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Sometimes the problem is that you're just not using enough lander legs. If you try to land a 200 ton vessel on four legs, bad things can happen. That's fixable by adding more legs.
Sometimes the problem is that you're not using enough struts. If it's a chain of 11 parts to go from one lander leg to another and there are no struts in between, that's going to be an awfully floppy vehicle.
Sometimes the problem is that parts aren't level. If you've got plenty of legs, but some are significantly higher than others, that can cause weird things to happen. You can often avoid that by using symmetry tools to place all legs at exactly the same height, or being very careful with placement when you can't.
Sometimes the game just doesn't like a design for mysterious reasons. Often, this results in your rocket immediately blowing up on the launch pad. Chaining together too many small parts instead of fewer, larger parts seems to do that, even if you have plenty of struts.
And then there is the Eve exception that you presumably haven't run into yet. Eve makes everything a lot more finicky, so that designs that would be stable anywhere else in the game sometimes explode on Eve. Or sometimes the game just doesn't like one particular lander leg for some mysterious reason and the rocket will shake until that particular leg explodes.
(Edit for clarity: I rebuilt the design back at Kerbin. However, I already had the previous prototype out on a mission on Duna, so it wasn't as easy as "Oh I'll just start over now." So, after reloading the bugged lander, it's been more stable for some mysterious reason.
Landed vessels always bounce when you leave time warp. One of KSP's biggest weaknesses is surface gameplay, and this is one of the best examples of this. When you leave time warp the vessel settles back down onto the surface (it sorta levels out and floats in the air slightly when you enter time warp), and this can cause the entire vessel to wobble a lot when it slams back down into the ground. On a body with low gravity, like Gilly, you can end up going dozens of meters into the air when this happens.
Legs that are overstressed can also have a tendency to wobble quite a bit, because the spring strength of the legs isn't enough to stop it. You might try using legs that are larger if possible (KSP's stock parts don't include anything larger than what I'd consider "medium" sized legs unfortunately).
They also weigh massively more than lander legs, are far more awkward to place without hitting other parts, can't adjust their height dynamically to all touch the ground simultaneously on an uneven surface, and lack the springiness that allows you to land and stick rather than bouncing. While lander legs nominally have an impact tolerance of 12 m/s, the springs allow them to survive much harder collisions than that.
That springiness in lander legs is very important, as rigid components pass force through pretty effectively, so if you hit the ground hard enough that the swept wings survive but the fuel tank that they were attached to blows up, you still fail. Springs can dampen the blow and survive much harder collisions. I've had a lander hit the ground at over 35 m/s without taking damage because the legs just made it bounce rather than exploding.
Swept wings do give you a wider base, but a lander using normal legs that can't readily handle a 45 degree slope is simply a botched design, unless perhaps your target is Eve or Laythe. The real fix is to lay out parts better, not add swept wings.
I didn't think to use struts on the ore tanks. Of course, I also didn't intend to attach the landing gears to the ore tanks to begin with, but it might explain the continuing unstable wobbling after I've landed.
I don't doubt that it can be made to work in most places. But as compared to an otherwise equivalent design using lander legs, using swept wings instead gets you:
1) less delta-v
2) slower rocket acceleration
3) slower rotation from rocket gimbal or reaction wheels
4) less impact tolerance
5) a more awkward design to pack into your launch vehicle
6) worse aerodynamics when launching from Kerbin at the start of a mission
And in exchange for what? You do get a wider base, to be sure. But the vehicles that need a super wide base on a very short vehicle are rovers, and those have to be on wheels, not legs or wings. For landers, the only reason you'd want a wide base is to be able to handle steeper slopes.
Certainly, being able to handle slopes is a hugely important part of lander design. But I'm not convinced that swept wings even give you an advantage here. The only way that there's a difference is if one design works and another fails, and for a good lander design, that means you're looking at some very steep slopes.
When you try to land on a 55 degree slope, you have to kill the engines when you first touch on the high side. Otherwise, as you rotate, the engines will try to take you off of the hill and make you slide down it rather than sticking. A wider base means you fall farther and hit harder when the low side of the lander hits the ground. That gives you more time to accumulate angular momentum that will try to pull the high side of the lander off the ground, and if it gets the high side very far off the ground, the landing fails. I haven't tried landing on swept wings, but it's far from obvious that they'll work better here than the usual landing legs.
Of course he does!
That's why he's here.
The only right way to do things is the way he does them, why can't you see that?
With all due respect... it was a pretty derpy suggestion.
Sure it works but..... damn.... there are so many better ways.
The better question is, why do you advise doing crazy things that make everything harder, and then launch personal attacks at anyone who points that out? If you can defend your proposal on the merits, then go ahead. But don't try to make everything into personal attacks.
It adds too much weight and affects your delta-V too much (despite 4 of the first wings you get only removing 20m/s on even my smallest sized mining lander).
It makes it too hard to get into orbit and affects the aerodynamics too much (despite anything able to lift a mining vehicle having more than enough gimble). You can't overcome them. It's totally impossible.
I apologise for offering up a suggestion that was off the cuff, out of the box a bit and from personal experience. How idiotic of me. Have fun with all the lack of suggestions in this thread that haven't tried to offer you a solution other than, "USE MOAR STRUTS AND LEGS".
I'm done having to "defend" my suggestion from the self appointed king of these threads. There, problem solved. Have fun lads.
KSP is a sandbox game about creativity, it's about doing whatever works for you and is fun. It's not about the "best" or the "right" solution.
As I'm sure you've already found out, no one really appreciates you telling them how you do things and insisting it's the only way, especially when you aren't very friendly about it. (You're not even that correct anyways really, the real "min max pro strat" way to do it would be to bring nothing and just land on the engine bell. If you want to get all technical and "smarter than thou" landing legs themselves are just a waste of mass.)
Offer your own solution in a helpful polite manner to the OP and stop nitpicking other peoples offered solutions. It's up to the OP to pick out the solutions he finds fun, interesting, or effective.
Chibbity, I wouldn't even bother mate. I've tried multiple times to tell him it doesn't matter who is objectively right, it's a game and about having fun and every time I've ended up in this exact situation.
I've also tried, "defending", my point of view and explaining why I had it, the reasoning behind it etc, and he just never stops - he just can't go, "Well, I disagree but each to his own". Even here, where I clearly didn't want to argue. It's tantamount to harassment to be honest and it derails every thread.
Sorry for my own passive aggressive post you probably got spammed with but it just drives me nuts. I try to do something nice to help someone out and I end up in a debate about whether or not this is the perfect solution. I totally had a ragequit moment earlier and feel like an arse now, but oh well. No going back now.
He obviously plays completely differently to me, but he just can't see that. Personally I build big, reusable rockets that cost me very little to get into space and back. I don't min-max because I play safe. Whether or not I have an extra 1 ton on my rocket or if it has some tiny bits that stick out make absolutely no difference to my designs. That means I come at things from a different angle to a min-max, but it also means I have a lot more room for what I find fun.
Thank you, Dr. Seuss!