Wheels are not in a good place but are a great start

Hard agree on all points. Wheels feel good from a physics perspective but the config options we're given access to are sparse. I figured we would at least get feature parity with SE1 since they haven't done anything particularly novel with the wheels in SE2. Aside from some physics improvements, the wheels feel like a port of SE1 wheels, but with fewer options.

I do want to throw out that I heard what Marek said on the livestream about potentially supporting wheel deformation, which I would absolutely love to see added. It's an exciting proposition. Bonus points if we also get a new configurable option that would allow us to tweak the deformation in some way, sort of like how adjusting tire pressure works with air-filled tires here on Earth. That said, I'd really like to see at least most of the SE1 options available before they jump on any features like that.

In my opinion, these are the biggest pain points with the first pass at wheels in SE2:

1. No sub-grid wheel control: I'm honestly astonished this isn't available from day one of the wheels update, given that I was able to do this in a couple hours one afternoon with a programmable block on SE1. Please Keen, just extend the cockpit inputs to wheels on sub-grids! It doesn't have to be perfect. We can tweak the steering and propulsion if you also expose those to the UI so we can change them too. Then we can dial in our own setups.
2. No ability to set power or speed limit: The acceleration option is all we get that's even close. I assume this just prevents the wheels from spinning too fast too quickly, which would mean that maybe it's not the same thing as the old "power" value. The wheels feel super sluggish with low acceleration values, which is intended, but switching to high acceleration to mimic a traditional electric motor (instant torque) makes it far too easy to go way too fast. We absolutely need to be able to set a maximum speed limit. It seems like acceleration, power, and speed limit would be necessary: Obviously the speed limit would control your maximum speed, power controls the amount of available wheel torque, and acceleration would control how fast you get to max speed. Between those three, we'd have a bit more control over propulsion than we did in SE1. So we just need power and max speed since acceleration is already present.
3. No ability to manually control which wheels turn, how far, how fast, or which direction: Most of this is essential for anything beyond the most basic rover setups. I have no means of properly setting up Ackermann steering geometry, for instance. Also, the fact that steering just happens automatically is unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, it's great for casual players, but at least give me the option to manually configure the steering and override the automatic stuff to achieve what I can in SE1. How am I supposed to make the rear wheels turn and not the front ones? I can't make a standard forklift setup or even typical rover steering (rear wheels turn opposite)!
4. No ability to control which wheels have propulsion (or which direction): Assuming sub-grid wheel control gets added, there would need to be some way to control whether or not the wheels should respond to forward/reverse inputs. Maybe powering them off would be sufficient. That said, there are more use-cases other than sub-grid control where this is necessary so it definitely needs to be added.

Overall I'm a bit disappointed with wheels at the moment. I thought that the first pass for wheels in SE2 would bring at least most of the same fifteen options that are available for wheels in SE1, and not just... three (damping, stiffness, acceleration). Like sure, we get damping and acceleration, which we didn't have in SE1... but why not all the others too? Presumably most of these options exist already within the game, since they have to in order for wheels to work at all, so why are we not able to change them?

I really hope the SE1 wheel parity comes in a patch or hotfix rather than waiting for another major update to drop.

The above posts capture the state perfectly; I’m going to skip piling on all the things I like about them, as well as overall enthusiastic support for the continued alpha-rollout out based upon player input. Keep up the great work!

That being said… great progress on wheels, AND YET I spent 6 hours of some of the most frustrating / rage-inducing time I’ve ever spent in any version of SE trying to get from a random Point A to Point B on planet via the current wheels: Of biggest concern is simply NOT having the spacebar work as a brake, as is common in almost every single game on the planet at this point. My muscle memory is so ingrained with that, that having to remember to hit the opposing W or S to stop, or slow down to keep velocity under control, was beyond painful. For as much as I’ve looked forward to wheels (and hinges!) I’m going to have to bow out at this point until further changes on this are added. Even if the space bar were to act temporarily not as an actual “brake” but simply apply acceleration in the opposite direction of current travel (emulating the current W and S mechanics) I could deal with it.

Beyond that, as listed above, the problem is exacerbated by not having any kind of speed / max-speed control. (Think about that – no speed control, combined with no brakes?....) I LOVE HAVING WHEELS, but this aspect should be patched ASAP.

I also am deeply in love with the level of detail on the new planets: however (at least in the survival mode), the planet I landed on was just rugged enough to be nearly impassable with wheels: with speed control & brakes, I could pass it off as merely “highly challenging” but spent more time spinning around hills and upside down than I have in years. To navigate to a relatively flat desert area where I could explore the wheels more fully took HOURS and more save/reloads to make progress than I care to admit. From a game-play perspective, the experience pushes me to rush to crafts with flight capabilities as quickly as possible… which completely negates the joy of having wheels. If survival mode had placed on a more “mars-like” planet I could have continued to enjoy it, but building a wheeled vehicle and trying to then drive to the two nearest outposts started off as challenging and quickly became nothing but pain.

Thank all of you for your continued hard work; thank you for wheels, and I’ll thank you in advance for quickly making some much needed changes to them!

Acceleration and maximum speed are good settings to have for making the rover controllable and pleasant to drive.

But the wheels should also have technical limitations for torque, power and top speed. Those represent what the wheel suspension can deliver (or if we are talking hub engines, the wheel itself.) Ideally adjustable per wheel, with 100% being the limits given by the design of the wheel.

Other than that, I can only 100% agree with the OP.

And this horror is being perpetrated by game designers from the country where the Tatra 148, Tatra 805, Tatra 813, and Praga V3S chassis were developed... 😵‍💫

I have had a heck of a time building a 'basic miner rover' and most of the pain comes from lacking torque and/or height displacement settings. Technically the stiffness/spring-strength can accomodate parts of the 2nd problem. Without excessive gyroscopes and a minimum of a 6-wheel setup I have yet to find a configuration for a mining rover that doesn't immediately get overburdoned with ore weight and gets stuck in the jagged geometry that a forward mounted miner will create.

If there isn't much more that can be done in the SE2 engine to fix wheel problems, I would love to see perhaps a 'planer drill' or 'scraper' that would cut a more smooth path to improve ground conditions for wheels. I really don't want driving to be limited to factory floors.

We could also use plain wheels with no suspension, as they were in SE1. Given that event controllers and timers can not directly drive wheels, at least we could put them on rotors to create self-driving vehicles.

So much good discussion!

however I'd have to disagree on the friction amount being sufficient. First rover I built was my favorite style in SE1 with 4 wheels on each side. it couldn't get enough friction to get over small hills. Once I deleted the middle 2 on each side, it was MUCH more capable. It was maybe not a friction issue as much as an AWD issue. wheels not touching the ground were spinning like crazy, but the 3 or 4 that were touching, couldn't get out of their own way.

Sub-grid wheels absolutely NEED to be controllable. I saw that we got hinges and rotors and tried to build my own suspension system similar to the ones used on NASA rovers and was really disappointed when the wheels didn't turn. And since the terrain is so difficult, an articulated vehicle is pretty much necessary in a lot of areas.

I also really miss the ability to control the turning angles of the wheels, the automatic system we have right now is neat for four-wheeled vehicles but struggles with everything else. I tried building a small six-wheeled rover just like the one in the trailer, and since only the front wheels turn, the turning radius is really poor. When I made it a little longer and moved the rear wheels back a little, the middle wheels suddenly started turning as well, by the same angle as the front wheels. This small change made the handling significantly worse and the vehicle basically uncontrollable on terrain, since the second you roll over a bump during a turn and the rear wheels lift off the ground or lose grip, the vehicle starts moving diagonally and just weirdly slides around. I can only imagine how poorly vehicles with eight or more wheels turn.

I really hope we get more options with the wheels as development continues. So far, building ground vehicles seems a lot more restrictive and less fun than in Space Engineers 1.