I’ve spent a few posts lately telling you about the times I have lost ships whilst hunting MTUs, and ths will hopefully be the last such post of this kind for a while.
It would be over 3 years from my fight with Trigger, detailed in this post, that I would lose another MTU hunting ship through PvP, and unlike the previous encounter, I saw this one coming.
On this day, I was graced with the presence of my CEO from my ganking days, Solecist Project, a highsec superstar and someone I’m very proud to call a friend. We were chatting away in the MTU Hunting chat channel, when I spotted 3 MTUs in a mining site in Geras, and so I asked Sol and TonyTiger 57 (another friend we were chatting with at the time) if they wanted to join me in erasing them. They did, and so I formed a fleet, scanned down the MTUs, and waited for them to arrive.
MTUs littered the field.
There were 2 ships near the MTUs, a Covetor and a Retriever, and while waiting for Sol and Tony to arrive, yet another MTU had been dropped at the site. When my friends reached me, I warped us to the site, and we immediately set to work on the MTUs, starting with the one closest to us. At this point I noticed combat probes on scan, made a quick check that they weren’t my own (I’ve spooked myself a couple of times, haha) and made the quick decision to warp out. I’d been a bit premature on that call, which Sol made sure to let me know. I should’ve waited to see what ships were coming first. I warped back to the site along with Tony (Sol had stayed there in his Probe) and we finished off the first MTU.
Kill: Adishi Hemah (Mobile Tractor Unit)
We then turned our attention to the next MTU, some 10km away from the first, and started shooting that too. Whilst shooting this one, there were now 2 ships on scan heading for us, a Catalyst and a Coercer, and they landed 10km from us at the site’s warp-in just as the second MTU popped.
Kill: Adishi Hemah (Mobile Tractor Unit)
It had been a long time since I had been in a real fight, so I made the decision to stay and fight these interlopers. I targetted both destroyers, and the Coercer reached me first so I started firing upon him first.
Kill: Meik Odunen (Coercer)
I then switched to the Catalyst, which had done a huge amount of damage to me by this point. I had him in deep armour, but then a Rupture landed and..
Kill: Pix Severus (Hecate)
Please excuse the bad fit, it was a result of my attempt to pop an MTU in under a minute without using polarized guns! Oh, and The Damsel survived, thankfully!
I got my pod out of the site, and at that point Sol lost his Probe and got his pod out too, thankfully Tony managed to escape in his Ares. While waiting for the weapon timer, I was bouncing around in my pod and chatting with Sol in local when something weird happened.
Kill: Eva Mabuse (Catalyst)
I don’t know how he managed to CONCORD himself, did he try to gank something? Regardless, no gank victim shows on his killboard.
What happened next though was something special, and at the time I had no idea just how special it was.
Kill: Adishi Hemah (Mobile Tractor Unit)
What we are looking at here is an MTU I got on the killmail for, filled with the remains of the ship I used to hunt it. This is a rare scenario, and is the first and only time this has ever happened for me.
In the end, our little scuffle in Geras looked something like this:
Click on image for full size.
I’m relatively happy with the outcome, it was a lot of fun and I learned a few things. If I had to do the fight over again though, I’d shoot the Catalyst first, then go for the Coercer, then hopefully GTFO just before the Rupture lands.
I’ve lost ships in all sorts of ways over the years, I’ve been ganked, lost numerous ships to NPCs, and I’ve even been blapped by POS guns in lowsec. What matters though is that the MTU devastation continues on regardless.
MTU Hunter 