Wrong Way Down - Part 6

Episode 6 of Wrong Way Down continues the story after a month-long break which gave W4sted time to test his Spider design in depth. Today's goal is to replace the blue rover by one of W4sted's "Daddy Longleg" style vehicles. W4sted builds the center wheel structure and Splitsie and Capac move functional blocks, tanks, batteries, and cargo across, in between defence work.

While building, they chat about Splitsie joining W4sted's Kerbal Space Engineering series. Capac is a bit under the weather and they compare him to a Red Shirt (Orange Shirt?) or Kenny. Splitsie explains the recent infinite Capac clone incident in Survival... Unlikely episode 42.  Capac thought he had broken the game that day but it wasn't his fault after all.

(0:30) W4sted accidentally disconnects the wheel base from the scaffolding and suddenly the whole (unpowered, no subgrid) wheelbase tilts upright as if under phantom forces. Capac immediately wants to harness the new force for good. Splitsie announces the planned setup for his next edited series. To move the charged batteries, Splitsie turns the small-grid Spider into a crane. When W4sted refers to Splitsie's pistons as "danger noodles", Capac is reminded of a D&D adventure where his cleric was fighting with a pool noodle shaped spiritual weapon. Capac wonders out loud why his hydrogen bottle displays 200% filled--and his game crashes seconds later.

(1:00) As Splitsie transfers the first large-grid battery to the new vehicle, W4sted is disconnected due to a network outage IRL, with his grinder still going in game, which gets a curious Capac killed. They continue building and transferring cargo without W4sted's expertise for now.

(1:30) Texfire joins the Chat and offers Tex Support. ;-) Splitsie ponders whether Keen did not update the official tutorial series for SE because everyone has been watching his... W4sted returns from his network outage and they chat about the difficulty of ending a running stream in such a case. Splitsie is transferring batteries as one of the batteries drops and gets damaged due to an unpowered connector, but it kept its charge. Capac is uncharacteristically helpful and industrious while W4sted is silently concentrating on building wheels.

(2:00) They have transferred almost all cargo and functional blocks. Splitsie claims he forgot to repack the parachutes in another series "for drama". ;-) Splitsie is astonished that when W4sted is around, Capac (self proclaimed Space Genius) is "better". Capac: "Better than *what*?!" Splitsie: "Better than usual!" Splitsie considers donating to a forest charity to pay penance for all the trees his rovers have destroyed.

Capac suddenly calls for help and W4sted quietly explodes in the background. Klang destroyed half the rover and left a huge crater, so Splitsie reloads the server from a backup. Capac defends himself that he was busy breaking his jetpack and did not have time breaking anything else! Splitsie blames too many subgrids and has to grind down the others' stuck characters before the players can reconnect. W4sted gets "Group Survival" drone war flashbacks as he sees hostile NPCs spawn nearby and feels the urge to hide underground. They realise, if Subgrid Damage was enabled, none of their mechanical contraptions would ever get completed, and it's only thanks to Share Inertia Tensor that a "danger noodle" can carry a battery.

(3:30) While struggling to transfer the last batteries, Splitsie mentions his plans to attend PAX AUS 2019. W4sted watches Splitsie's unorthodox crane methods and states that he himself stops at the point when things get too clangy--but Splitsie takes it as challenge to work around that point! To get a square peg into a round hole (W4sted gives an example), Captain Shack would say "ooh, squirrel!" and drill more holes until one randomly fits. Splitsie in contrast would just hammer the square peg into the round hole. (Splitsie laughs and admits that this is literally how he built his microphone mount IRL...) W4sted adds, he himself would ignore the round hole and *build* a whole new multi-sided hole. And Capac's approach would be to throw the square peg in the vague direction of the round hole, and then silently wander off to find other "sweeeet" holes that nobody has found before. Chat sums it up:

> Shack = ADHS engineer, W4sted = creative engineer, Splitsie = stubborn engineer, Capac = the engineer that has stayed in space waaay to long...
>
>

Suddenly a Drone Installation spawns and sends drones to destroy Capac's mountaintop flag -- they need to pack up and move! Drone debris is raining down on top of them. Splitsie confirms that Capac and he do use swear words *off screen* while W4sted promises to swear less on Splitsie's streams; Chat doesn't mind because their watching kids curse more than the streamers anyway...

(3:00) Splitsie finishes the defence system on the new big Spider rover and, despite lacking the planned outriggers, they are about ready to move. When Chat asks about must-have SE mods, Splitsie and W4sted both recommend starting "vanilla". They hurry on south and Splitsie adjusts the wheel settings as he goes. W4sted volunteers to be the pathfinder while Capac struggles to drive the gantry crane uphill, so they abandon the crane and Capac joins Splitsie on the new big Spider.

W4sted explains the wheels' airshock features, and Capac unsuccessfully tries to make the others pay 10k space bucks for individual ammo magazines. A subgrid bug suddenly makes W4sted's small Spider's wheels disappear, and he agrees to let Splitsie dismantle it, since he has discovered major shortcomings in the prototype. While they take a break on the next mountaintop, W4sted builds the missing outrigger wheels. They have made it only 63km from the north pole, as the bird flies. Capac christens the new large rover the Bird Eater, because it is shaped like a spider and eats drones.

(3:30) They take the opportunity to recharge and Splitsie gets distracted building another ice drill contraption. Splitsie rebuilds the map LCD and Capac almost loses a gatling turret including ammo that rolls down the mountain in the dark. They jokingly advertise Splitsie's Build Planner tutorial and Capac's channel.

W4sted laughs at Chat's concern that the Bird Eater's movement might be in any way impeded by Splitsie's puny drill holes. The drones are back, and our heroes need to finish building the outrigger wheels so they can get moving. Splitsie jinxes everything by "speaking of the devil". W4sted mentions not trusting the rotor limits, and shortly after, the whole rover clangs out, leaving nothing but a caldera. With all respawn points gone, Splitsie respawns back at the north pole.

(4:00) Splitsie reloads from a backup and from now on to the end, they all have lots of trouble logging back into and staying in the game. A tree actually saves them from one of the drones crashing into the Bird Eater. W4sted explains how rotor limits cause physics bugs -- and wants to weaponise them. Splitsie attempts to set the rotor limits and saves after every change. They also admin-delete the drone base so they can get anything done. Splitsie and W4sted determine empirically which rotors cause explosions when touched. Capac appropriately quotes Star Wars and Matrix. Splitsie carefully rebuilds all rotors and theorises about solutions, while W4sted plays Minesweeper because he can't log in.

(4:30) Capac is bored and flies around. As a workaround they just leave the rotor limits unset and drive on. But while driving, the right outriggers get ripped off... The drones wake up and give chase. The rover stumbles, carves a hole into the ground, and they lose many wheels off the undercarriage.

They announce to restart next time from a game save 5 mins back.

## References

1. ↑ Lucas had given Splitsie a custom prank mod: To celebrate Capac's 100th death, the med bay was supposed to output countless despawning Capac clones. But Lucas never tested it while the "victim" was in game. It turned out that the game would teleport Capac's point of view into the most recent dying clone, and the clones didn't despawn, creating a "ball pit of Capacs", which was funny but also slightly disconcerting.
2. ↑ That was an known issue at time of recording; only from version 1.999 on, Connectors no longer required any power to stay connected.
3. ↑ Build Planner tutorial
4. ↑ Around this time, Capac released several funny AI Transformer generated "Captain's Log" stories and uploaded his first solo live stream.
5. ↑ Standing in front of LCDs that explain to guests, possibly Texfire, how to join the session
6. ↑ i.e. by exploding and reloading backups repeatedly