Ever since I began my career as an MTU Hunter, I have received quite a lot of mail from capsuleers across New Eden, and I would like to share some of them with you. Unlike some other hunters out there, I don’t mail the owners of MTUs I have popped, I sit back and let them contact me. I may change this approach in the future, for now though, lets dig through my backlog of EVEmails.
I get asked this question a lot (amongst others), so I recently added an MTU FAQ page to the blog where you can find the answer to this, and other burning questions you might have about the wonderful world of MTU Hunting. Here are a couple of fits I use regardless: Hecate and Svipul.
I hear that the loadout site, o.smium, will be going down soon (probably forever) due to changes with the EVE API, so those links may not work in the near future. I’ll try to find another way to show you these fits when that happens. I would like to thank those responsible for creating and hosting that site over the years, it filled the void left by Battleclinic back in the day, and remained very useful to many right up until the end; it will be missed.
A while back, to celebrate the release of my guide to hunting MTUs, I ran a competition on the blog where the first 3 pilots to post an MTU kill in the comments would receive 50m ISK each. Sith was one of the lucky winners, and here’s that killmail for you (it’s a good one!)
Kill: Vorian Tagarian (Mobile Tractor Unit)
This is not the usual sort of question I tend to receive about MTU Hunting. Occasionally, when I set out on a hunt, instead of hanging around the busy mission-running hubs I like to set a long course to the outer reaches of highsec (occasionally lowsec) and explore, popping any MTUs I find along the way. To do this, I’ll bring up the universe map, pick an area near the edge of highsec (sorting map colours by security status) and start adding waypoints to all the systems in that area; this can often result in very long routes with over 100 jumps.
To answer Alasdan’s question above, there is always going to be some backtracking, unfortunately, largely due to single-gate systems and other areas that just end-up being dead-ends.
Despite the answer to his question perhaps not being what he wanted to hear, he went with it regardless, and ended-up having himself a fun and profitable time. Here’s those killmails for you:
Kill: knorkle (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: ThareaHUN (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Kilree EagleShade (Mobile Tractor Unit)
This is actually how the majority of MTUs in highsec are lost, the mission runner simply forgets to go back for it before completing the mission, and then doesn’t know how/can’t be bothered to scan it down to retrieve it afterwards. To answer beanbro’s question, MTUs are freely attackable by anyone at any time, you only gain a suspect timer for shooting MTUs. This is another frequently asked question, that you will find in the new MTU FAQ page.
I’ve had this happen to myself before, you probe down a few MTUs and bookmark them before heading out to do some real life activities, and by the time you return, another hunter has found your targets and wiped them out. Oh well, there’s plenty more MTUs in the vast ocean of space. Shaela did indeed join my chat channel afterwards, which goes by the name “MTU Hunting” in case you were interested.
I occasionally receive mails from other MTU Hunters out there, including ones with vastly more experience than myself; Ganolen is one such hunter. Back when I received this mail, Ganolen had just over 1000 MTU kills, and it was partly due to wanting to catch-up that drove me to work harder to keep on wiping MTUs from the face of the galaxy.
Catching-up is still something of a pipe-dream, however, as Ganolen is still hunting MTUs to this day, and at the time of writing this post, has an incredible 1700 MTU kills. This is personally the highest MTU kill count I’ve ever seen, if you’ve seen higher than this, please share it with me.
If you have any questions or comments you would like to send me via EVEmail, please do so. I try to respond to every mail as time permits, and there’s a good chance your mail will be featured in a future episode of MTU Mailbag.
MTU Hunter 
Pingback: MTU Mailbag 3 | MTU Hunter