Wrong Way... Up?

In the first episode of Wrong Way Up we are introduced to the main protagonists, Splitsie (grey suit), Capac Amaru (orange suit), W4stedspace (orange&black hexagons suit), Texfire (black&white cow suit), and "DE"/Directed Energy (purple suit with "#1 dad" wristpad).
Splitsie explains the rules of this challenge:

1. They'll drive a single large-grid wheeled mobile base, subgrids are allowed, but no thrusters
2. Have fun with planes (using Draygo's aerodynamics mod). Small-grid aircraft can have thrusters in one direction.
3. They have jetpacks but won't use them in combat, because jumping/flying doesn't work for the lagging Americans and Europeans on an Australian server.
4. Progresion is off.

They walk out the Welcome Center on a grassy paradise moon called Elysium and Splitsie reveals their starter rover: A red jalopy truck with extra "live stock" seats in the back. They drive a bit north and see the curvature of a greenish glowing globe just below the horizon: The planet Perseii's north pole is their goal. And they will need to get over there without thrusters on the large-grid vehicle...

> "You've had it too easy! Prove your engineering medal and *drive* all the way to another planet. Good luck. The jalopy ute is gonna need it. From Mrs Bill Person (?)" -- a message read by w4stedspace
>
>

They start driving and collect ice, stone, and ores on the way. Ten minutes into the first episode, DE's encouragement of Capac's reckless driving crashes the Red Jalopy (#blamecapac?) and they need to get it back on its wheels and replace the destroyed hydrogen engine with solar sails. Splitsie says that wasn't the kind of difficulty that he had planned -- just as W4stedspace asks whether a "Raider drop-pod" 300m away would be of interest to them? They team up to defeat several hostile NPC robots that Splitsie might not have told them about.

(0:30) Splitsie drives while the others reenact the intro scene from Skyrim, when Capac alerts them to stop for Cobalt. Just like in any Survival world, they build standard starter base equipment, but on a mobile grid. They discuss whose fault the broken hydrogen engine is: Splitsie's because he made Capac drive, or Capac's. For Capac it's only important that "It does not absolve me, but it definitely implicates him". Soon after, they fight off the next wave of robot raiders.

(1:00) Chat suggests each should pick a block colour so everyone can see who built what (but Splitsie eventually paints over everything). Everyone gets lost in the simple mining tunnel, including the attacking robots. Splitsie announces there will be "Blame Ca(t)pac" T-shirts as merchandise soon. Suddenly Pav and TheFinalEvent97 (TFE) attack them and break a wind turbine. Since the attackers were accidentally invulnerable, DE jokingly provokes them to do better.

W4sted and Splitsie discuss where to add wheels to their "practically ready-to-roll" large-grid mobile base. W4sted suggests the factory blocks should be compact in case they will want to reposition them later. Splitsie bears in mind that the rover needs to be big enough for aircraft to land on it. They're making up funny names for the new rover and try to determine the best prime number of wheels.

(1:30) When they fight some more attackers, Splitsie explains that the robot raiders are computer NPCs, while Pav and TFE are "human NPCs", trusted community members whom they asked to join because the computer NPCs cannot control aircraft in dogfights. Capac finds a crocodile grinder and they reminisce about good old Capacodiles. Capac chases an escaping wheel while the others are "facilitating an abomination" of a rover instead of *building* it. They experience odd bugs like invisible Merge blocks, disconnected pistons, and no Share Inertia Tensor option, which results in the grid accidentally getting split in half.

(2:00) Capac notices Splitsie's new skybox but two out of five are colourblind and can't see the red space nebulae anyway, nor the emissive lights on devices for that matter. Splitsie will install a mod to adjust the colours.

After Splitsie drives to the second mine, the Human NPCs attack the Red Jalopy -- and it completely explodes for unknown reasons (mods, bugs, or rifle lag?). The Red Jalopy and the Survival Kit are dead, but maybe they can name the new rover Jalopy in its memory. W4sted's cool spacesuit glows in the dark, so he considers changing his suit skin to be camouflaged from the Human NPCs. At the current state of mobile base building, the way up to the med bay is designed for "survival of the fittest". To charge the batteries faster, Capac wants to build moonar (lunar?) panels instead of solar panels.

(2:30) The IRL gym next door to Capac's temporary streamer office is noisy so he needs RTX Voice which makes him sound robotic. The raider bots start attacking something -- Splitsie realises he left Steve in the smoking wreckage of the Red Jalopy! Tex changes the topic to food while Splitsie runs back to rescue Steve.

Splitsie explains you can't trust a Ca(t)pac because he throws things of shelves. Capac says the shelves had it coming! The next Raider Pod attacks, prompting them to consider defence turrets. The human and the computer controlled bots team up against them, so they retreat to the mobile base construction site, where they find the med bay ground down! -- It was W4sted's doing who was just moving it to a better location, but got interrupted.

Splitsie enjoys the challenge posed by the raider pods. He instructed the human NPCs to attack not more often than the Computer NPCs, and they must not bomb the heroes into the stone ages, beyond that, they have free reign. Since Chipstix213 made Splitsie a player model for Steve that looks like a piece of Cobalt, a surprised Tex needs a Margerita when he sees a blue rock hopping around and onto the mobile base.

(3:00) Another skirmish with lots of friendly fire disrupts Splitsie's musings about choosing a seat for Steve: A cockpit causes piloting conflicts and a cryopod has no 3rd person view... The red, 16-wheeled mobile base, now named Angry Jalopy, is almost ready: Splitsie adds cool headlights, Capac adds angry eyebrows, and W4sted adds a spare wheel because he insists on a prime number of wheels. A fan in Chat makes a huge donation and asks Splitsie to run over Capac, and Splitsie is uncomfortable and bargains with Capac.

Their first built turret immediately spots hidden robot raiders. W4sted realises that building the turret escalated the situation, because the NPCs now also get stronger, but he knows advanced trenching techniques that the robots don't know. In a break between attacks, Splitsie adds a missing gyroscope while the others free the mobile base from its scaffold to move out.

(3:30) They are on the move. Capac phases through buggy blocks and gets run over--so Splitsie has completed his donation deal. They compare how many hours each of them has played SE and it ranges from 1000 (Capac), around 3000 for Tex and DE, up to 4000 (Splitsie) and 5000 (W4sted). Tex looks at those numbers, and the rover, and sighs that THAT is what they have built!?

They park to extend the *cryogenic retrieval system* (Capac's tech-blah name for an ice drill) while the robots catch up with them. Splitsie admin-cleans up wrecks because by now, everyone is experiencing lag. They blame Splitsie for blowing up the Red Jalopy, but compromise to blame the person who installed the explosive hydrogen tank mod -- which is also Splitsie. More and more players are lagging and crashing due to a mod, so they call it a day.

## References

1. ↑ Red Jalopy Truck on the Steam Workshop. The driver seat is on the right because 3 of 5 participants are from countries with the driver sitting on the right, and Steve, tasked to be Splitsie's time lapse recording camera, was taking up the left front seat.
2. ↑ https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Blame-Catpac-by-ZebraMonkeys/95241621.NL9AC