Wheels

Wheels are used for making a ground vehicle move, most notably rovers. They require Electric charge to function.

Each wheel has a top speed that its motors can produce. Beyond this there is a maximum, or breakdown, speed at which the wheel will break. Broken wheels can be repaired by a level 3 Engineer. Breakdown speed is separate from the impact tolerance that all parts have. Exceeding impact tolerance completely destroys the part with no way to repair it.

Update 1.1 introduced Unity5 which substantially improved the performance of motorized wheels. Wheel failure is now dependent on impact and other stresses. The amount of stress on the wheel can be monitored by right-clicking on it. Once the wheel stress exceeds 100.0 failure is expected. The user has the ability to select whether steering and/or the motor is enabled or disabled as in previous versions. The suspension can be toggled between enabled or disabled (fixed) in the right-click menu as well.

Wheels also feature traction control and friction control. By default these options are set to Auto with a traction control value of 1.0. The traction control value can be tailored to individual vehicles to prevent wheelspin in different conditions. Traction control can be overridden and a manual limit to the motor output set. Friction control can be overridden and adjusted on a scale from 0.1-5.0. Friction control determines the responsiveness of the wheels with the ground. Low values will have a lot of slip, so the vehicle will slide or drift. High values will have better traction but may make the vehicle more susceptible to rolling over.

Tweaking wheel settings to improve Vehicle Stability

• Divide the wheels into steering-enabled (traditionally front) and steering-disabled (traditionally rear).
• Use low friction control on the steering wheels, this will allow them to slip instead of attempting to oversteer the vehicle.
• Use high friction control on non-steering wheels, this will cause the vehicle to want to go in a straight line and resist changing direction.

This scheme will improve stability when driving at high speed on flat ground. Beware that it will not help much on uneven terrain.

List of wheels

Image	Part	Radial size	Cost ()	Mass (t)	Max. Temp. (K)	Tolerance (m/s)	Tolerance (g)	Electricity (⚡/s)	Max. Motor Speed (m/s)	Brake Torque (kNm)
	RoveMax Model S2	Radial mounted	300	0.05	1 200	20	20	1.0	12	0.34
	RoveMax Model M1	Radial mounted	450	0.075	1 200	50	50	2.5	34	2
	TR-2L Ruggedized Vehicular Wheel	Radial mounted	760	0.105	1 200	100	80	3.5	58	3
	RoveMax Model XL3	Radial mounted	1 200	1.25	1 200	150	200	5.0	15.5	30