Stronger robotic joints

[gotmachine]

A very common complaint about breaking grounds robotic is that the joints are pretty weak compared to the usual part connections.

The main reason for this is that KSP uses a single internal PhysX joint for the actuators, whereas multiple internal joint are usually used for connecting parts, as a way to effectively increase the amount of solver iterations in a targeted way.

It is at least theoretically possible to implement the same trick for actuator joints, this is something that might be worth investigating.

Edit : Actually, after a quick look, the main reason why robotic joints aren't very strong is a design decision. The strength of the joint is actually configurable to some extent in the module config, with the caveat that it is at least partially tied to the EC consumption of the motor. It should be possible to increase their strength by a good margin by just playing around with how things are configured, although that might require introducing some additional strength scaling factor / option.