Ship Steering

[cxado]

I'm fairly new to this game, I'm still playing around in the vehicle designer to get the hang of how the basic mechanics work, but I'm currently building a boat, and I've come across a problem when it came down to placing rudders and getting the ship working. It's a somewhat small ship, nothing big, but it's a lot bigger than the starting raft.
The problem is that at the back, I've got 1 rudder and 3 small propellers (the propellers being enough for speed because 1 large makes the ship fly directly up and stall in mid-air before belly flopping the ocean) but for some reason instead of the H and K keys, the rudder actives the Y and I keys for turning, which actually (sort of) doesn't turn the vehicle left and right, it just tips the thing left and right like a see-saw until the thing is pulling a wheelie on the sea to turn a corner.

How do I make the rudder turn the ship left and right, instead of twisting the entire thing sideways?

[ZANZIBAR]

It means your rudder is too far from the horizontal plane in respect to your center of mass. You can solve this by bringing them together. So either mounting your rudder higher or lowering your center of mass.

Rudders exert lateral force at the spot you position them. Now with your ship being a lever, this lateral force has two fulcrums, one is vertically through the center of mass and one is axially through the same spot. In your case your ship experiences less resistance turning about the axial fulcrum than the vertical one and therefore will tend to lean.

[cxado]

Thanks, that seems to have worked. But do you know how I can get the key mapping to go back to H,K,U and J? I don't know why but even though it works the keymapping is Y,I,T and G, which is less comfortable for manual driving.

[ZANZIBAR]

Use a Ship's wheel instead of a Vehicle Controller if you like the former as your control scheme.

[Smokin' Dragon]

there are two type of control block, a vehicle control block and a ship wheel, which have different bindings by default. Check which one you have and switch it for the other

[cxado]

Oh, I see. Seems a bit strange, but thanks