For the love of god please fix Scarab Maneuverability

[Blue Mars]

Driving the scarab is the most unenjoyable thing you could ever imagine. As if the developer though what vehicle could we bring to land on planets that is the most non suitable for planets? The Scarab! It will bump into the smallest rubble and turn wildly to any direction it feels like. It will sometime luch utself to the air just because a little curve on the road says so. Unless you are driving on a flat highway it will be a pain.
Now seriously, this is a nightmare, I see more and more posts on how Elite developers never play their game, while this is of course absurd the driving of the Scarab really feels this way.
Also please don't tell me to drive the other Vehicle, it doesn't have radar. Why on earth would I explore an alien planet without a radar?

hello commander,

not that i know everything, but i have a tip to improve your low gravity driving.

Now a scarab may be different than an SRV... which what i use..

If i drive over a mogul or a speed bump or a rock and it turns me from my direction... I
a) lower spd which is about 9-14 kph(kilometers per hour)
b) if it is flat moon or stretch , I accel to max for about a few second then back down to half top spd of 16 kph

if I drive and see obstacle ahead like a boulder...
a) i use thrusters and put max pips to thrusters or one pip

i launch over obstacles

whenever i am going too fast and drive over a mogul area or humps or etc... i decelerate and use the brake "ALOT "

the most under used "way" to keep going is by useing the "break" every minute , almost then i can re steer to my heading..

Lastly , if i am going 13-25 kph, and see like a canyon, a ravine, or etc...obstacle,...

a) i use thrusters to max and try to FLY over it... if no target is ahead in ravine....

so those are my tips,
x) i use the hand break all the time
y) i use thrusters to fly over obstacles or uneven terrain
z) i keep cargo scoop up until reaching a target

 

[Mika L]

hello commander,

not that i know everything, but i have a tip to improve your low gravity driving.

Now a scarab may be different than an SRV... which what i use..

If i drive over a mogul or a speed bump or a rock and it turns me from my direction... I
a) lower spd which is about 9-14 kph(kilometers per hour)
b) if it is flat moon or stretch , I accel to max for about a few second then back down to half top spd of 16 kph

if I drive and see obstacle ahead like a boulder...
a) i use thrusters and put max pips to thrusters or one pip

i launch over obstacles

whenever i am going too fast and drive over a mogul area or humps or etc... i decelerate and use the brake "ALOT "

the most under used "way" to keep going is by useing the "break" every minute , almost then i can re steer to my heading..

Lastly , if i am going 13-25 kph, and see like a canyon, a ravine, or etc...obstacle,...

a) i use thrusters to max and try to FLY over it... if no target is ahead in ravine....

so those are my tips,
x) i use the hand break all the time
y) i use thrusters to fly over obstacles or uneven terrain
z) i keep cargo scoop up until reaching a target

Just FYI, the unit of speed in an SRV is m/s, not km/h. 1 m/s = 3.6 km/h. And the Scarab is an SRV, Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle. The Scorpion is the other SRV model in the game.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

hello commander,

not that i know everything, but i have a tip to improve your low gravity driving.

Now a scarab may be different than an SRV... which what i use..

If i drive over a mogul or a speed bump or a rock and it turns me from my direction... I
a) lower spd which is about 9-14 kph(kilometers per hour)
b) if it is flat moon or stretch , I accel to max for about a few second then back down to half top spd of 16 kph

if I drive and see obstacle ahead like a boulder...
a) i use thrusters and put max pips to thrusters or one pip

i launch over obstacles

whenever i am going too fast and drive over a mogul area or humps or etc... i decelerate and use the brake "ALOT "

the most under used "way" to keep going is by useing the "break" every minute , almost then i can re steer to my heading..

Lastly , if i am going 13-25 kph, and see like a canyon, a ravine, or etc...obstacle,...

a) i use thrusters to max and try to FLY over it... if no target is ahead in ravine....

so those are my tips,
x) i use the hand break all the time
y) i use thrusters to fly over obstacles or uneven terrain
z) i keep cargo scoop up until reaching a target

It is way faster, speedometer displays meters per second, not kph 16 meters per second is around 50 kph...

 

[Fnord Velkor]

....
z) i keep cargo scoop up until reaching a target

Nonsense - makes no difference whatsoever.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I don't get it. If you dont look at the speedometer you actually get an impression that the SRV isnt really slow. You can also drive around bases and ship to gauge the performance. Jump hoohahh and that. Imo, the Scarab and SRV driving is one of the most outstanding parts that FD really nailed. If it was just the stupid engineers I'd clamour for refunds, but since I had so much fun with the buggy I got my moneys worth out of Horizon.

 

[Chaparral]

Source: https://youtu.be/x07Gdcj1gsM

You are definitely in the cool kids club. Enjoy your current handling.

 

[Chaparral]

People in this thread keep alluding to the uncontrollability of the Scarab, and I keep wondering what they are talking about. Seriously. I myself don't see much of a problem. Sure, on low-gravity slippery-ice worlds the SRV spins around more easily and makes longer jumps even on very small bumps, but that feels completely normal to me, and it's quite easy to learn to avoid it. Just watch what's ahead of you and drive accordingly. It's not like it's extraordinarily unrealistic. You can't expect a vehicle to behave the same on a 0.05g moon than it does on 1g.

But more fundamentally, even considering that, I still don't see the utter uncontrollability and unmaneuverability of the vehicle. It feels quite controllable to me, and believe me, I drive the SRV a lot. So, perhaps, it may be a question that I presented before in this thread but which wasn't really answered:

Is this a question of controller vs. mouse&keyboard? Is this difference caused by the input device you are using? Are people who are finding the SRV almost uncontrollable using keyboard&mouse?

Because I find the SRV very controllable with a game controller (in my case an Xbox One controller). The analog trigger allows for very fine-tuned acceleration, and the analog stick allows for very fine-tuned turning, allowing quite well-controlled behavior of the vehicle even on the most extreme terrain and gravity conditions. Just learn how the vehicle behaves, and watch the terrain ahead, avoid the bigger rocks, decelerate when a bump is coming up, be aware of ice, be aware of low-gravity conditions. Does the SRV still sometimes turn around because of hitting a rock? Yes, but rarely, and it isn't really all that bothering.

Hotas. The handling on the SRV makes it a skittery mess on low g, and a tippy nightmare on bouldery terrain. It does not handle like a real vehicle with understeer and oversteer. It breaks loose at seemingly random times, which is exacerbated with non-rendered or late rendered terrain features. The vertical downthrust jets over each wheel are supposed to keep it on the terrain. If they are supposed to suck on low g, there should be a dial to increase their force output.

I 4WD in the desert frequently. In the real world. If I had a vehicle like the SRV, I would return it immediately.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Hotas. The handling on the SRV makes it a skittery mess on low g, and a tippy nightmare on bouldery terrain. It does not handle like a real vehicle with understeer and oversteer. It breaks loose at seemingly random times, which is exacerbated with non-rendered or late rendered terrain features. The vertical downthrust jets over each wheel are supposed to keep it on the terrain. If they are supposed to suck on low g, there should be a dial to increase their force output.

I 4WD in the desert frequently. In the real world. If I had a vehicle like the SRV, I would return it immediately.

HOTAS is most likely culprit. Your 4WD would get really skittery too, if lets say 90 degrees for steering wheel would turn front wheels full range.
With steering wheel SRV is nicely controllable.

 

[Chaparral]

HOTAS is most likely culprit. Your 4WD would get really skittery too, if lets say 90 degrees for steering wheel would turn front wheels full range.
With steering wheel SRV is nicely controllable

The skipping stone contact driving of the current SRV model is more like driving a boat than a ground vehicle. But that's what the cool kid club wants so that's what we have.

I've used keyboard as well, and the vehicle simply does not respond as a ground vehicle does. Increasing the control over vertical downvector thrust to "glue" you on the terrain would help, but the interactions and bounciness with surface features needs to be moderated. We aren't driving pogo sticks.

At this point I'd scrap the whole model and go with this in a heartbeat.

 

[Crank Larson]

It's not just a ground vehicle, it's got boosters everywhere that affect the physics. More to the point, though, it's an imaginary vehicle in a computer game...

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Heavier the gravity more "natural" SVR behaves. It simply seems to get more traction.

 

[varonica]

Heavier the gravity more "natural" SVR behaves. It simply seems to get more traction.

Well it would wouldn't it, the amount of force pressing two surfaces together is what determines the amount of friction between the surfaces, the more friction the more traction, so with a higher gravity you get more force pushing the sufaces together. Of course you can get more friction also by changing the nature of the contact surface, but snce we can't put chains or spiked tires on our SRV's we have what we have!

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Basically it seems to me when people speculate about those downforce thrusters, that they work just as minor aids. Of course they could make system such that there would always be traction, but then what's the difference between driving at high and low g objects?

 

[varonica]

Basically it seems to me when people speculate about those downforce thrusters, that they work just as minor aids. Of course they could make system such that there would always be traction, but then what's the difference between driving at high and low g objects?

Because thrust from the thrusters isn't the same as gravity, gravity acts equally on every atom the SRV is made of pulling it downward towards the center of the body, but the thrust from the thrusters acts on the centre axis of the SRV, if the SRV tilts the thrust of the thrusters is no longer directly down but at an angle so when that happens the thrusters have to adjust, but suddenly the thrust is no longer along the center axis of the SRV, it's at an angle to that center axis. So if you are driving up a slope and the thrusters change angle to keep thrust going directly down they will act to push you backwards down the slope, so they don't work the same as gravity in all driving situations. So they can be an aid, but they can't replace gravity.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

HOTAS is most likely culprit. Your 4WD would get really skittery too, if lets say 90 degrees for steering wheel would turn front wheels full range.
With steering wheel SRV is nicely controllable.

I think it's overall FD's way to implement stuff: barely usable in vanilla - you need 3rd party. I think I redid the axis with the srv or maybe did combine it with all input devices. Throttle on stick and steering with left rigtht axis. If you use the stick's twist you may find it way to sensitive to make steering commands. Like in FAOff the absense of any tool to smoothen the input makes it basically unusable depending on your choice of how you want to control an input axis.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Well it would wouldn't it, the amount of force pressing two surfaces together is what determines the amount of friction between the surfaces, the more friction the more traction, so with a higher gravity you get more force pushing the sufaces together. Of course you can get more friction also by changing the nature of the contact surface, but snce we can't put chains or spiked tires on our SRV's we have what we have!

Shouldn't filling the cargo bay with 4t also significantly help with contact friction? 4t frame + 0.45t fuel + extra 4t cargo.

I didn't feel any difference when I tried.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Shouldn't filling the cargo bay with 4t also significantly help with contact friction? 4t frame + 0.45t fuel + extra 4t cargo.

I didn't feel any difference when I tried.

Probably it does not simulate cargo mass.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

If it does, that would also change mass distribution, where exactly cargo space lies in SRV. Balance would be affected and so on and on...

 

[Greasetrap42]

If it does, that would also change mass distribution, where exactly cargo space lies in SRV. Balance would be affected and so on and on...

For calculatons the SRV's center of mass location can be simplified by keeping it static and I'm sure nobody would care. Keeping the center of mass low but in the middle of the SRV would be fine, its just a video game. Almost doubling the SRVs mass should have a significant effect on handling though. I would hope the programmers used mass as a variable for calculating the various motions of the SRV.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Shouldn't filling the cargo bay with 4t also significantly help with contact friction? 4t frame + 0.45t fuel + extra 4t cargo.

I didn't feel any difference when I tried.

Cargo load isnt modelled. It isnt for ships either afaik.