atmosphere of a planet to slow down, it’s very usefull to save fuel with. [/i]
Once your are in obit:
Burn Retrograde to slow your craft down enough so the gravity will pull you into the atmosphere.
Here I keep the fairings so I’m sure nothing will explode due to overheating during the re-entry.
When you enter the atmosphere, flames will appear due to friction.
When flames disappear open the fairing and decouple the Heat Shield, deploy parachute when they are safe (parachute icon in red means they aren’t safe to deploy and will break if done, orange means that they can deploy BUT it’s risky and they may break too)
Now you just have to wait until your rover lands. when it lands, deploy antena/solar pannel if you had some
(on my rover I put the parachute on an other stage so I decouple it).
DUNA LANDING
For those of you who want to land on Duna, you have to know some other details first. Duna has a very thin atmosphere, but thick enough so that you need a heatshield. Parachutes can help slow you down, but they alone are not enough. You need to protect your craft with a heatshield, too. For this, I advice you combine both skycranes so that you have both engines and parachutes to land with. Use both engines and parachutes to land efficiently and effectively.
Drive your rover
I don’t have a lot of things to say, just be careful and don’t go too fast and all should be fine
- Like I said before, know your wheel max speed and stay below it.
- Turn off the brake of all wheels that are in front of the center of mass, this prevent fliping at high speed brake or on low gravity planets
- Turn the reaction wheels to SAS only and select stability assist it will help you to keep your rover under control on low gravity planets like minmius
- Be careful when you extend a antena, aerodynamics forces can break them at high speed
- Don’t try to do jumps with your rover, always stay on the ground
- Avoid places where there is no direct sunlight like craters in case you have a solar powered probe
Suggestions
According to the commentary from Quoniam15, It propose to create a little rover and then put it in a 2.5m service bay.
On the top of the rover place a OX-STAT-XL solar panel and an antena.
don’t forget to put the ejection force of the decoupler to 0 otherwise the rover will crash into the top of the service bay
Line up the front of the rover and the door of the service bay so you can take out the rover more easily
once it’s done you can build a skycrane and a rocket to land the service bay
OR
place it on a lander
conclusion
That’s all for the moment and I hope it helped you a lot ! I will try my best to answer any questions if here;
If you have any suggestion that can improve rovers tell me in the comment and I will add it.
If this guide help you don’t forget to share and rate it so other player will see it too !
A BIG thanks to Shrekomrade who had the patience to corrected my grammar and spelling.