What's the best way to set up rover wheels?

[Gojak_v3]

For best stability. There are a lot of options when you right click a wheel and I'm uncertain what all these options do, or how they work together. Does anyone have setting that seem to work best for them?

[Chibbity]

The default settings are fine 99.9% of the time.

As a general tip; the best place to build a rover is the SPH since things are naturally oriented length wise there.

A low COM will help with roll over stability, properly spaced wheels are important as well. Building in the option to switch between 2 and 4 wheel drive (or een 6 or 8!) is always nice as well; just bind them to an action group. 4 wheel steering can be a handy option as well.

[Toastie Buns]

Depends what you want it for. You'll use different 'settings' for different bodies.

Supension is pretty simple; springs absorb bounces, dampers stop you from bouncing (in theory) so you tweak that sort of ♥♥♥♥ on the fly while you're driving, commit it to memory and do a proper set-up in the VAB.

Friction and Traction is pretty simple too; they're just friction sliders. When you mess with these, pay attention to your motor and how hard it needs to work, because they will effect your top speed. For all purposes though, they work like magic wheel glue.

[Gojak_v3]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

The default settings are fine 99.9% of the time.

So playing around with them a bit, just using them with default settings seems pretty stable. It's just I remember like a year or two ago they were completely unusable just putting them on a rover using the default settings. You had to tweak the wheel settings a lot to be able to use them. I'm guessing they got a fix along the way.

Also what's COM?

[Chibbity]

Originally posted by Gojak_v3:

So playing around with them a bit, just using them with default settings seems pretty stable. It's just I remember like a year or two ago they were completely unusable just putting them on a rover using the default settings. You had to tweak the wheel settings a lot to be able to use them. I'm guessing they got a fix along the way.
Also what's COM?

Yeah, they were super buggy for a couple of patches; that was "mostly" fixed awhile back.

For low grav rovers you'll want a fairly wide and low wheel base obviously, it's very easy to tip over on the Mun.

As Toastie suggests; play with the sliders a bit while driving where the rover is meant to explore. See what works for you. (You can use the debug menu to teleport to other bodies.) Then head back to the editor and punch those numbers in and save them.

COM is Center of Mass, or the yellow ball in the editor once you toggle the indicator on in the lower left hand corner.