Shack Attack

Episode 8 of Wrong Way Up starts with Captain Shack (red suit with custom face) regretting his life choices after he finds himself on a rover with wheels by W4stedspace, trailer hitches by Splitsie, and greebling by Texfire. An amazed Shack gets a tour of the rover, the planes, the runway, and the *recently acquired* enemy base next door. Capac arrives late and cruises around the base in a car stolen from the Bots. They agree that "The real runway is the one that you made along the way". They chat while they fix their planes and the rover. Splitsie sighs because w4sted used the new unweldable armor plates in his plane (Elon Thrust) design. DE demoes correct runway landing to Shack while Splitsie builds a gatling-drill-crane.

(0:30) Tex is building a plane recovery crane with an inscrutable number of subgrids. W4sted and Capac narrate events as coded spy transmissions: "I repeat. The hydrogen is in the tank. The bottle has fallen." Tex is about to reveal his trick how bad luck leaves him alone but he's interrupted by an explosion and a scream! Shack's stolen Warthog ignited a warhead. Meanwhile, Capac is repairing a stolen minibus whose permissions are set to a foreboding "Capac Amaru (dead)".

DE and Tex copy Splitsie's hitch setup and Splitsie admits he sometimes does things that make sense intentionally, and sometimes by accident. W4sted recommends drag chutes and thrust limiting and gets temporarily stuck under a modded plane wheel. Splitsie has modded the hydrogen engines' effectiveness which means all planes they build here won't work anywhere else... Tex and DE project their trailer blueprint off the new hitch to extend the rover with salvaged components from the raided base. Chat recommends the Build&Repair mod, but DE and Splitsie counter that cooperating to find a solution is more interesting to watch. They chat about the impact of colourblindness on navigating this planet and on being a farmer in Australia. Shack proudly flies past and the others list everything that's wrong with his plane, and DE and Splitsie help him weld up his acid bitten wings. Capac's constant "cruising" prompts a conversation about city traffic rules.

(1:00) Acid rain damages the unfinished trailer and DE hurries to get his burning Toblerone to safety. After the rain, they quickly weld up the trailer. Tex describes it as "Co-op-er-a-tion! Brought to you by the letter A like Acid!" When Splitsie falls through non-corporeal projected blocks, "who you gonna call?" -- "Blockbusters", responds Capac. Capac likes the drill's gun-armor-shield until he hears that Splitsie designed it.

The Bots in in-game Chat contact their compromised "Outpost 76" and almost fall for Capac's charming smalltalk. W4sted offers to add missing wheels if Splitsie lowers the piston drills to push the trailer off the ground, but actually it was a ruse so w4sted could reach the drills' conveyor ports to refill his hydrogen bottle. DE would switch teams for pizza but not for robot pizza with Halford o-rings and motor oil. The Bots' surveillance drone passes at great height and none of our heroes' planes is fuelled or rearmed. Splitsie starts driving the rover to drill ice from a nearby frozen alien lake.

(1:30) Shack lands his repurposed plane on the Jalopy's runway and is again greeted by DE with a shopping list of what he should have done differently. They shorten Shack's wings, cut off the long tail, and add canards. Tex struggles to build his crane trailer without subgrid projections. Shack and DE talk shop about FOD walks: inspecting the runway for foreign object damage/debris. In in-game chat, a Bot convoy contacts the compromised base and Capac types cheeky responses. Splitsie starts driving towards the Bots' Bruce Willis (?) Survey Rover which almost throws the Toblerone off the elevator.

The Bots arrive and realise their base is occupied by meatbags! W4sted analyses their spelling and confirms they are not orcs. Tex and w4sted man the rover's turrets and Shack, Splitsie, and Capac take over two enemy cars. DE's Toblerone is in the air. They steal the Bot convoy's cargo while w4sted engages the Bot crew. Shack is the driver and Splitsie the "roof gunner" while Capac runs over Bots in the second stolen car and steals back the rocket launcher.

(2:00) DE is frustrated by his Toblerone's sudden emergency landing (a bug?). W4sted evades rockets and experiments empirically with recoil in laggy conditions. At sun rise, they offload the loot into the Jalopy, and secure (most of) the planes to leave this place. Capac ponders flapping the runway like an ornithopter. While driving, Splitsie clarifies he doesn't hit trees because he hates them, but because he loves seeing them fly. Splitsie has fixed Shack's plane's center of drag by adding ... a stylish moustache.

Everyone screams when the Jalopy stops dead. Its front crumbles, trailers fold concertina style, and craters appear below the wheels. Luckily, the physics engine untangles the concertina seconds later, and they can salvage the torn-off drill arm and rebuild the shattered front cargo containers.

Splitsie corrects Shack's plane's wing orientation. Tex realises slowly what not being able to project subgrids means for building his complex crane... DE is positively surprised that a "random" piston built into the hangar deck is Capac's car lift. Capac's learning! We're all doomed! -- Everyone's startled again as Shack's plane slips and lands face down between the trailers. Instead of waiting for Tex and DE's recovery crane, Splitsie flips it right side up using gyroscope override. Shack lifts off and lands again three seconds later, asking for fuel.

(2:30) W4sted compares his unwieldy plane in the hangar to the boat in NCIS Agent Gibbs' basement. Since everyone's too lazy to measure the size, they jam the plane into the elevator to see what happens. The whole rover sashays, probably due to subgrid issues. The bots declare red alert over Capac's cheeky in-game chat responses. Tex tells about his spiritual experience finding tacos. DE recommends to redeem his Twitch Channel Points to receive dad jokes. Capac watches stars and low flying enemy drones through a rocket launcher's sights. W4sted's plane barely survives the trip up the elevator and gets secured to the runway. A bitter DE doesn't trust Splitsie's situational awareness. At the same time, Shack loves this server, because every time he does something stupid everyone blames Capac. Splitsie upgrades Shack's grounded plane to hydrogen and is accused of sabotage and possibly ("gasp!") Splitsie even being the head behind the enemy Bot attacks! Tex's crane is ready but Shack instead lifts off to engage a bomb-dropping Warthog in dense fog.

(3:00) Shack lands on the runway next to Elon Thrust. Splitsie saves him from falling off and gets unceremoniously run over. Shack manages to park down in the hangar, suffering only "minor opportunities for redesign". W4sted tries to weld a ship with a rifle. Hardly having made any progress, they start driving again and find fool's silver and mine real cobalt. Everything's vibrating/spinning and subgrids appear detached. During the acid rain, they help Tex keep his crane trailer repaired. Splitsie uses his leet Build Vision skills to control the wild whacky fuel arm to refuel the parked planes. While driving on, they chat about desync bugs where sitting in any seats trolls the driver.

(3:30) Capac is not allowed to scout on foot and almost gets abandoned. Everyone is scared and travel sick while "dad" Splitsie races across rough terrain in the dark. They wish they had "ultimate sea legs" and Capac thinks that's a crustacean buffet. They solve the problem of seeing horrible terrain ahead by averting their eyes. The trailers tilt like cities in the movie Inception. Splitsie reminds them to look for an ice lake next episode and declares success for today.

## References

1. ↑ Alluding to the TV trope "Maybe The Real Treasure Was the Friends We Made Along the Way"
2. ↑ Roof or wing gunner means, instead of using automatic turrets, a player with a rifle or rocket launcher stands on the plane wings or vehicle roof.