Custom Rover Suspension Testing In Space Engineers

This is the sort of thing where I think the new event controller blocks could REALLY shine if they were to add keyboard button press. Something like if thrust forward button pressed, accelerate wheels etc

Glad to see I'm not the only one that has been working on actual suspension in space engineers lol iv been taking a crack at it for about a year or so now it's just so neat to watch the geometry in action it's also quite neat you effectively made solid axle suspension where as I made independent suspension lol keep up the great work man and hopefully we can get some insane rovers built to truly wow the SE community

Nice articulating suspension! That last truck platform stayed super level over the undulating surfaces

I watched this and the tutorial video and for those wondering, these do work for their large grid variants, they just take a little fidgeting and patience to make it work. I have a line of large grid rovers that specialize in drilling that have been plagued for ages by rough terrain. These custom suspensions of yours have significantly improved their capabilities over rough terrain and I want to thank you for putting this on YouTube. Seriously, you helped a lot Lol. 🤣

The stock wheel suspension is pretty good and robust in this game. You clearly enjoyed the experimentation of more complex wheel suspensions systems. I actually find driving on low gravity worlds more difficult than high gravity worlds as the suspension needs to have it's damping reduced to a very low number otherwise my rides are going to get lots of air (vacuum) when moving at some speed or rolling the vehicle. Active robotic suspensions for off road vehicles is not yet invented but already, NASA and ESA are experimenting with such suspensions systems to address the unique hazards of driving at speed in a low gravity environment. Basically, Active robotic suspension adds an additional axis or dimension to an existing active suspension system allowing it to handle offroading conditions at a higher speed than the gravity driving conditions allow

7:09 This one makes me think of a motor grader, and I could see that mechanism being handy in similar applications. Really putting the ‘engineering’ into ‘space engineers’!

Thanks for making the video. Really enjoyed it. I'm very impressed with your designs.

For me the main topic of studying suspentions is to find survival friendly solution to a drastic changes in weight (yeah i was building kharak like cruisers with hangars, assault and onboard production) which where supposed to atack npc's and then dissasemble, drain all power and hydrogen literally leaving only bones and skeletons. And i was sucsessfull enougth with pulling a gigant rover on Pertam out of canion, and performing its tasks. But two major sources of headic where overweight stress during contaniers being 50 % full. And inability to leave it in open. As pretty much any passing ship or spawned drone where long living enough to blow up moust of wheels or heavily damage it while operator is offline.

Hey Quantum, Search the workshop for "Prototype Suspension Mk-15 Small Rover Frame" I think ittl be right up your alley, considering you enjoy putting rotor heads on your wheels, its my best work yet. Also the MK-14's are nice too but thats large grid. Enjoy some really crazy custom suspensions

Something you may like, an idea that's been out for a good long time, is a vanilla fix for controlling sub-grids without need for a script. Not saying there's anything wrong with scripts but I encourage you to look into the "WASD Converter". I'm trying to make a biped mech with a WASD Converter built in so I won't need a script... And yes it was satisfying to see that 8-wheeler👌☺

Gosh dang thats some nice suspension

I shared this on some other S.E. discord channels so more people can see and appreciate them!

Yes tutorial would be nice and show off large grid that would be a blast

Honestly, I think the only way to make that final design work 100% forward and backwards is to use springs or another set of wheels with a rotor head (as a makeshift spring) with those main struts facing against one another. You would half the amount of wheels you could have for the same space, but it would work forward and backwards. Not sure if that tradeoff is worth it though.

Impressive

The last build have really nice suspension for offroad rovers. How it works in XXL, also with big blocks. And how i pull up the power to lift more, as this platform where you build it on.

My major problem with any suspension design is the subgrid script. It never just locks the wheels. They all spin the wheels when "parked", which I can only assume is a limitation of the scripting/game itself. But it doesn't stop me from messing around with suspension designs. :-) Ninja edit: It takes a lot of fine tuning to get suspensions to move properly. Brake torque is immensely useful as are rotor limits. I usually set my minimums to keep things from smashing together, and braking torque to allow things to slowly settle. I've probably spent more time than I care to admit fiddling with them.

Im gonna use this as inspiration and expand upon this.

have you considered making the wheels slightly closer together and then adding a set of wheels at the front and back set wider and higher up? This helps reduce the chance of it ever flipping, and having wheels higher and closer to the front and back make it less likely you'll smash the front and back on particularly steep slope transitions.

Wow very very cool design :)