Capac Amaru, Space Plumber

**Capac Amaru, Space Plumber** is the 41st episode of Assertive Acquisitions.

## Synopsis

### Building in the carrier

Splitsie builds a mechanical arm with a projector and a small merge block that extends into the fighter repair bay to create a fighter printer. He tests it by printing a second Pointy Stick. The Pointy Stick and Green Menace are tweaked to accommodate being printed.

Capac builds the fore medical bay behind the bridge.

Splitsie continues the construction of the artillery corridors that now run underneath the fighter bays.

### SPRT Assault

Splitsie, Capac, and TFE see communications sent by SPRT:

> "Transmitting Image, Confirm Target"
>
>
> "That's them alright, report back with mission success."
>
>
>
> "Roger, Engaging"
>
>

Soon afterwards, they are swarmed by "SPR.Ben-Ji" signals, so group scrambles their fighters; launching the Pointy Stick, Green Menace, and H-Tram.

#### Space Battle

Capac (in the Green Menace) engages the enemy Ben-Ji's with gattlings guns. Splitsie (in the Pointy Stick) tries to shoot them with his railguns, but they are not firing, so he switches to gattling guns too before realizing that the problem was that they were turned off.

Splitsie watches a Ben-Ji crash into the carrier, though it doesn't appear to do any damage to the carrier. Capac continues spraying another Ben-Ji with gattling bullets until it is "dead in the water."

Splitsie shoots a different Ben-Ji with his railguns, but doesn't destroy it. It shoots a rail gun at TFE (in the H-Tram), but misses. Capac engages it with gattlings guns and Splitsie and TFE talk about it. Capac continues shooting it until he runs out of ammunition, at which point he rams it, disabling both it and the Green Menace. Capac survives the crash, but there is now a big hole in the front of his ship where the cockpit used to be. Splitsie makes sure it is dead by firing his railguns at it, and briefly spots what appears to be a body floating away from it.

#### Downtime

Splitsie asks: "Damage... report...?" Capac replies: "Yes." TFE replies that he thinks he may have slightly shot the carrier in the crossfire, so Splitsie takes the opportunity to jokingly blame all damage on the carrier on him.

Splitsie uses the Pointy Stick's magnetic plates to carry the Green Menace back to the carrier while TFE grinds down a mostly in tact enemy ship (which isn't a Ben-Ji).

Splitsie moves the printer arm out of the way so Capac can use the welding bay.

While trying to help Capac fix his ship, Splitsie flies into the welder bay and dies, having forgetten or not realised that Capac had actually turned it on already.

A meteor crashes into the carrier, punching a decently-sized hole in its hull. Splitsie wants to replace the carrier's light armour with heavy.

Splitsie realises that Capac's projector on the Green Menace was misaligned, and the ship had been repaired wrong. Capac doesn't care, however.

Splitsie has an idea for the medbay. He asks Capac if he had any plans for the middle of its floor, to which he discusses his thoughts of putting lab equipment, and maybe something coming down from the ceiling. Splitsie puts down his idea, placing an operating table in the medbay.

#### Recapture of the Hiding Pirate Station

Suddenly, the crew hears gunfire as their turrets shoot at something. The crew uses their jetpacks to investigate, rifles at the ready. Capac spots a person trying to board the Hiding Pirate Station that they captured previously. Some rifle fire ensures. Splitsie finds it difficult to keep track of who is who and accidentally shoots TFE.

Capac finds an tries to loot a backpack floating in space, but gets shot by a light patrol drone. The patrol drone, on fire from the damage done to it by turrets, flies directly towards Splitsie who uses his jetpack to dodge it at the last moment.

The pirate station suddenly starts moving upwards, with TFE noticing that it is flying away.

Capac jetpacks to the station and enters its bridge. The pirate piloting it notices and shoots and kills Capac before Capac can kill him with a grinder. Splitsie approaches the station and trades gunfire with the pirate.

The pirates get the attention of an ASSERT Sojourner and sends a Fruit Fly drone after the station. Upon spotting the Fruit Fly, Splitsie bails from the station and flies back to his carrier, leaving the pirates to deal with it. Capac, who had also boarded the station, also bails, after grabbing his stuff in the backpack from his previous death.

#### Second Space Battle

Splitsie decides it is time to jump the carrier, and orders the others to lock down, but TFE had just taken off in the H-Tram to fight back against a Ben-Ji that had flown to the carrier, so Splitsie gets into the Pointy Stick. The Fruit Fly starts attacking the carrier, and Capac also launches his Green Menace.

After a little fighting against the ASSERT Fruit Fly drone and pirate Ben-Ji fighters, TFE suggests they lock everything down and get out of there. Splitsie agrees, and orders Capac to come lock down, so Capac leaves the firefight he is in and starts flying 3 km back to base. Splitsie chases a Ben-Ji, which crashes into the Marlin's drills. Splitsie shoots it off with his gattling guns.

Splitsie and Capac lock down their fighters to the carrier, and TFE uses the Marlin to jump the carrier to the uranium asteroid.

### Blowing up a Salvage Station

After jumping, Splitsie spots the signal of a Space Pirate Salvage Station only 11 km away, to his dismay. Splitsie quickly calls an attack on it, and TFE agrees to help while Capac works on the medbay.

Splitsie launches the Pointy Stick. He goes to turns back due to having low ammo, but then the Pointy Stick runs out of battery and starts floating helplessly spinning through space. He quickly affixes some small batteries to it and recovers it. As he is piloting it back to the carrier, the salvage station sends a drone, though it is shot down by their turrets.

Splitsie launches in the second Pointy Stick he printed earlier in the episode, and starts flying to the salvage station, along with TFE who is in the Nemo. Splitsie reminisces about the earlier days when it was just them, taking on enemies. TFE interjects that they were using rovers back then.

The salvage station comes into view. TFE asks Splitsie if he is wanting to just absolutely eviscerate it, since keeping Space Pirate stuff in tact has not gone so well for them so far.

Splitsie takes out a turret with his railguns. The station is apparently shooting at the pirates own drones.

Splitsie spots an exposed hydrogen tank. He has an idea, which is all he tells TFE before he shoots it with both his railguns, blowing up the entire station in a dramatic fashion.

### Wrapping up

Splitsie inspects the damage done to the carrier this episode and has a look at what Capac has been doing in the medbay. TFE has also been working on the Marlin, and Splitsie comments that it has just been getting bigger and bigger. It now has a very big chin.

The crew back in the medbay, Capac shows the other two around and makes special note of the ship's first toilet (explaining the title of the episode).

## Behind the Scenes

Other people helped make this episode by playing the pirates. Eisen commenting on Discord that making the nose of the Ben-Ji's out of heavy armour seems to have paid off. Jexsam was responsible for one of the ships in the battle, which he named a Trident, but was disapointed that it was reduced to a footnote in TFE's perspective. gruzzob shared a video of an inside perspective of the final explosion of the episode; he was using a toilet inside the salvage station when it was blown up, killing him instantly.

It can be spotted that Splitsie subtly censored the names of other players in chat while editing the video. The messages sent before the beginning of the first battle had the player names replaced them with "SPRT." Later in the video, when he was on board the Hiding Pirate Station, the last chat messages sent by ASSERT NPCs were duplicated, presumably to cover up previous chat messages for whatever reason.

## Hauntings

Back in episode 38, TFE noticed that one of the solar panels of the Marlin had been renamed to have 666 at the end of its name. This episode, he discovers that a Drill, two Sci-Fi Ion Thrusters, a Hydrogen Engine, a Warfare Battery, and a Wasabi Gyroscope in addition to the solar panel had also been renumbered to 666.

## Trivia

A link to this episode was tweeted by the Space Engineers official Twitter account, with a quote from the episode.

## References

1. ↑ https://discord.com/channels/257056038665191436/748147696136618055/1118555390855086090
2. ↑ https://discord.com/channels/257056038665191436/748147696136618055/1118596217081970748
3. ↑ Message: https://discord.com/channels/257056038665191436/748147696136618055/1119274730550210801

Video file: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/748147696136618055/1119274730021716089/station\_blammo.mp4
4. ↑ https://twitter.com/SpaceEngineersG/status/1670450294151589888