Wrong Way Down - Part 10

In Episode 10 of Wrong Way Down, Splitsie, Capac (wearing a slimy Hazmat suit), W4stedspace, and Texfire, need to recover from the deadend they found themselves in at the end of the previous episode.

W4stedspace needs to catch up with the Bird Eater's new course when Splitsie finds a less steep cliffside to drive up from the lake in a southwestern direction. W4stedspace mentions that his community has created a James Bond like stream intro for the big charity stream this week. Capac confirms to Chat that eating Algal Nutrient Paste increases your IQ by 200+% and Splitsie teases that percentage increases depend on the starting value.

The Bird Eater's outriggers have too much torque (possibly since today's update?) and W4sted's first instinct is, "Can we weaponise this?" While trying to find an Australian metaphor for how W4sted's speederbike is sheepherding the Bird Eater, they realise that kangaroos are basically three-legged marsupial T-Rexes. They have reached the southern latitudinal World Seam, and build a short ramp over it.

(0:30) Thanks to the high-powered spotlight and the bullet trails mods, their drone battles now look like Star Gate Atlantis sieges. W4sted scouts and they travel further south west. Splitsie explains to Chat that if you made the trip around a planet with agile small-grid rovers only, you would have no assembler for repair materials. To lower the rover's weight on the steep slopes, Splitsie and W4sted suggest to cast Capac, or respectively Texfire, over board. W4sted asks Splitsie for a (geographic) GPS of their goal but Splitsie plans to recognise the (magnetic) south pole when the compass starts spinning. Capac declines the option of building his own vehicle. They get stuck on an uphill stretch and start sliding backwards because the bottom wheels don't have traction. Flipping the outriggers out of the way makes it worse. Texfire adds two more gyroscopes and proposes jacking the Bird Eater up to stay in place. Capac suggests solving the problem with explosives. Splitsie returns to the idea of constructing arms to pull the Bird Eater up like an ice climber, and also using experience gained in Episode 2.

(1:00) At sunrise, Capac gets lured away by a U.F.O. and attracts a stealthy Squid drone. W4sted speeds off because, if that drone as much as *looks* at his speederbike (now named Mine Roo), it will fall apart into wheels. As debris rains down on them, Texfire and Capac want to pave their roads with "good intentions and the gibs of their enemies."

Splitsie's landing-gear-on-pistons-with-rotors construction pulls them up onto flatter ground, but then the rotors stop behaving and they grind it off again. Capac has added a bumper sticker to the Bird Eater that says "Capac is my co-pilot." and is pondering merchandise ideas with his Chat. W4sted zooms around the "overweight grandparent" Bird Eater like a grandchild and makes driving on mountains look easy. They try different manoeuvres to get uphill, such as tacking. Chat teases that by Christmas, they must make it back to the North Pole! They ponder various future small-grid wheeled multi-grid constructions while getting stuck again.

Eventually, they give up on the climbing pistons and build a ramp across the crevice. Splitsie wants to use the backs of refineries to save steel plate -- but W4sted challenges them to build a bridge for only the center wheels and let the Outriggers hang by the sides. Splitsie is onboard with that dare.

(1:30) Last time W4sted tried this approach he definitely didn't end up in a pit, and Splitsie definitely didn't see it happen... Lucas in Chat one-ups their dares by suggesting they should attach a grinder in the back of the Bird Eater to "eat" the bridge as the drive across. Texfire sounds worried about these plans. Capac runs off building more Capacodiles to not have to help build a boring bridge. W4sted manages to kill himself while placing a block, and Splitsie throws blocks at Capac under the bridge.

They look at last episode's map but Bravada has half-blanked it so they are not influenced by seeing the upcoming terrain. W4sted crosses the bridge despite getting dramatically disconnected. While Splitsie is crossing the bridge, Capac tries to distract him with puns about Lacoste/Lacrosse/Macrosse. Splitsie's localhosted game crashes and they need to restart, losing a few minutes of unsaved changes. Splitsie races across the bridge and the outriggers lose multiple wheels, but he makes it. They drive on with 17% fuel left in the hydrogen engine.

(2:00) At dawn, they struggle to drive uphill and Splitsie loses several more wheels. Splitsie's next idea is to build one or two small-grid cargo vehicles to take some weight off the Bird Eater for the upcoming steeper terrain. In the meantime, Capac has added another bumper sticker "How's my driving?" that advertises Capac's Twitch channel.

While Texfire and Capac build small-grid cargo carriers, W4sted shows Splitsie the steep, scouted trail in the speederbike. They spot a stationary cargo ship above the valley--clearly Splitsie's last beta patch has not resolved this mod issue yet.

Splitsie comes to the conclusion that upscaling well-running designs like W4sted's Spider doesn't necessarily work for large-grid vehicles like the Bird Eater. The game crashes again, luckily they only lose one minute of work. Capac hopes that the Spider vehicles would eat the game bugs and Splitsie compares Capac's failure to rejoin the game to a creepy party guest showing up too early. After rejoining, Capac would rather eat snow to produce hydrogen than *beg* Splitsie to help him out with jetpack fuel.

Splitsie is busy dismantling the stuck outriggers and W4sted walks around the construction site giving thumbs-up like a manager. Splitsie insults Capac's PC as "potato bulldozer." Capac's cargo vehicle scaffold tips over but he can right it quickly.

(2:30) While the others build their vehicles, Splitsie adds solar panels to the core of the Bird Eater. Splitsie sees Capac's slow design efforts and threatens to leave him behind at sunset. Splitsie plans to throw components and ores overboard every time the Bird Eater cannot scale an incline. They wonder whether the south pole will have polar night or day?

The cargo vehicles will be unarmed and will hide behind the Bird Eater when attacked. Splitsie helps Capac weld the wheels on his static pixel-art variant of a Spider vehicle. They chat about that it's a pity that Capac can't attend the Charity event tomorrow, because they could have an SE pixel-art contest.

W4sted and Texfire tease Splitsie by repeatedly saying that there are no good SE tutorials and nobody knows how to use Build Planner... Capac doesn't want to record tutorials because it would mean that people steal his ideas! W4sted ironically jokes that Captain Shack (who will also attend the Charity event) should be the one recording tutorials. Out of context, Capac reminds Splitsie to put a Capactron in the Moon Museum. They chat about how coop games like Deep Rock Galactic are better with friends.

(3:00) They share their stream schedule for tomorrow's charity stream. Capac gets compliments and encouragement for his thumbnail worthy SE builds, but he is fobidden to use rotors. Splitsie is teased for oppressing new creative ideas with his practicality and experience... W4sted replaces one of Capac's bumper stickers with a custom picture of W4sted and his team as Kerbals.

Capac's cargo carrier's decorative grinders / spider fangs grind off his own front wheels if activated, so they need to stay off. Splitsie offloads a lot of cargo and ejects rocks. Everyone agrees that the most hated greebling problem is the front of the fighter cockpit--except Capac, who thinks he solved it easily when designing his Fightertron. Splitsie attaches an ugly drill to Capac's spider to collect ice for his hydrogen engines and notices that Capac forgot to add an O2/H2 generator...

(3:30) They're ready to go at dusk. Capac says Texfire's tank looks like a duck/centipede hybrid. While Texfire is messing with his steering settings, Splitsie gets uphill on the second attempt. Splitsie names Capac's vehicle Spider Bus.

Splitsie suddenly hits something and front wheels, the med bay, and the front cargo containers are destroyed, causing a crater. The suspension was likely too bouncy. Splitsie and W4sted fix the medbay etc. while the others pick up the dropped components. Due to the hurried repairs, the Bird Eater is getting more and more primary coloured. Splitsie realises that the small-grid transparent LCDs from the last game update are practically small-grid windows. They start driving south again and need to go around a deep drop, but the Bird Eater moves more easily now. Texfire's tank's spinning lights look like footsteps.

W4sted invites everyone to their charity stream for tomorrow.

## References

1. ↑ A reference to Algal Nutrient Paste from the Zebra Monkeys machinima series Light Echoes.
2. ↑ A World Seam is a straight-line edge in the planet's 3D cube model at the edges where the maps are stitched together. There is one latitudinal seam around each polar region, and four longitudinal seams. The southern latitudinal Seam is also the reason for the strangely cut off lakeside visible on the map.
3. ↑ It's named Mine Roo because it's got the posture of a kangaroo and Splitsie told them to name everything that's theirs, so w4sted added "mine".
4. ↑ Fightertron on the Steam Workshop