Wrong Way Down - Part 1

**Wrong Way Down - Part 1** is the beginning of the Wrong Way Down series. Splitsie's goal is to travel on wheels only from north pole to south pole.

In this episode, Splitsie sets out from the Earthlike planet's north pole. He starts by describing the self-imposed rules as follows:

* Wheeled Moon Rover instead of planetary Drop Pod
* No thrusters
* No player built missiles nor pathfinder drones
* No tools on respawn
* Power sources: Solar and hydrogen engine, wind turbines only while stationary
* Progression is on (by accident)
* PvE Mods spawn neutral and hostile NPC ships, bases, and drones
* Dark Skybox at night and long range spotlight mod
* Unknown Signals are on
* HUD Compass mod is allowed
* Default respawn is at the north pole if no survival kits remain
* Building outposts/respawn points is allowed
* Day length 1 hour to limit the amount of darkness on stream

(0:30) Splitsie starts alone since Capac cannot join today. Just like in any Survival world, he first builds standard starter base equipment. His long-term plan is to build a large-grid rover with drill rig. His short-term plan is to drill from the small-grid starter rover. Splitsie talks with Chat about making tutorials and that he learned to teach in his job despite not being a teacher. Chat quips about who's smarter, Capac or Splitsie?

(1:00) Construction of the large-grid rover begins, but he is lacking Cobalt for essential components. The small badly balanced mining rover tips right in the moment Texfire joins the chat. Splitsie jokingly blames Capac (#BlameCapac). Splitsie can't build pistons as carjacks (#OneMorePiston), so he uses a mess of unbuilt batteries and Merge blocks as counter-weights (#OneMoreBattery). Chat calls him the Sjin of Space Enginers. When shifting counterweights, chat reminds him of the parking brake. After flipping over several times, the rover lands on its wheels with miraculously no damage... Splitsie would have liked to record a timelapse, but with him moving so much, there was no stable camera position. Chat calls him Splitsie the Science Guy like Bill Nye. Splitsie finds silver and gold ore but doesn't have an advanced refinery to process any of it.

(1:30) He can, however, refine magnesium and make ammo. Texfire and Splitsie discuss crazy ways of stabilising wheeled vehicles on this terrain: Outrigger wheels on pistons to extend the wheelbase! Putting wheels on top and bottom of the vehicle! Cockpits on rotors! Tristar wheels! Splitsie dismantles the small-grid rover to get the large-grid rover in a driveable state. Splitsie invites Texfire to join, but Textfire doesn't have time today.

(2:00) The large rover is ready and Chat reminds him of the parking brake again... Thanks to the large drill, mining stone and ice is now much faster. But the drills don't help smoothing the terrain in front of the rover. Splitsie is looking forward to the extra engineering challenge of not using thrusters, combined with the possibility of being attacked by Assertive Drones. He notices he forgot to make a GPS marker at the pole to measure the distance travelled. Driving further away from the polar region, Splitsie is starting to run over trees. With a constant speed of 20m/s, how long would it take to drive around a planet 120 kilometers in diameter, Chat wonders?

(2:30) Still no Cobalt to be found, and the batteries won't last forever, either. Lacking a gyroscope, the rover eventually rolls downhill and damages the O2/H2 generator. The rover flips and is stuck upside down, but at least the factory blocks are still intact. An Assert lookout tower nearby is not sending drones, so Splitsie has time to turn the rover using counterweights again. The rover rolls onto its wheels and rolls straight downhill -- he forgot the parking brake again. Splitsie barely manages to stop it. Splitsie marks the rover's location and approaches the Assert lookout tower on foot from a trench. The tower is armed but also full of metal grids to loot. Splitsie wishes he had throwable explosives while he carefully disarms the tower.

(3:00) After adding a gyroscope, he approaches the tower with the rover to loot the rest. Splitsie explains the conditions how the Assertive Mod spawns drones to attack the character -- suddenly an overlooked turret attacks the rover! After dealing with its last hidden defence, he salvages the tower. With the gained components, he extends the rover's wheelbase adds more cargo space, a refinery, assembler, a turret, and a better cockpit.

(3:30) Splitsie says it's fun to get live feedback from an audience. He adds hammerhead-shark spotlights and starts driving south again. He plans to make measuring the daily distance covered easier by adding a GPS at the north pole. At a cliff, he pauses and ponders turning the rover into a bridge layer. Literally, a cliffhanger ending.