Top Engineer - Race to the Bottom

Top Engineer was a short Space Engineers stream series in early 2020 where Splitsie, W4stedspace, and Captain Shack set themselves a challenge.
In this segment, the challenge was:

* Using their preferred means of transport under *different* start conditions, they race each other to the south pole of the Earthlike planet.
* Every half hour, they roll the dice for a random event.

The idea stemmed from W4stedspace' claim during Wrong Way Up that his Spider could drive from pole to pole in a day, and Splitsie one-upping him by claiming to get from *Titan* to Earthlike's pole in a day. Shack was just dragged along "because that's funny."

The challenge's name was inspired by the TV show Top Gear. For a similar race, see also Top Engineer - The Set Up.

## The Challenge

Three experienced Space Engineers streamers challenge each other to a race to the south pole of the Earthlike planet. The punchline is that each player uses the means of transport that they are most familiar with, balanced by different starting conditions:

* W4stedspace started at the Earthlike north pole. He was allowed to paste in the Spider, a complex small-grid multi-wheeled all-terrain vehicle built in creative mode. The vehicle's strength was its steady hill-climbing and speed, but it lacked long-distance power, and its complex subgrids would be almost impossible to repair en route.
* Captain Shack also started at the Earthlike north pole. His challenge was to glide the whole way without thrusters in a modded small-grid plane that he built in survival mode. The plane's strengths were its simplicity and ability to glide over the hilly terrain, but it was fragile, couldn't carry much cargo, and taxiing uphill was sluggish.
* Splitsie started ~6000km away on Titan. His challenge was to speedrun to Earthlike's south pole. His large-grid ships's strength was a fast jump drive, but he first had to progress through all survival stages (from drop-pod to jump drive), plus avoid modded hostile NPCs (Reavers). This means he'd be stationary the majority of time, followed by quick jumps on the home stretch.

## Episodes

Identifying the episodes/recaps and their order is a bit confusing looking at the video names:

* Session 1 (February 23, 2020)
 Top Engineers - Race to the bottom - part 1 (February 23, 2020)
Full ~4-hour stream
On the Flipsie channel
	+ Top Engineers - Race to the bottom - part 1
	Recap of first half of session 1 edited down to ~50 min
	On the Splitsie channel
	+ Top Engineers - Race to the bottom #2 (published March 2, 2020)
	Recap of second half of session 1 edited down to ~50 min
	On the Splitsie channel
* Session 2 (March 22, 2020)
	+ Top Engineers - Race to the bottom - part 2
	Full ~4-hour stream
	On the Flipsie channel

## Rules: Random Events

Every 30 minutes, the luck of the dice selects a random event from a shared list of 20 events. Each player rolled their own d20, either digital or physical.

Higher rolls triggered helpful events and lower rolls were rather distracting:

* The lower half of events was bad: Roll for two random events, reload last auto-save, heavy weather, an early dusk, inverted mouse, no HUD/compass, no jetpack, spawn in space pirates / ACS drone carriers / "w4stedbots", having to carry "one more piston", having to carry engineer-shaped decoys.
* The higher half of events was neutral or good: Free small reactor, free crash recovery, an early dawn, supply drop, good weather, chase the next unknown signal, and so on.

Certain events only lasted 5 minutes and others for 30 mins or the whole session.

If players failed to stick to an events' conditions or died a non-lag-related death, they had to subtract 1 from their next dice roll.

During the first live stream, viewers could additionally vote in a poll what they wanted the last event to be, the result was a tie between inverted mouse and free crash recovery.

## Plot Summary

In session 1, they explain the rules and go to their respective starting positions. w4sted and Shack build their vehicles and tease each other at the north pole base. In the meanwhile, Splitsie on Titan builds a starter base, a small atmospheric mining ship, and the frame of a large-grid hydrogen ship.

In the second half of session 1, W4sted and Shack start driving. Shack struggles to get up a mountain to start his glide and only gets rid of two hostile drones when they ram each other, raining spare parts onto his flipped plane. W4sted escapes the drone but loses his new battery trailer because, ironically, the Capac decoy on the trailer sacrificed itself for the Spider. The Spider proves it can climb and roll and land undamaged on its feet. Splitsie has built a factory, has found all ores, and is ramping up power production.

In session 2, w4sted is frustrated by lag and glitches and does the rest of the challenge in a local single-player session. Shack has to rebuild his glider from the wrecks of drones, and Splitsie finishes building his large grid ship by exchanging the temporary factory for hydrogen thrusters. As long as Splitsie's ship is static, the passing Reavers can't detect his thermal signature...

In the second half of session 2, Splitsie lifts off from Titan to escape Reavers and lands again to fuel up. Shortly before Splitsie's first jump, w4sted's Spider gets hit by a drone and he punishes himself by restarting from the north pole. Shack could be making rapid progress but has rolled "No HUD" and can't tell where south is. W4sted makes his Spider glide but cannot possibly catch up. Splitsie lands at the south pole with 1% hydrogen left only minutes after winner Shack, who arrived on tattered rims.

## Mods and World Settings

Progression and
Economy were switched off in the world settings.

The following mods were in use:

* Build Vision 2.4
* Plane parts
* HUD compass
* small ship vanilla mod pack
* Reavers, dynamic tracking beacon, thermal signature
* ACS (Assertive Cargo Ships) / MES
* A fresh new view HUD, coloured
* "W4stedBots" / Invasion of Wolves
* Suppress Vanilla Cargo Ships
* Suppress Vanilla Encounters
* Relative Spectator

And some minor others.

## Trivia

They could play this challenge locally in case lag requires it, but strove to stay in the same multiplayer world, because then the random events triggered by one player also affect the others in (hopefully) amusing ways.

## References

1. ↑ The players with small-grid vehicles got to admin-paste the large-grid decoys for free onto a magplate, whereas Splitsie had to build his own.
2. ↑ In session 1 we see that Splitsie has a ping of ~300 ms, W4sted ~150 ms, and Shack is the host.
3. ↑ Unfortunately, vehicle recovery (flipping a vehicle upright) was the least of their worries at this point.
4. ↑ Splitsie opens the mod screen around the 1:00 hour mark in session 1