There's Something Strange...

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**There's Something Strange...** is the 34th episode of Assertive Acquisitions. It is the first episode to take place in a new save file without any planets.

## Synopsis

### Settling in

Due to the loss of Agitation Station in the last episode, they no longer have any production set up. Due to the temporary mess of hydrogen tanks and cargo containers dangling in the middle of where they wanted to build the production area of the carrier, Splitsie spends a significant chunk of the video dismantling them and designing/building more permanent hydrogen and cargo storage.

Meanwhile, TFE flies the Marlin to search for and mine ice from the surrounding asteroids.

Splitsie and Capac also build some gyros, refineries, and plan a cargo/vehicle lift.

#### Hauntings

While Splitsie and Capac were working on the interior of the carrier, they encountered unexplained banging noises, leading them to conclude that the ship was haunted.

Later, Capac noticed confirmation that the ship was possessed when they discovered almost-pentagrams being cast on the wall. The shapes are being created by the shadows from sunlight shining through unbuilt light armour blocks at just the right angle.

### Battle Against a Pirate Vulture

Splitsie had noticed the signal of a "pirate vulture" that hadn't done anything in half an hour. Hoping that it would have ion thrusters, Splitsie organized an attack against it. Splitsie went in with the Wasabi, TFE with the H-Tram, and Capac went in just with his jetpack and a grinder (as they didn't have a Paprika nor the means to build one).

On first approach of the Vulture, the Wasabi took gatling fire to its underside while TFE dodged rockets. The Vulture then proceeded to chase the Wasabi head-on, giving Splitsie the opportunity to take out its turrets with his assault cannons. Capac notices the appearance of two Vulture drones, which Splitsie and TFE focus on obliterating whilst Capac boards the enemy vessel (and quickly disables the enemy bed).

Capac hacks the Vulture's flight seat, but finds it is still under the control of an autopilot. Capac scours the ship for the remote control block, but cannot find it, so he instead opts to shut down the ship entirely by grinding down its battery and hydrogen engine.

### Capturing the Pirate Vulture

With the Vulture shut down, Capac returns to base to get the Tugg of War to pull the Vulture back to the carrier. Splitsie, however, decides to briefly fix the Vulture's hydrogen engine, for some reason. This causes the ship's autopilot to re-activate, which freaks out and starts spinning the ship. Splitsie grinds the engine back down, and points out to the others that the ship is going to spin forever, as with no power, there is nothing to stop its spin. Splitsie, for whatever reason, decides to repair the hydrogen engine a second time, which causes the ship to spin even faster.

Splitsie manages to locate the remote control block after grinding down some blocks, however as he does so, the rotational forces push him away from it and he gets stuck on the other side of the room. After struggling with his mag boots for a bit, he manages to find the remote control again and destroy it. He then attempts to repair the engine again to restore power to the ship so it can stop spinning, however he discovers that he had dropped off the components for it in a cargo container that was now out of his reach!

Splitsie manages to negotiate his mag-boots into cooperating, and repairs the engine, stopping the ship's spin, in time for Capac's arrival to tug the Vulture back home.

## Behind the Scenes

The pirate ship that they battle in this episode, "Encounter Vulture vessel," is an encounter from vanilla Space Engineers. The group decided to fight vanilla encounters for this episode, in place of the Assertive Combat Systems encounters.