The Angry Miner

When you have hunted MTUs long enough, you begin to notice certain patterns to the reactions of capsuleers whose MTUs you have successfully destroyed. For example, you can pop MTUs owned by mission runners all day long and not hear a peep from them, but the moment you so much as look in the direction of a miner’s MTU, all hell breaks loose.

Some examples of this have already been featured on my blog in the past, in this post a Russian miner launches a tirade of abuse at me through local chat, and in this post, a miner actually grabs his PvP ship and attacks me.

One night, on a typical hunt through the Essence region, I noticed an MTU on D-Scan in Villore and parked myself at a moon. I was about to start the process of probing it down when I realised that it was actually in an asteroid belt and I could just warp to it. I can remember feeling a little trepidation at this point, knowing that when you attack an MTU in an asteroid belt, there is a good chance you’re going to have to deal with an upset miner, one way or another. This time, however, the kill went by uneventfully, it was your typical asteroid belt MTU kill, filled with ore and cheap rat droppings.

kill: Sandra Boirelle (Mobile Tractor Unit)

I went to bed after this kill, but when I logged in the following day, I found this rather rude EVEmail waiting for me:

*Sigh* Here we go.

I don’t get a lot of correspondence from angry folk, most players either find what I do amusing, or they are completely oblivious to it, but still, it happens from time to time. I decided that it was important to help this player calm down and look at things objectively, so I responded thusly:

That should help…

…maybe not.

A few minutes after that last mail, the miner sent a follow-up mail where she, for some reason, started talking about Microwarpdrives, wardecs, and MTU mechanics.

Be a manly man.

In a response mail, I tried to get her to understand that I don’t do what I do out of malice, I do it to make highsec a cleaner place. However, I also questioned her knowledge of MTU mechanics, which in hindsight may not have been the best thing to do at that point.

Yikes.

With the threat of execution looming over my head, I sent one desperate final mail to try to calm her down, but it was futile. I received no further communication from this capsuleer.

Let this post serve as a warning to any prospective MTU Hunters out there. One day you are going to find an MTU in an asteroid belt, ice field, or mining site/mission, and chances are you will have to deal with this kind of hostility.