My pet peaves with wheels, and what I'd like fixed

Crovid shared this feedback 20 days ago
Not Enough Votes

I love making rovers in SE1 and I already enjoy making them in 2, especially huge mobile bases.

Yes I know wheels are new and will get updated, its why I'm making this post, I have ideas that I would love to see get added.

Currently my issues are that you can't set the steering angle, and the game auto decides which wheels are steering and which aren't. Meaning no fancy 8 wheeled car with the inner wheels turning less.


My fixes:

1. let the player set the steering angle (duh!) BUT! let the player set a negative steering angle instead of the game automatically turning the rear wheels backwards. This would let you manually set which wheels turn in the opposite direction, if any. Which if rear wheels turn in the same direction as front wheels, you can make a rover crab walk.

Also had the idea of a button to reset the angle back to 0, but might be unnecessary, especially if the angle can only be a whole number.


2. The event controller! Let the event controller "accelerate" or "reverse" wheels. This INSTANTLY, allows for wheels on sub grids, and probably also having rovers that tank steer and other ideas i cant think of right now. And of course, having an event controller set the wheel steering angle. So you can set the rear wheels to steer in the same direction as the front wheels, toggleable crab walk :)

Replies (7)

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Good points, I'll hope that all of the settings including air pressure and such be carried over from SE1. I'm not sure what the settings there actually do since they changed the terminology and have no tooltip or hint what the settings actually do. Acceleration seems 'logical' but even then what exactly do the various settings do (physics wise).

My biggest issue right now is that when I drive my Grover D-8 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=37599172318https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3759917231 This is a massive like 25-30 meter wide gigantic rover. Yet it currently feels like it barely has any actual mass. It's bouncing around off of terrain and trees like a plastic plate hitting the ground and rattling to rest. This thing is HEAVY and driving into a tree at 10ms should not cause the rover to bounce up in the air like a balloon. It should just knock things over like they're barely there and the only reaction should be the suspension traveling up to absorb the shock and keep the rover generally stable. I hit a smallish boulder and all the momentum was lost and the rover bounced up into the air and turned 90 degrees. It's really non-ideal for the physics engine if that's how it's going to be.

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Timer/EC control is a must, but I guess it is coming in the next update. Also, plain wheels without suspension, for various purposes.

I'd also consider the ability to remap basic cockpit controls to any mechanical block. Like driving a piston or rotor with W/S. This would enable custom features, cranes, or special setups where sensors read the position of said piston and for example switch on additional motors or whatever.

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FYI: Event Controller subgrid wheel control in Vanilla is already possible. Kinda...

Here's how you do it in SE1 (should translate):

  1. Place 1 timer block. Set it to power on all wheels you want to power.
  2. Place 2nd timer block, to disable power on those wheels
  3. Set wheels to desired override %, and turn them off.
  4. Place 1 small thruster pointing backwards. (not actually used for thrust, but does give a little)
  5. Set event controller to read Thrust % and set the threshold to something like 5%.
  6. Set event controller true to activate ON timer block, and false to activate OFF timer block
  7. profit (pressing W will power on the wheels, and turn them off when you let go).

Does not give steering, or reverse, but it Does work. Monkeying with this setup may be possible to get better results. You could for instance, use the A,D keys to turn a rotor, giving you steering options. C,Space could change ride height (suspension stiffness? don't remember what options are available)

You can repeat this once for each keypress that activates a thruster (W,A,S,D,C,Space) to control anything a timer block can control. Downside, is you lose that functionality normally associated with that keypress....

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There is no wheel override % in SE2

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Oh man, and the turn speed of the wheels is terrible. Plus no space bar handbrake? Annoying.

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One thing I would really like to see is a braking power setting for wheels. Instead of locking up completely, they would apply a torque against the wheel's current rotation. It'd be nice to be able to prevent less agile rovers from flipping over when you apply the brake without needing to feather the brake input.


Generally, I've been listening to discussions on SE2 wheels for a bit, and the most common things I hear people wanting are;

-steering angle and steering speed settings

-speed limit setting

-manual wheel behavior setup(steering toggle/invert and propulsion toggle/invert)

-subgrid control

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as with many other things at the time of introduction.. they are lacking features found in se1... i am however positive that these additional setting will be implemented in a future update. i dont even question it! but i think its important to understand at just how early, even after 1 year, we are in development i only see this game as building creations, not expecting the creations to work as intended YET!! as we all know the pistons and rotors need serious rebalancing and they still have to improve the menu u.i as theres still settings from se1 missing. but i come from the star cit ecosystem so yall gotta admit keens development speed is litteraly fkn lightyears ahread of what cig is doing!!

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Appreciate your perspective but if we don't make noise about it, it likely won't happen. They have intentionally removed lots of the more advanced settings in favour of a more broader market player focused approach. Not because they haven't got to them yet. I think most of us feel that the pendulum has swung too far to simplicity rather than just explaining the game better because SE1 isn't even that complicated, just abtuse and poorly explained.

Yes, development is proceeding well but I've been in the se1 and star citizen ecosystems since they both began. Keen can be stubborn. They stick to what they think is good and don't budge until everyone is yelling at them. So we're trying to pre-empt those issues in this development cycle by being vocal about what we think should change.

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I'll add another nice to have: Joystick control. Stick forward/backward for accelerating/decelerating, sideways for steering. This is encountered rarely in non-flight simulations, so I cannot say from experience how well it would work. But would be worth a try.

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