Pix Severus was here o/

Some time ago I came up with the idea of leaving a calling card in the systems that I hunt in, for the purpose of letting people know that their friendly, local MTU Hunter is never too far away.

I was there.

The original plan was to anchor a Small Secure Container at the location of MTUs I had popped, but I decided to leave them at Stargates instead so that more people would actually see them. These containers have to be anchored at least 100km away from large structures and entities such as stargates, and at least 5km from other structures and deployables, including MTUs and shipwrecks. Once they are anchored they will last a minimum of 30 days until they disappear from space. If you right-click on one of these containers, either in-space or in your overview, and select “Show Info” you can find information about the container’s owner.

As you can see, I didn’t put a huge amount of thought into the message these containers would.. contain, opting for the time-tested “[name] was here” format, and hoping it would give pilots something more fun to read than the Russian corp ads which surround seemingly every gate in highsec these days. I didn’t expect the kind of reaction I received for simply placing these containers across highsec, indeed it wasn’t long before mails from capsuleers across New Eden came trickling into my inbox, telling me where they saw my containers, and what they thought of them.

I had also received many private messages from other pilots, and people had even joined my MTU Hunting chat channel after they had found my character bio from the containers. The message had even been mentioned on the official EVE Forums. I also placed a few containers advertising notme7’s chat channel, which worked to bring more people into it. So to anyone looking to advertise or send a message using this method, I can tell you that it does work, pilots do notice them.

Some facts and tips about Small Secure Containers:
– You need to anchor the container to make it last the full 30 days in space before it despawns.
– Unanchored containers will despawn after a couple of hours.
– You need the skill Anchoring at level 1, to anchor containers.
– They can only be anchored in systems that have a security rating of 0.7 or lower.
– Right-click and Show Info on a container to see who deployed it.
– For more info, check out the Uniwiki entry here.

Upon returning to EVE late last year, I noticed that one of my containers had managed to last almost 6 months in space without disappearing. How could this be? Containers are supposed to decay after a month without the owner using them in some direct way (opening them, putting an item in them, etc), and my account was inactive the entire time. The container in question was one that I had placed 100km off the Uedama gate in the system of Sivala.

After a short period of confusion concerning this, I remembered something that had happened around 6 months prior that may provide an answer to the mystery of the undying container. Whilst out MTU Hunting one night, I received a message saying that, due to unlawful aggression against me, I now had a killright against New Order Agent, and CEO of The Conference Elite, Mildron Klinker. I found this quite perplexing, he wasn’t in system with me and hadn’t done anything to me; a quick conversation with the man himself cleared things up, however.

A kill right against a ganker is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Shooting a container in a rookie ship is common practice across highsec for resetting CONCORD and allowing further ganks to take place in that system. If you shoot someone’s container in highsec, CONCORD destroys your ship, and the container’s owner gets a kill right against you, and this is what Agent Klinker had done with my container. It seems quite likely, then, that the reason my container had managed to survive for so long is because it was shot. This must surely be some kind of bug, but one that I personally don’t mind, because it saves me from having to replace that particular container every month or so. I have received a number of other kill right notifications over the last few months, as gankers use my containers in their work, and I’m very happy that my containers have proven useful to content creation in highsec.

Placing containers in space has provided me with some fun communications, and new information about the mechanics of EVE, so I’d say it has definitely been worth it. This isn’t the end of this story though, these containers turned out to be the gift that just kept on giving, and would spark a series of events that would lead me to many new adventures. Stay tuned for the continuation.