Impossible to drive uphill?

[Shivan]

I tried to do the Juno peak mission.
I tried building many cars with big wheels and maximum torque.

But its just impossible to drive uphill. Its like the wheels have no grib at all, its like they are driving on ice.

Is the physics just wonky or am I missing something?

[toinkertoy]

yeah just use the stock car you're given for "the jump", max the torque and gear ratio on all wheels AND make the main fuselage a battery! I dunno if it's the power the battery has or just the extra weight but it should work great if you do that!

ADD: ok just tested this out, it's definitely a weight issue. I changed the fuselage to solid fuel (113 kg. instead of 28 kg. for an empty fuel tank) and it climbed the mountains! but it also uses a lot more power when climbing. So making the fuselage a battery (241 kg.) is prolly best as the battery option is much heavier then solid rocket fuel (so better traction) and you'll be less likely to run out of power!

[Corinne]

I did it easy after making sure I was actually driving with all 4 of the wheels I had.

[Shoddyfrog]

Yeah, make a car 4 wheel drive, max torque and increase the gear ratio to max (6) is the way to climb steep hills.
Also check the center of mass, to make sure that the vehicle's weight is evenly split between the front and back wheels. When you enable steering on a set of wheels, it increases their weight, making the car unbalanced. The easiest way to solve this problem, is to make the body of the car two separate fuel tanks, then with the center of mass display turned on, select the rear tank, and with the part properties tool, adjust the tank's 'Dead Weight' slider until the red ball showing center of mass, is in the middle of the two sets of wheels.
Note - You need to unlock the tech 'Mechanical Engineers' in order to be able to adjust a fuel tanks dead weight.

[Ext3h]

Tiny wheels. Always go for the tiniest, narrowest wheel possible for the maximum speed you are willing to accept. Crank up torque and gear ratio to the maximum permitted by the wheel size.

And then go multiple wheels. Caterpilar like design with 4 driving wheels per side works fine. Make the front-most, and the rearmost wheel steerable, and don't forget that you need to invert steering on the rear wheel. Bigger craft? Just add more wheels. Never bigger, just more.

About suspension: DO NOT USE SUSPENSION ON DRIVEN WHEELS. Suspension works somewhat fine for large wheels on a trike, but NEVER use it with small wheels and/or if you have more than 2 driven wheels. Your craft will go flying of the launchpad.

For rough terrain, add another pair of non-driven wheels at the front and back, just slightly offset from the ground. Those are your shock absorbers, and they do well with suspension (minimum strength, maximum dampening). What they mostly do, is ensure that you don't end up with broken parts every time you hit a concave edge in the terrain.

[Arran Chace]

I just mounted a Rocket Engine to the back of the Car to climb steep angles, worked as a charm.. When it starts to slide back, add a bit of throttle to the Rocket engine, and up you go.

Good ol' KSP Engineering

[Tampax4Life]

I didn't read all the comments so ignore if already resolved or if I'm repeating others but I just made extended the wheels away from the body, angled in my wheels at -15 degrees, put gear ration low and torque high and let the vehicle rest only a few inches off the ground, I had great control of it and it made it up the mountain effortlessly.

[Dr. Manhattan]

The starter wheels you get are Street Tires.
Even maxed on torque and traction, you will still get a poor display while off road.
Spend some Tech Points to upgrade to the OFF ROAD Tire or plan your route better so you dont have to climb the steep parts.

[Shivan]

I managed to solve it by making the vehicle smaller, not bigger. Seems like if the vehicle is very heavy it gets pulled down even tho it has very big wheels and large engine.

[Rasip]

The first wheels you get are useless offroad. Slap some wheels on a low thrust liquid fueled rocket and ice skate to the top.

[Pneumonia]

Originally posted by Ext3h:

Tiny wheels. Always go for the tiniest, narrowest wheel possible for the maximum speed you are willing to accept. Crank up torque and gear ratio to the maximum permitted by the wheel size.

And then go multiple wheels. Caterpilar like design with 4 driving wheels per side works fine. Make the front-most, and the rearmost wheel steerable, and don't forget that you need to invert steering on the rear wheel. Bigger craft? Just add more wheels. Never bigger, just more.

About suspension: DO NOT USE SUSPENSION ON DRIVEN WHEELS. Suspension works somewhat fine for large wheels on a trike, but NEVER use it with small wheels and/or if you have more than 2 driven wheels. Your craft will go flying of the launchpad.

For rough terrain, add another pair of non-driven wheels at the front and back, just slightly offset from the ground. Those are your shock absorbers, and they do well with suspension (minimum strength, maximum dampening). What they mostly do, is ensure that you don't end up with broken parts every time you hit a concave edge in the terrain.

Why do smaller wheels work better for mountain climbing? It just seems counter intuitive to me.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

Ext3h's view isn't the only view. Here's my all-rounder dune buggy[www.simplerockets.com]. It's ... not pretty ... but it'll get you there.

Learning to tune this drove me to actual suspension tuning sites, what they taught me about real suspension performance works in the game.

[Proxy]

WHYYY if the torque in editor is linearly increasing with wheel size, in reality after 100% size the wheel barely can move on a flat surface, wtf why is it like that. its like we have separate invisible motor with constant torque and it cant turn bigger wheels. Is it bugged or poorly designed? Am I missing something? Tech tree node is called "monster trucks" or smth but as far as I can tell you cant build monster trucks because hub motors in wheels wont be able to move it?

upd: well, I found out that "rugged" hubs with big wheels ~middle ratio give enough torque to drive fast and uphill, ok, but I still dont get it how it works, why other hubs are such junk then

[dith]

Originally posted by Proxy:

WHYYY if the torque in editor is linearly increasing with wheel size, in reality after 100% size the wheel barely can move on a flat surface, wtf why is it like that.

I've been wondering about that too. My guess is that despite its size and mass, the bigger wheels slip. Ofc there is no indicator for what goes wrong.