Wrong Way Down - Part 8

In episode 8, the inofficial Halloween episode of Wrong Way Down, our heroes make the most progress since the beginning of the series. Splitsie (Gray suit) and Capac (orange helmet + Grafitti suit) are once more joined by W4stedspace (Grafitti helmet + orange-black Hexagon suit) and Texfire (white Cow suit). Texfire babbles cheerfully and "Pl4guedSpace" is oddly muted. Splitsie has reenabled the Assertive Installations and is now localhosting in an attempt to prevent recent multiplayer bugs. They start driving immediately.

A female synthetic voice introduces W4stedspace and Texfire's cheeky offer of Tex-to-speech is declined. W4sted has lost his voice and has to rely on text-to-speech today. They're low on power as they reach the desert biome so Splitsie stops and decides to steal batteries from an Observer base. After being driven back by the Observer's drones and turrets, they keep the Bird Eater at a safe distance and plan to build either a "capacapult" or a small attack vehicle. Capac suggests a pillbox as infantry cover and Splitsie builds a vehicle that pushes the zero-friction pillbox towards the enemy like a shopping cart.

(0:30) They approach the Observer in the dark inside the pillbox and take turns as decoys. The Bird Eater's turret barrage works well against drones, but is equally life-threatening for our heroes, so Texfire switches the turrets on and off manually. Before W4sted and Splitsie reach the Observer, the uncontrollable pillbox slides off course and Splitsie surfs it downhill, chased by drones. Between their corpseruns and the fray, Capac can tell what he hit only by the "your reputation with (faction X) has dropped!" messages. They are now surrounded by newly spawned enemy Outposts, so they regroup at the Bird Eater and change position. Splitsie offers brain surgery to a sneaky drone and Capac is (according to Chat) bae.

(1:00) At dawn, Splitsie declines Chat's suggestion of using the Sapper method (drilling a tunnel under the enemy base) as cheesy. Splitsie's and Texfire's on-foot attack from behind a boulder finally brings a breakthrough and they start looting the base. Splitsie jokingly calls Capac a pro streamer because his alarm clock is audible, and Ca(t)pac teases back he wishes Splitsie would get caught in the crossfire. Meanwhile, W4sted in the Bird Eater is being attacked by drones and has used up half the ammo supply, but Splitsie motivates them by seeing enemy bases as sources of batteries. Splitsie manages to align the Bird Eater with the Battery but doesn't want to to build an Escape From Mars style crane. A drone attacks and unlucky Capac finds himself catapulted hundreds of metres away.

Splitsie and Texfire build a piston-merge-block-landing-gear contraption and even W4sted's text-to-speech voice sounds sarcastic about it. The next drone attack breaks the piston and the battery balances on the edge of the rear deck. They build two vertical pistons legs holding up the horizontal piston that inserts the battery into the rear deck... To avoid demonetisation, Capac resists describing the situation in words and subtly adds the outline of a stick figure's upper body...

(1:30) Splitsie and Texfire are busy over-complicating the over-complicated crane as large squid drones fly over and rain debris down on them. The makeshift crane collapses and they have to start over. Capac teases them with the statement that the viewers are more attached to the rover than that crane. W4sted warns that ammo supplies are running low. Their solar panels are in the shade and the drones have broken the wind turbines so they can't assemble more. W4sted suggests to merge the battery just anywhere and get out of here.

They notice the unmerged merge block is dragging the battery like a magnet. Soon after, the piston clangs out, damaging the battery, so they give up on the battery. A drone crashes into the Bird Eater, the ramp is lost, plus they're out of ammo. They hurry on south and W4sted warns that the whole right side is "being held together by one steel plate". Moments later, W4sted strains his voice to whisper out loud "Clanging out hard!" The rover spins slowly around its length axis and one wheel outrigger sinks into the ground...?! Texfire thinks they are being eaten by Shai-Hulud. Splitsie remembers the same physics bug (where all grids start spinning slowly in place) from his SE 1000 Dominos video. For a moment, the audio turns robotic and Splitsie quick-reloads the last auto-save from minutes earlier.

Splitsie admin-deletes debris and NPC bases while driving, and doesn't notice the Nickel boulder that shears off the already damaged front wheel. Capac just wants to drill into the side of a mountain and hide and repair in peace. They have made it further today than on any other day before! Lucas cheekily mentions in chat that he has been testing the drones in this region of the planet. Splitsie refuses to interpret "wrong way down" as *digging* his way to the south pole, because that would be a boring stream. Capac warns them of a boulder that Splitsie cannot see and that turns out to be non-corporeal.

(2:00) Bugs are accumulating, but Splitsie hesitates to restart the whole game. They drive on, quoting Dune and Star Wars, and W4sted uses his hoarse voice for great effect. They are in the only area of the planet that is not full of ice lakes--and running out of hydrogen power. Capac expertly spots an NPC base right before it sends drones. Texfire is tasked with building and recharging batteries. At dawn, they sneak up on the base with varying degrees of sneakiness: Splitsie snipes and decoys, W4sted builds barricades, and Capac flies straight in but is without tools or weapons.

(2:30) Right after they deactivate this base, drones from a new Installation attack and they need to move. While Splitsie is evading drones, W4sted amuses himself teaching the text-to-speech silly phrases. At dusk, the need to choose whether to follow the valley or go uphill. Nailing a drone to the Bird Eater to get uphill is alas against the self-imposed rules, so valley it is. Capac's idea of a scenario where batteries are strewn about to attract serial battery kleptomaniacs gets Splitsie's attention. They stop in the dark for repairs and ice mining. True to character, Capac retorts "I have sooo done the thing that you were just saying!" to Splitsie's "Capac never listens to me." W4sted's text-to-speech voice explains to Chat that "the moon is orange because spoohoohoohoohooky" which cracks everyone up. They consider adding a battering ram subgrid and discuss the ethics of "beating a tree to death with the corpses of its brethren." They notice their recent loot contained Uranium but have no reactor.

(3:00) Capac brainstorms that if their outriggers had outriggers, then they could not only drive up walls but also across ceilings. Splitsie builds an advanced angled ice drill rig while Capac simply finds an above ground ice boulder. Texfire is readding the lost access ramp in the back after having built a tree deCAPACitator out of Capac decoys as front grill. They give up on digging out the tiny amount of ice and rescue Capac who fell into the vertical hole with no jetpack fuel. Splitsie runs over Texfire as a Drifting Persuant attacks. W4sted advises better outrigger settings but the Bird Eater gets stuck and the tree deCAPACitator is destroyed (Capac: "How many of me died?!") by unknown forces. They run from drones while still looking for a large ice lake. W4sted realises the reason why they got so far in this Hallowe'en episode is because they were running *scared* more than usual. Splitsie floors it while the wheels are damaged, half the guns are missing, and Capac and Texfire can't log back in again (Capac: "I just died again even though I'm dead"). Splitsie finally restarts the game in hopes of clearing out the accumulated glitches.

(3:30) Terrain and view conditions are perfect as Splitsie plows through the forest, trailed by the smoke from the unrepaired turbines. Capac points out broken wheels but doesn't dare to fix them while Splitsie's driving. Texfire and W4sted jetpack up to look for an ice lake, but they see only snow. A drone approaches and the Bird Eater gets stuck on the terrain. Splitsie notices that the sim speed has dropped. He admin deletes the bases and crashed drones they left behind and "copy&paste" resets the Bird Eater. They're now down to their hydrogen reserves to run the engine for power, and drive on. Splitsie vows cutting back on the enemy bases just a tad... He drives at night until they reach uneven terrain. They made it 110 km from the north pole! Splitsie is taking bets how long it will take to the south pole and W4sted teases in his robotic voice "the meatbags will fail in four streams!"

## References

1. ↑ They are dressed up in costumes because it's the week of Halloween. You can also see that the skybox contains a moon that is big, red, and spooky, e.g. at 1:49:32 and 2:54:00.
2. ↑ Space Engineers 1000 Dominos
3. ↑ Set your paint color to Capac orange (RGB value 15,100,100 = #FF4300) before placing the modded decoys.