It’s that time, once again, for me to dig through my backlog of EVEmails and showcase the various comments and questions I receive from pilots across New Eden. 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 though.
Today we have an MTU Mailbag special in which I’ll tell you about how I met a pilot named Sira Cunningham, an encounter that resulted in the birth of a new MTU hunter, and a whole slew of killmails. It started off, as things usually do for me, with an EVEmail.
Like many pilots who live in, or pass through highsec, she had seen my containers lying around that tell people where I’d been, you’ll find more information on this activity in this post. Oh, and as I keep having to tell people, I’m not creepy at all. It even says so in my profile!
After a little banter, as is customary when someone calls me creepy in EVE, Sira told me that she had tried MTU hunting for herself.
Here’s that killmail for you:
Kill: Bristol West (Mobile Tractor Unit)
I explained to her that you don’t lose security status for popping MTUs, and that she must have lost the sec status in an earlier encounter. It turns out that I was correct on that matter and she had lost the security status earlier when popping a Venture out in lowsec.
We ended-up becoming friends, and sending mails to each other regularly about our respective shenanigans in-game. I was also happy to provide advice on any MTU hunting related questions she had.
Kill: Sinvyus Sinzafine (Mobile Tractor Unit)
It wasn’t long before Sira would start sending her MTU killmails to me, something I particularly enjoyed.
That is correct. When you begin shooting an MTU, a Suspect Timer starts, and this timer will last for 15 minutes after the shooting has ended. During those 15 minutes, you are free-to-shoot without CONCORD intervention in highsec.
We spent a lot of time chatting through EVEmail over the next few months, most of which I won’t show you out of respect for privacy, so I’ll keep it mostly about business, the business of MTU destruction.
Kill: WolfW (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Rader Bastanold (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: PaiMei Six Shi-Tu (Mobile Tractor Unit)
In case you were wondering, you do get bounty payments from killing MTUs, if the MTU’s owner has a bounty on his head. Due to the way the bounty system works though, you don’t tend to get a very large payout, it’s usually enough to cover ammo expenses though.
Here was my response to those killmails:
Kill: Father Pimen (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Jason Skirr (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Leo Weiss (‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit)
The day before, I had encountered that very same MTU that Sira had popped, I’d scanned it down, and had just gotten it into structure when I spotted combat probes closing-in on me on D-Scan. With a Tengu on it’s way, something that my Hecate would have a lot of trouble with, it was time for me to bail. I was glad to hear that the MTU was taken care of regardless though.
Kill: Mite Ordinary (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Dmitriy Septim (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Hardly Gospel (Mobile Tractor Unit)
This wasn’t the first time I had seen the name Mite Ordinary, but I’ll get around to that in a later post.
I’d noticed that Sira had been using a Nemesis to pop MTUs with, she’d told me that the cloak provides some fun options when hunting MTUs, but was displeased that she couldn’t use the bomb launcher in highsec. This inspired me to train up a few missile skills and try the ship out for myself.
Kill: Bassen (‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit)
I enjoyed using it, but nothing beats the Hecate for this line of work, if you can fly it. Still, it got me some extra points in Empty You’s “Pop an MTU using as many different ships as possible” competition, which has been running for a while now.
It was around the time I was talking with Sira (December 2017) that I was still at around 600 MTU kills, and I’d just found my third-ever ‘Magpie’ MTU, which I happily linked to her.
Kill: Sun Ying (‘Magpie’ Mobile Tractor Unit)
This shows you can expect to kill maybe one ‘Magpie’ MTU for every 200 standard MTUs you kill. After this we agreed to team up if we ever found another ‘Magpie’ out there, and if we were both online at the same time.
We chatted about so much more than I’ve shown here, from POS bashing (an activity I was doing with my corp at the time) to The New Order of Highsec (which Sira actually invested in), to wormholes and beyond. My apparent fame within New Eden was also a matter we discussed, and she had no qualms in letting me know she was a fan, despite how creepy I was!
This cool kid is happy to have met her, and I’ll make sure to send her another mail when this blog post goes live.
That’s it for this edition of MTU Mailbag, if you have any comments or questions for me, don’t hesitate to send me (Pix Severus) a mail. I reply to almost all mails I receive and there’s a good chance your mail will appear on this blog at some point in the future.
MTU Hunter 