Bipedal Vehicle / Karma Help!

I have a tracked vehicle and a bipedal robot-type vehicle in the works.

Do tracked vehicles have any specific propulsion type, or does everyone just use a multiple 'wheel' arrangement?

I guess that inline wheels could take care of the tracks relaxing over the terrain etc.

Bipedal Vehicles:

In the case of a large bipedal vehicle, for a walking motion: would it be best to apply a simple vecor force and tie it to the player's throttle setting? A force for each foot? Generally only one foot is in contact with the ground at any particular time when the biped is in motion.

Bipeds generally would have decent hill-climbing ability, and good forward/brake and turning torque even on uneven terrain.

I'd also like the biped's feet to contact the ground at the correct angle...I have sufficient range in the skeleton to take care of the angles on ramps, terrain etc...but how do I specify collision for each foot --> correct foot angle? I'm guessing the feet need to be ankle- heel - toe 'ragdolls' in their own right.

I'm hoping the ragdolls will work with the otherwise normal animation for the walk/run cycle.

I know this will increase collision overhead (it needs to be per polygon too), but I think the detail is worth it.
Biped vehicles walk cycle is slower than players (even though they move quicker overall)...so the extra detail is needed as foot-ground collision is much more obvious.
Bottom line is, I don't want the biped to stop on a ramp or side of a hill, turn, and have a leg sticking out into space :/

The biped is my main project right now, just not sure how to approach it. I haven't animated it yet (working in Maya)..as these questions might affect any animation (if any) for the feet.

If anyone can give me a heads up, that'd be great!

[legacy-FireCrack]

For the tank inline wheels seems the way to go, and for the biped... well your gonna have to have constant 'gyro force' applied and also you will have to use rigid bodies cause ragdolls always use capsule collision (not per poly). Evewn then karma static objects dont work per poly either, you need a colision hull, but that is workable. Unless your planning to use non-karma, in wich cas you wont use traditional colision anyways, just check if the foot bone is close enough to the ground then fix it and move onto the other foot.

Thanks -

I take it capsule collision is worked on radius / cylinder etc collision volumes rather than set volumes that move with the mesh.

I'm not sure about the gyro force - I'll be animating the walk cycle and then just tying the playback speed to the throttle - so it'll walk slower at lower throttle etc.

I'll only have it fall over if certain conditions are met...with a fall anim / full ragdoll followed by stand-up animation.

I don't need to reproduce a human's 'controlled fall' style of walking...just angle and fix the foot orientation for each step. if the robot walks up a ramp, for example, his feet should be flat on the ramp, as opposed to a nortmal UT2003 player, who would either be floating just off the ramp, or have thei feet part in, part out of the ramp.

MechWarrior4 does this with their giant robot / mechs. Each terrain triangle is pretty large (several metres wide), and each toe and heel of the mech follows the terrain with each step.