Small Wheeled Gravity-Level Tunnel Digger

[dominicawb]

Ha anyone gotten one to work? I'll post my design and used mods in a bit but Im curious if anyone else has managed to get a vehicle capable of making gravity-level tunnels on voxel terrain.

I feel like I've developed a decent rig to accomplish that, it's just i'm stuck on actually being able to drive down the tunnel. Does it have to be very, very smooth to be driveable? How much does rubble impact driving?

[dominicawb]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=559175954

Here it is, I'm currrently using the Small Ship Flight Seat Mod, the Small Advanced Rotor mod, the "Twin" Drill mod, the Small Conveyor Parts, and the Small Battery mod for this particular design.

Ive locked the rotors to only be able to swing 90 degrees, and sitting at the low 0 Degree position makes them level with the vehicle. The digging range for those drills is pretty large, and i estimated they should dig a tunnel level with the terrain the vehicle sits on with at 0 degrees.

That dug out area in the shot was done solely by the Small Digger.

I forgot to mention I also used the Alternate Piston Types mod, putting four of them next to the wheel suspensions.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=559175998

Right now I set the back ones up to only lift very slightly higher than the lowest point the wheel sits, as I noticed the "Handbrake" option was completely incapable of truly stopping the vehicle from moving. It also helps keep the Digger in one place as it drills.

I setup the conveyor system to connect the two drills with a medium cargo container. It manages to catch about 75% of the drilled material but the rest, mostly very small rocks, pools in the subtle pits of the tunnel.

[dominicawb]

Anyone have any advice?

[Neferdias]

Yeah I've given up trying to get a wheeled one to work. I've heard that people have suceeded in building reverse plow style miners... (where you drive forward and the drills are behind you opening up a pit.

I would suspect if you made the drills wide enough you could open a path large enough to install ramps down into the pit as you dredge lower and lower into the layers.

Right now there are really unforgiving bugs when it comes to the terrain and wheels... so I think people are hold their breath and still experimenting.

[dominicawb]

Well thanks for the input. Either the uneven dug out terrain, and/or the rubble is causing problems driving forward. I really shouldve known rubble would be an issue, the thing is like directly based off of a Rock Raiders design, lol.

It seems like the game, I'll have to design some kind of rubble clearing vehicle, and then perhaps some kind of paving vehicle...

Atleast the Small Digger actually functions well enough on it's own as a simple drilling vehicle.

[Neferdias]

Oh, and yes. The voxels will cause you issues on anywhere but 4 sides of the planet, so the ground will always be "uneven" but that's where i figure the reverse plow would work best. You could drive on the flat ground which should dig out a fairly flat trench behind you.

And that's another thing you could try chancing. Stacking Pistons on top of eachother and build a stationary/mobile mining drill. It'll blow up on you 8/10 times but since the ore is so shallow, you don't really need to burrow down to it.

[dominicawb]

Those would work okay, but the main purpose of the vehicle would be tunnel construction for transportation, exploration and base building purposes.

I'll do some more work on the vehicle to see if I can get a smoother cutout of the voxel material.

[dominicawb]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=559217897

This is about the smoothest I can get it with the Small Digger. Even with the rubble, I have no trouble traversing it on foot, but there are several spots where the wheels get stuck and Im unable to move it out without a lot of wiggling.

I'm reluctant to add any more moving parts to the Small Digger too, ive had instances where it would spin uncontrollably despite being parked and completely unpowered.

[Voice From Beyond]

I'm getting frustrated trying to do this. It seems to work alright at first, but as I get underground it starts pulling to the right and ends up getting stuck. One time it was at a 90 degree angle. Plus you can't see, not even in 3rd person view.

I've been trying with 6 3x3 wheels but next I am trying 5x5. It's a small ship. The other problem I have is it's not creating a smooth ramp. It's more like sharply rolling hills that tend to trap the wheels.

[dominicawb]

This might require a specialty dril to carve out the shape. Either that or another vehicle to smooth it out somehow. The Voxel Concrete mod works pretty well, Id love for there to be a ship tool option/

[dominicawb]

Jesus H Christ, even with the very flat surfaces i managed to get with the concrete tool, the slightest bumb will completely ♥♥♥♥ up my vehicle, its such a pain to get it in the right spot its pretty much not worth exploring further at this point. I hope sometime in the future they do more with how well wheeled vehicles function on terrestrial planets.