Fork the darn robotic parts from ground breaking DLC ....

[~* BiZZ Keryear *~]

(ノಠ益ಠ)╯︵ ┻━┻
After spending day before yesterday the whole day making a helicopter which stopped working at some point and I could not figure out why ... took me 50 iterations to do so ... turns out the landing gear autostrutted to the main engine blocking it from working ... just great ...

Yesterday I spend the whole day making a manned rover that is folded up during launch ... only that it got possessed at some point ... turn out the dampeners and springs of the landing gear (/rover wheels) introduce phantom forces under gravity above a certain weight ... took me only about 30 iterations till I got that fixed (while it was lighter there was no problem when certain parts touched other parts while extended ... which later was a problem when the rover got to its final heavy form) ... the phantom forces go away when the robotics parts are locked ... but that only works in micro gravity due to the phantom forces prevent the part from locking (you see my problem here)...

Today I spend the whole day making a walking rover (I made it very lightweight so that it has a chance working even in this broken state of this DLC, but no cigar).
Aside from that for some reasons some parts act out (moving direction is inverted ... so instead of extending it starts to move and clip through itself* ... or a rotor moves the wrong way round ...)

After spending hours programming the walking animation in a KAL-1000 (yes ... I needed way more time than I should have ... and only half*² due to my mistakes) and now the movement of one leg is borked ... not in the KAL-1000, tho ... it just doesn't move as it is programmed in there. (e.g. target angle for the Alligator hinge in KAL is 125° but in the part it is 100°*³)
And no, it isn't because o the forces or gravity ... it is when I test run the animation in the VAB.
And no, I play currently vanilla, so no mods which might mess things up**.

I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!

The breaking ground robotics parts are broken in so many ways ...

*= in a way it normally can't, and should not be able to under any circumstance. And to work around that I would have to tell it to move negative which it can't ... and when I want to fix that I need to remove the parts(!) and replace them. But that also means all animation programming is lost.

*²= Had to learn it the hard way that most of the time the KAL-1000 switches the existing programming to a cloned part (if you clone an existing part) which mean in best case your animation is in the wrong place ... or has the wrong name ... but in worst case (cloned a part by accident and then delete it cause you don't need it ...) that the programming is lost ...
But it does that only MOST of the times ... sometime it behaves as it should. So each time a part is cloned you have to triple check which one now holds the programming ...

*³= I have screenshots, but am too lazy to upload them just now and include them.

**=I haven't had played for while, and even longer not vanilla, so I wanted experience the vanilla 1.9.0

[MechBFP]

Don’t place robotics in symmetry or clone them. Copying individual tracks between KAL controllers is fine though.

[כְּפִיר]

I stopped using robotic parts other than rotors for propellers :/ Hoping for a real fix

[~* BiZZ Keryear *~]

Originally posted by MechBFP:

Don’t place robotics in symmetry or clone them. Copying individual tracks between KAL controllers is fine though.

Well sometimes you want the former to have them distributed evenly ... sucks when your contraption goes out of control because the mass isn't evenly distributed ... or if it does that causethe robotoc parts it stands on are croocked.
While the latter happens acidentally ... at least for me. Unless I do it on purpose ... cause I have a robotic contraption ... e.g. made out of one rotor, two aligators, one leg and I want the identical everwhere I use them ...

[GunsForBucks]

Just place them individually then use the move tool to snap them to grid and straighten them out. I don't even have that expansion but I think even the normal mining drills don't work right unless you place them individually.

[~* BiZZ Keryear *~]

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

Just place them individually then use the move tool to snap them to grid and straighten them out. I don't even have that expansion but I think even the normal mining drills don't work right unless you place them individually.

Straighten them out is easier said than done. I rather use symmetry and break it later ...

[XLjedi]

They're quirky; but I can generally make them do what I want.

[~* BiZZ Keryear *~]

I do, too ... takes me a long time, tho ... but yesterday I spend the whole day making a ship (fine tuning can really take time) with robotics (twice ... since one I misclicked ruined and though ... well rather than the sometime buggy undo I just load the last save of the ship I just made ... only that I didn't ...) ... and then, after hours of fine tuning the KAL program ... I figured I need a small change on one part of the ship ... result was all KAL did reset ...

I did alt+f4 at that point ...

Edit: since I save every little change into a separte craft I lost the overview ... so I thought a little clean up is due ... and I found the craft I painstakingly recreated ... shoot me ... just shoot me.

[XLjedi]

The KAL can be a bit of a pain... I have also had the glitch where it just forgets assignments. It's not fun.

[~* BiZZ Keryear *~]

Originally posted by XLjedi:

The KAL can be a bit of a pain... I have also had the glitch where it just forgets assignments. It's not fun.

Especially if you (like me) just spend several real life hours programming the darn thing. (I think it was upwards of 2) ... the general thing was easy ... but the fine tuning was a pain in the butt.

[crimsyn76]

I'd imagine the folks who worked on the Vikram lander shared similar feelings of frustration.

[~* BiZZ Keryear *~]

Yeah now several days after my initial fail ... and the ship I build and programmed several times ... I finally flown it ... works nice except the script got borked cause it depended that all parts stay where I did pot them ... and they don't ... for some reasons everything attached to robotics is only attached with rubber bands ... very kerbal ... anyway ship contained a rover attached with a dockingport attached to a piston ... docking port didn't stayed where I did put it ... fine ... I did put it (roughly) back in place by editing the save file ... but even before that I realized one conundrum of breaking ground ... you have (recently unlocked) RTG power generators which need a base station to be deployed... which only can be deployed when you ave power ... well I didn't pack the solar power ... time for an emergency satelite ... but before I was off unloading the scene the rover didn't worked as predicted ... even tho it had enough power to go around ... and also all breaks (16 wheeler / 8 wheel pairs) where set to 200% just the slightest slope was enough to make the rover run away ...why? I don't know ... also never will figure out. Cause I folded up the wheels (yay the rover did stay in place with 2 kerbals on board in seats) and left to the space center ... suddenly my 2 kerbals where standing on the mun ... not in any vehicle ... the rover was not to be seen anywhere in the save file either (nor debris from it) ... my guess what happened to it (and all the science on board) is as good as yours ... well min is that it either fell through the floor and everything got instaploded, or it got flung up while switching nearbys and counted as suborbital when I left...

[rempell]

This thread is old but I feel like responding. Steam won't show the numbers but I have 10k+ hours. I don't disagree. However, the 'rules' are at least consistent. The wheels use Unity's built in suspension which sometimes don't do what they should. Dampening needs to be 0.15+ or the wheel loses friction. Robotic parts' default settings are not useful but for extremely simple crafts. Anytime you have a couple parts working together, you need to fine tune their extension rates, dampening, force. Generally I turn damp right off on robotic parts. The other major component you'll need to know for making robotics work is to pass an autostrut through robotics. The part must be in place, not moving too much, and then when it is Locked, autostruts can now pass through them. When you Unlock, the autostrut drops again. So say you have a foldable crane, it won't work well lifting parts because it will want to fold back up. You'll need to lock the robotics in place before doing a crane lift. Just an example.

I've built basically everything that can be built in kerbal, if you have any questions you can DM me. :) I keep my stock crafts on KerbalX[kerbalx.com] if you're interested.

[~* BiZZ Keryear *~]

Originally posted by rempell:

This thread is old but I feel like responding. Steam won't show the numbers but I have 10k+ hours. I don't disagree. However, the 'rules' are at least consistent. The wheels use Unity's built in suspension which sometimes don't do what they should. Dampening needs to be 0.15+ or the wheel loses friction. Robotic parts' default settings are not useful but for extremely simple crafts. Anytime you have a couple parts working together, you need to fine tune their extension rates, dampening, force. Generally I turn damp right off on robotic parts. The other major component you'll need to know for making robotics work is to pass an autostrut through robotics. The part must be in place, not moving too much, and then when it is Locked, autostruts can now pass through them. When you Unlock, the autostrut drops again. So say you have a foldable crane, it won't work well lifting parts because it will want to fold back up. You'll need to lock the robotics in place before doing a crane lift. Just an example.

I've built basically everything that can be built in kerbal, if you have any questions you can DM me. :) I keep my stock crafts on KerbalX[kerbalx.com] if you're interested.

Dude, the thread is 3 years old by now.
And the parts are still horribly broken. At least the robotics parts. If you don't lock them, they'll just glitch out if you move (and that is basically any speed above what KSP considers staying still). The programming doesn't really work for locking. Sometimes it locks, other times it does not.

Dunno about the wheels. I only know the fancy wheels (the foldable with the mud guard) are missing an option to flip the textures, so one side always looks as if backwards. Back then, if you did overload the wheels (like put medium wheels on a full orange tank, but instead of two pairs more like a millipede) the craft experienced phantom forces. Which forked up parking and made it slide around. On top I did put those wheels on moveable parts with introduced the issue or made it worse.
Can't really remember. IT WAS 3 YEARS AGO!

Anyway, I still don't understand how propellers work in KSP, which still have all sorts of weird issues. And the rest of robotics is as glitchtastic.

Edit: I have 3000+ hours. (Steam recorded 2545 of it, but I played a lot of it outside of steam)

[GunsForBucks]

Originally posted by ~* BiZZ Keryear *~:

Originally posted by rempell:

This thread is old but I feel like responding. Steam won't show the numbers but I have 10k+ hours. I don't disagree. However, the 'rules' are at least consistent. The wheels use Unity's built in suspension which sometimes don't do what they should. Dampening needs to be 0.15+ or the wheel loses friction. Robotic parts' default settings are not useful but for extremely simple crafts. Anytime you have a couple parts working together, you need to fine tune their extension rates, dampening, force. Generally I turn damp right off on robotic parts. The other major component you'll need to know for making robotics work is to pass an autostrut through robotics. The part must be in place, not moving too much, and then when it is Locked, autostruts can now pass through them. When you Unlock, the autostrut drops again. So say you have a foldable crane, it won't work well lifting parts because it will want to fold back up. You'll need to lock the robotics in place before doing a crane lift. Just an example.

I've built basically everything that can be built in kerbal, if you have any questions you can DM me. :) I keep my stock crafts on KerbalX[kerbalx.com] if you're interested.

Dude, the thread is 3 years old by now.
And the parts are still horribly broken. At least the robotics parts. If you don't lock them, they'll just glitch out if you move (and that is basically any speed above what KSP considers staying still). The programming doesn't really work for locking. Sometimes it locks, other times it does not.

Dunno about the wheels. I only know the fancy wheels (the foldable with the mud guard) are missing an option to flip the textures, so one side always looks as if backwards. Back then, if you did overload the wheels (like put medium wheels on a full orange tank, but instead of two pairs more like a millipede) the craft experienced phantom forces. Which forked up parking and made it slide around. On top I did put those wheels on moveable parts with introduced the issue or made it worse.
Can't really remember. IT WAS 3 YEARS AGO!

Anyway, I still don't understand how propellers work in KSP, which still have all sorts of weird issues. And the rest of robotics is as glitchtastic.

Edit: I have 3000+ hours. (Steam recorded 2545 of it, but I played a lot of it outside of steam)

I made this, hope it helps. Props can be done pretty much the same programming as helicopter rotors, the blades just snap on weird and need to be checked for rotation.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2786904362

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2894472611