The Orange Baron Flies Again

Episode 4 of Wrong Way Up starts with w4stedspace (dark military suit) calling the show *Severe Lag Sundays*. They banter with Naburine in chat whether she wants a doppelgänger DE (purple suit) while Splitsie hurries to change his suit color back to gray. Capac (orange suit) has such bad luck that even a basic alarm clock app crashes on him. Texfire (cow suit) is back and inspects the airplanes on the runway. Splitsie notices the "engineer on the beach towel" ceiling decoration is wearing Capac's suit color from Light Echoes.

Capac immediately runs off chasing Unknown Signals. Splitsie admits he forgot to turn left at some point in the last episode and drives the Jalopy and his runway trailer back to correct that. Texfire and DE are reconfiguring their detached rear trailer and struggle to catch up with the front part. Everyone argues over whether *P* is now a safe keyboard shortcut to use in Space Engineers. While Capac and W4stedspace have flashbacks of getting stuck in Euro Truck Simulator and Snowrunner, the rear trailer abruptly jumps up vertically fifty metres because DE changed the suspension strength too quickly. They reattach the rear trailer while Splitsie's dog whines into the microphone. Splitsie wants to go scout in Capac's airplane but it lacks hydrogen. They joke about using warheads to just get rid of the hilly terrain and fake-advertise "*blow up* that Like button!!" to make Splitsie cringe.

(0:30) W4sted suggests to use the subgrid control script equally on *all* wheels and no longer attempt to control the front truck wheels directly. Splitsie sneaks off to ignite a warhead on a hill and DE immediately recognises it's a Splitsie experiment and not a bot attack. But Splitsie needs to stick to the self-imposed "mobile grids only" rule and not build warheads on voxels. Splitsie starts modifying the **Mouldy Banana'**s tailwings and Capac is bored and shoots at "the enemy planet". W4sted successfully guides the Jalopy over the hills.

(1:00) They are making some actual progress now, even though it looks like the trailers are colliding. After a steep climb onto a high plateau, the middle and rear trailer roll over and the bots take the moment of weakness to attack! Bomb-dropping Bucking Blammos fly by but don't hit anything. Splitsie uses gyroscope overrides to roll the middle trailer right side up onto the plateau.

DE's rear trailer is upside down on its roof and detached from the front. Splitsie parks the front two vehicles on flatter terrain before they try and fail to flip the rear trailer with pistons. Chat comes up with the idea of adding hinges inside the roof supports and flipping the whole roof open like a flip phone to right the rear trailer?

(1:30) Splitsie however prefers w4sted's plan to build a multi-jointed piston arm with hinges and magnetic landing gear to hold onto the grass. Tex sits in the rear trailer's update-down driver seat ready to take over. In a physically impossible manoeuvre, they flip the rear trailer... Splitsie releases the sparking landing gear and Tex rides the trailer to level ground to connect to the front trailer. Well done! From Tex' point of view, the rover was overwhelmed with Clang Sparks. And from Capac's point of view, Splitsie was levitating tonnes with his bare hands.

After a lot of back and forth, they reattach all trailers and drive on. They joke about Splitsie killing trees and whether DE is the Lorax and DE coldly hints he is used to Splitsie murdering things DE cares about right in front of him... Another bot plane provokes them without leaving noticeable damage when they stop to drill ice. Capac reports live while he chases after his lost backpack. Then Capac gets into his scout plane (the **Orange Baron**) and discovers a Van Diesel vehicle stalking them and a small CLG faction Outpost.

(2:00) Capac lands near the CLG Outpost, leaves the Orange Baron behind, and steals the bots' new car named Challenger. Capac damages the stolen car's engine while fleeing the Van Diesel and Splitsie teases him about his GTA-trained driving skills. Capac hides the Challenger underneath the Jalopy from their own turrets before Splitsie "hacks" the stolen Challenger and gives it to Texfire.

W4sted is building a plane on the "beach" under the "palm tree". It takes Splitsie a while to ready the Mouldy Banana before Capac and Splitsie can fly back to recover the Orange Baron. Capac tells Chat his theme song is "Flight of the bumblebee" but Splitsie claims it's rather "Free falling"... The bots shoot at the Mouldy Banana as Capac "paradrops", but he can't find his plane--the bots have stolen it in retaliation! Capac invades the empty CLG base and damages their battery. Splitsie dogfights with the bots and clips the enemy Bucking Blammo, which makes an emergency landing. Capac takes the Bucking Blammo back to the Jalopy as well.

(2:30) Back on the Angry Jalopy, they consider building a plane lift because Splitsie screws up his landings. Capac envies Splitsie who fails to land thrice and then drops on the runway like a brick, without exploding! Capac moves the stolen plane out of the way using a crane, revealing warheads under its wings.

W4sted builds a sexy white plane and admits he secretly plans to leave them all behind. Their plane building choices are so governed by lag workarounds that they even consider how block paint colour will negatively affect the runway surface. Everyone compliments the 10/10 design of the captured plane (by Jexsam).

Texfire has fixed up the stolen Challenger; Splitsie jumps in and they successfully fend off the approaching Van Diesel. The weather changes to "It's a blizzard, Harry!" A Failspin type plane harasses Tex and Splitsie who are scrambling to drive the Challenger back uphill. Capac has destroyed so many enemy grids that the space pirate faction has become neutral.

(3:00) As the blizzard ends, the evening sun comes out, and they use a hinges-pistons-magplate crane to lift the Challenger. Splitsie defines "crash" not as any collision but as something he cannot walk away from. The target planet looms over them (the gravity being 0.97 is standard on this modded planet) making them wonder how the aerodynamics mod calculates lift and drag for large-grid rovers.

After Tex drops the whole crane by accident, they build a better prehensile "scorpion tail" crane that picks up planes or cars from the ground and places them on DE's runway, from where they can take a lift down into a hangar below the runway. At sunset, everything is locked down and they finally drive on towards the planet.

(3:30) For a moment, the server goes (as w4sted calls it) cattywampus: The rover freezes mid driving and all mechanical blocks unhinge and desync, but luckily it recovers and they drive on. The bots harass them, flying by in their Failspins.

W4sted attempts to launch despite his lag, and not even Texfire the firefighter can save him. Splitsie helps w4sted with quick ground repairs and DE and Capac give the wheels a stern talking to. They use the scorpion tail to get w4sted's plane back up on the runway but W4sted slides uncontrollably and launches into the fog... Splitsie promises to install the plane parts mod wheels if they ever see him again. Suddenly Capac's plane gets unlocked--everyone calls Splitsie a filthy P presser but Tex admits it was him. W4sted returns and lands on the ground next to the Jalopy. Capac suggests trees on the runway as arrestor cables, Splitsie suggests buffer tyres instead. Tex detaches the scorpion tail by accident, which they will fix next episode.

## References

1. ↑ The Lorax is a children's book written by Dr. Seuss and published in 1971. Lorax, the main character, "speaks for the trees".
2. ↑ DE is referring to their co-op *Seven Days To Die* series with Naburine who suffered from Splitsie's friendly fire incidents.
3. ↑ Space Engineers Word of the day! Cattywampus or catawampus: Out of alignment, crooked, fierce, destructive, savage, going off-kilter or awry.