Vocal Local 11

December 16, 2020 by Pix Severus

One thing I have noticed during my travels throughout highsec space is just how quiet it is, there could be over 100 people in local, and not a single word is uttered between those players. This makes me sad, so I like to encourage discourse where possible.

Sometimes, however, an MTU hunter can be rather pleased that the locals still remember him, even after returning from a very lengthy break.

I had just returned to EVE after a year and a half away, and I was in the process of replenishing my network of named containers across New Eden when I received this nice message in local. Thanks Firlefranz!

Sometimes people see me travelling around the quiet backwater systems in a Hecate, and assume I’m doing exploration/site running. If only they knew!

I missed this salute from Dace Cad as I was travelling through Iidoken. I remembered his name from somewhere, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I decided to send him a mail regardless, as I usually do when I miss someone greeting me in local.

This response made me remember why I recognised his name.

Here’s a link to the post I mentioned in the above mail. Thanks for being a good sport about it all, Dace!

Here we have a pleasant exchange with Mylee Rose, a member of CODE.

I do enjoy talking with CODE. agents as they tend to be a lot more vocal than most pilots in highsec, on average.

I popped into Umokka one evening to find local chat buzzing, and as is usual, the locals were talking about The Code. In this instance, they were discussing the merits of owning a mining permit.

It seems that Omah had bought a mining permit, and was defending his purchase to some other locals who had objected to it. Shortly after this, some of them started talking about putting tanks on Ventures to make them ungankable, I told them that this wasn’t a good idea, but was ultimately ignored.

Here we have a nice chat with Brin Eventine, who mentioned the containers I tend to leave strewn across highsec.

In the same system, J Abysser joined the chat after I commented on the system’s name (I just had to!) Unfortunately Nani is now a ghost town after it was invaded by the Triglavians, who took it into Final Liminality.

It is a rather good name if I do say so myself. Thanks Aesir!

That’s all for this edition of Vocal Local, but there is plenty more to come. If you see me in local, don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation with me, even a simple wave can go a long way. Who knows, you might find yourself featured in a future edition of this series.

Vocal Local 10

MTU Mailbag 9

December 9, 2020 by Pix Severus

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.

First up, we have a couple of short mails about the many containers I leave lying across highsec.

Thanks to both of you for these mails, I find them fun and encouraging. I am indeed well-travelled, I’m not the sort of player who just sticks to one area all the time, I like to get out there and stretch my legs. For more information about why I receive mails like these, please see this post: Pix Severus was here o/

Sticking with the same theme, I received this mail from Peepinglee.

Which prompted one of my typical replies.

Which resulted in a pleasant exchange between us.

Here’s that killmail for you:

Kill: Wulfgar WarHammer (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Thanks for the chat, Peepinglee, see you around. o/

The answer is yes, anyone can kill gankers in highsec, if that ganker’s security status is low enough, and if you can catch them. The second “if” is a big one, you’ll find that most gankers are extremely difficult to catch, but I’m sure most of them will welcome you to try.

Unfortunately I was on one of my many breaks from New Eden when this mail came in. Regardless, I don’t tend to go MTU hunting with people I don’t know very often, I would rather encourage you to go out and try it for yourself, it isn’t difficult, and you’ll learn more that way.

… indeed.

I believe this is how most people find my blog these days. Thank you for the kind words, Blued, and make sure to look after those MTUs, there’s all sorts of crazy people about!

Here are those killmails for you.

Kill: KingTheGlor (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Maksim Startsev (Ferox)

The “comet place” in Deltole that Natalya is talking about is a combat site that is often littered with MTUs and other Mobile Deployables, and was mentioned on my blog long ago in this post.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Natalya, and great work on those kills there!

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 Mailbag 8: The Fangirl

October 12, 2020 by Pix Severus

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.

MTU Mailbag 7

September 16, 2020 by Pix Severus

First, lets take a look at a mail from MTU hunter, Pod Watcher.

Here’s that killmail for you:

Kill: kus Hamabu (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Great work there, Pod Watcher! Pod is one of the few hunters that routinely removes MTUs from dangerous systems like Amarr and Jita, keep up the great work!

Geras is actually one of the systems where I have an undying container, see this post for more information on this phenomenon.

Thank you very much for the kind words, Chrinni. I was unsure about the style/theme I chose for my blog at first, but it has grown on me, and now it feels quite homely.

To answer Chrinni’s question, you get a yellow marker (Suspect Status) for shooting an MTU, not a red one. There is more info about this on the MTU FAQ page on this blog, which didn’t exist yet when I first received this mail.

If Orion’s name looks familiar to you, you might remember him from Vocal Local 8 where he said some nice things to me in local. I decided to dedicate an MTU kill to him in appreciation, here it is for you:

Kill: Sun Ying (‘Magpie’ Mobile Tractor Unit)

That’s quite the expensive thing to just leave lying around!

Wow, another Magpie! Here’s that killmail for you:

Kill: K-700 TPAKTOP (‘Magpie’ Mobile Tractor Unit)

What an excellent first MTU kill for Nemo/Revy. In the small text under the killmail he mentions that he tried to shoot the wreck and got his Huggin CONCORDed, oops! That’s a lesson learned though, and he went on to kill a number of other MTUs, before finding his feet in PvP and racking-up an impressive killboard. Congratulations!

I’ve always believed that MTU hunting is a great way to get pilots interested in PvP, and to help some of them break out of the repetitive PvE cycle that traps so many.

Bounties

September 9, 2020 by Pix Severus

Not everyone is happy to see that their friendly. local MTU Hunter has paid them a visit. Indeed, some get so peeved over it that they will even express their displeasure by throwing their ISK around wildly. In this post, I’d like to go over some of the occasions that I’ve been on the receiving-end of such money-flinging.

Putting a bounty on someone’s head in EVE Online might seem like a great way to get back at the people who have wronged you, but it really isn’t. All it succeeds in doing is making the target of your ire look cooler and more dangerous to the newer players. No one attacks other capsuleers based on how high their bounty is anymore, this is mostly due to the fact that you only get a fraction of that bounty paid-out when you kill them, depending on the cost of the target’s ship. At most, a bounty is a nice bonus that comes as more of a “cherry-on-top” after you’ve already killed someone.

It is also possible to “troll” people who have placed a bounty on your head by purposefully dying over and over again in cheap Rookie ships. This will spam the inbox of the bounty-placer with notifications of your death, and if they placed a large amount of ISK on your head, that spam will keep coming for a very long time!

The very first time I received a bounty in my MTU hunting career was detailed in this post, where the MTU’s owner dropped an 80m ISK bounty on my head. My crime? Saving The Damsel, who had been sucked-into an MTU, and was most certainly in distress. Oh, and she still rides with me to this day, in case you were wondering.

The Damsel

The next bounty I received was detailed in this post, where a small sum was put on my head for daring to scoop an abandoned drone and take it to safety. I swear, being a nice guy in New Eden can be more trouble than it’s worth!

Another bounty I received was to the tune of 13.2m ISK, and was placed upon my head by The Angry Miner, Sandra Boirelle. I actually neglected to mention the bounty in that blog post, and unfortunately the bounty notification I received was pruned long ago.

A more recent bounty I received was from a pilot named T M0NEY T, shortly after I had popped his MTU in the system of Aclan one night.

Kill: T M0NEY T (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Bounty from T M0NEY T

This bounty was notable because of the unusal sum he placed upon my head, of 1,000,069 ISK, which tickled me. This warranted a follow-up EVEmail.

Aren’t I nice?

He responded a few minutes later.

EVEmail from T M0NEY T

We ended on cordial terms, and he turned-out to be a pretty cool guy about the whole thing. Thanks for being a good sport, T!

The final bounty I want to cover is also a more recent one. I had just passed through a Triglavian invasion system for the first time (I’d been away from New Eden for a while), called Sasta. When I passed through to the neighbouring system, Lashesih, I noticed an MTU laying abandoned near the centre of said system on D-Scan. Let’s take a look at that MTU kill, shall we?

Kill: RoSS Onren (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Nothing special about that kill, right? It is clearly just your standard MTU pop, filled with cheap mission rat droppings valued at less than 1m ISK. But it is what happened next that made that MTU kill very special indeed.

Bounty from RoSS Onren

This is the largest single bounty I have ever received in my MTU hunting career to date. I wonder what was going through the pilot’s mind when he decided to put such a large sum on my head over such a small thing? Did he add an extra 0 or two by mistake? Or was he seriously that upset over a 7m MTU loss? I sent him a follow-up EVEmail to ask him about it, but he never responded, unfortunately.

That just about covers all the bounties I have received thus far in my MTU hunting adventure, and as you can see, it doesn’t happen very often. If you feel that I have wronged you in some way, and you have ISK burning a hole in your wallet, why not put it on my head? I find it most amusing.

Bonus!
Yadot has updated his blog with a few stories and other observations about MTU hunting, check it out here: 400 million Isk

MTU Mailbag 6

September 2, 2020 by Pix Severus

First up, we have a question from a budding new MTU hunter.

I told him to make sure he had deployables on scan, as that had changed recently, and I was in the process of updating my guide to include that information at the time.

Ah ha! Problem solved. Always bring combat probes, guys! Oh, and Hakaru did indeed get his first MTU kill:

Kill: Xeng He (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Thank you very much, FuChita! I’ll certainly try to keep it up.

Haha, thanks Havoc! I’m glad you liked it.

Thank you Tau! Looking at his killboard, he didn’t give MTU hunting a try, on that character at least. It would be nice if he had an alt somewhere filled with MTU kills though.

If Rohkea’s name looks familiar to you, it is most likely because one of his mails was featured in the last episode of MTU Mailbag. He had sent me a mail a couple of months beforehand after seeing one of my containers in his local system, just to say hello. I was very happy to learn that he was now actually giving deployable hunting a try for himself. Here’s that Mobile Depot kill for you:

Kill: Roseta mallard (Mobile Depot)

Mobile Depots are the scourge of MTU hunters everywhere, as they clutter-up scan and are annoying to kill because they have a 48 hour timer. Thanks for doing us all a great service, Rohkea!

Oh, and if Roseta’s name looks familiar to you, he was featured in this post on the blog, as he’d made his POS magically disappear one night before my corp were due to dismantle it.

Small world!

Bonus!
Vishnu Calm updated his blog yesterday with some useful information and fitting advice for the Structure Bashing Leshak. His blog is teeming with useful guides and fits, I highly recommend you check it out: ShipFitPod

MTU Mailbag 5

August 16, 2020 by Pix Severus

This exchange was sparked after I had received a notification telling me that I had received a Kill Right on DriftedAway. This usually happens when people shoot one of the many containers I leave lying around highsec.

Most of the time, the people who shoot my containers are gankers who are pulling CONCORD, sometimes though it is a newbie who is curious to see what happens. Needless to say I don’t activate these kill rights very often, but as you can see, I get quite a few of them!

I agree with Mag that MTU Hunting is a good middle ground activity for those who are interested in killboard interaction, without having to go all-in, and sitting firmly in the “not quite PvP” category (until someone shoots you back). To answer Mag’s question, you could try an Astero or Stratios, but I’d imagine the DPS would be a lot lower than a much cheaper T1 ship that you refit for scanning or combat on the fly.

A good alternative is a Gnosis, as it has bonuses to scanning, good DPS, and plenty of cargo space. (Thanks to Solacia Solette for this info!)

I’m not in this for the money.

Kill: Aewenora (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Additionally, I’m not going to mail the owners of every single MTU I scan down before popping them. That would be silly!

I love a good, lengthy mail filled with chatlogs and killmails! Speaking of which, let me grab those for you:

Kill: Fama Un (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Fama Un (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Fama Un (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Sookie Stackhouse (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Impressive work there, Mr Goblin! Sookie Stackhouse didn’t seem best pleased to have his mess tidied away for him, but you kept your composure whilst allowing him to vent, proving yourself to be the more mature individual. Sterling work indeed.

Thank you Rohkea! I do get around, and come to think of it, it’s been a while since I last visited Josekorn, I’ll head back that way soon. o/

You might think that I received this mail whilst popping this fellow’s MTU, but you’d be wrong, I had actually done.. nothing! In fact, I hadn’t popped any MTUs for several days beforehand, and I was sat in station when this mail came in. I replied to his mail asking him what I should be stopping, but he never replied. Weird.

Speaking of weird, I did actually pop one of his MTUs almost a year later!

Kill: Kargoth Miteraxe (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Small world.

MTU Mailbag 3

November 15, 2018 by Pix Severus

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.

It is always nice to receive positive mails such as this one. I have always chosen politeness over smacktalk, even in my ganking days where I would receive nothing but death threats in return. Of course, there is a time and place for smacktalk, for example it can be used as a tool to get someone to undock who otherwise would’ve stayed hidden, and it can also anger some people enough in the heat of the moment to cause them to make mistakes. There isn’t much call for that in my line of work at the moment though, I’d rather make as many friends as possible right now.

One of my goals in New Eden is to get more pilots talking in local, as to me there is nothing more depressing than entering a system filled with dozens of people, and having not a single word exchanged between them. I believe that keeping it friendly is the best way to encourage more pilots to communicate with me, and with each other. After all, who would want to open their mouth when all they get in return are snarky responses?

Let me grab those killmails for you:
Kill: Selcrim Arkenvos (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Gogela (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Those are some huge MTU kills there, thank you for sharing them with us, Shaela. A follow-up mail to Shaela confirmed that these MTUs were popped during the aftermath of some citadel attacks in Perimeter, hence the unusual loot found within.

Thank you very much, Ieze, I do indeed have a lot of fun doing what I do. On another note, I tend to get a few mails titled “Sorry” from time to time, either for sending me random mails, or asking questions, but please don’t. I’m very happy to receive each and every mail I get, there’s no need to apologise.

I received this rather cheerful mail from Elenow who was looking for tips and general info about the game, having recently started playing EVE with a few friends.

I, of course, recommended popping a few MTUs, after all, that’s what I do. I realise that it isn’t for everyone, however, so I asked her what she and her friends wanted to do. It seems like they were looking to get into the world of mercenary work, and had run into some trouble/fun in that regard, which Elenow’s killboard can attest to. The method of ISK-making I recommended was incursions, as it would help with learning to fly as part of a larger fleet, and pays-out extremely well. If I was to recommend an ISK-making activity today though, it would be wormhole exploration.

This mail was formatted in such a way as to make it rather hard to read at my UI scale (90%, in case you’re wondering) so instead of resetting my UI, which is a pain, I’ve copied and pasted the contents below.

—————————–
Hello and thanks!
From: c4binfever
Sent: 2017.02.13 18:56
To: Pix Severus,

Pix,

I found your blog after randomly clicking on your character in local. I really enjoy reading it and wanted to say thanks – I have racked up quite a few MTU kills now using your guide and fits.

Reading your posts gave me an idea to further persue ninja salvaging and start a little project called The Junk Committee. It’s just a small group of ninjas that hope to work together. I haven’t got all the details ironed out yet though.

I wanted to pick your brains about ganking. I seen your killboard and you have done some ganking before. I was wondering how you pick targets, and where you shoot people? Is there any money to be made solo ganking?

kind regards
c4binfever
—————————–

It’s always nice to hear that someone has found my MTU hunting guide useful, as it makes the time I spent making it feel all the more worth it. Here’s c4binfever’s killboard if you want to see his MTU kills. His corp, The Junk Committee, was an interesting idea, similar in nature to my own corp, which at the time I received this mail hadn’t grown beyond being my own one-man operation. It seems that he had created his own blog at some point, named after his corp, and I remember getting a few hits from his blog as he mentioned mine on it. Check out his blog here: The Junk Committee.

Its not often this MTU hunter gets asked about ganking, but it was indeed a profession of mine, and is something that I still do in an opportunistic capacity. I won’t go into full details, but I gave c4binfever some basic advice in my reply. My advice to you, if you’re looking at getting into ganking, is to check out the MinerBumping blog, it has a great resource on how to get started. Otherwise, feel free to mail me and I’ll help you if I can.

After reading through these mails again, I was happy to see the different ways in which people found my blog and learned about my activities. Whether it was through the official EVE Online forums, my network of “Pix Severus was here o/” containers spread throughout highsec, or just from clicking my name in local, presumably after seeing me go suspect.

That’s it for this edition of MTU Mailbag, if you have any comments or questions for me, don’t hesitate to send in a mail. I reply to all mails I receive and there’s a good chance your mail will appear on this blog at some point in the future.

MTU Mailbag 2

A not-so-Empty You

November 8, 2018 by Pix Severus

This post will be the first part of a series, and will be concerned with the early days of my corporation, Empty You, as pilots from across New Eden began applying for membership.

During the spring of 2017, I had been taking a break from EVE after a somewhat disappointing and uneventful winter. I checked the EVE forums to see if anything interesting was going on, and found that I had received a bunch of EVEmails in my absence (this was back when the official forums had that feature). Two of those mails, received less than a month apart, were from two seperate MTU hunters, Oylpann Kumamato and Carnivorous Swarm, both of whom expressing interest in joining my corporation.

Here’s that killmail for you.

I wasn’t planning on returning to EVE for some time due to personal reasons, but after reading those two very well written mails I thought the least I could do was login and send them a corp invite, if they were still interested. Then, at the very least, they could work together if needed, whether I was there or not. I responded to both mails and sent out invites soon after, and thankfully they both joined. I say “thankfully” because recruiting these guys turned-out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made in my EVE career.

It wasn’t long before I ended-up back in EVE full time, the pull was too strong after witnessing the slew of MTU killmails these hunters were generating for the corp. It was during this time that I planned-out a rather nostalgic hunting route, which funnily enough would turn out to be another one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in this game. That route would take me back to the system of Ahmak, a special system to me, as detailed in previous posts here, and here.

The hunt itself went uneventfully, with no notable MTU kills to report. Upon arriving in Ahmak, however, I immediately spotted two blues in local, Niyalyn and one of his alts, and he wasted no time in greeting me. Niyalyn is one of the Ahmak locals I met through notme7’s chat channel during the events that took place there the previous year (see the two previous posts I linked above). We had a good old chat, and before I moved-on to continue the hunt, I threw him a link to my public chat channel, MTU Hunting (all are welcome by the way, we’re quite friendly) which he joined straight away.

With two new corpmates, and another friend to chat with on the regular, this was a happy time, as no time is more fun in EVE than time spent with friends.

Unfortunately, after a few weeks, Carnivorous Swarm decided he’d had his fill of MTU hunting, and suddenly, without warning, biomassed his character. When a player biomasses his character whilst being a member of a player corporation, all ISK in that character’s wallet is transferred to the corp wallet as “Inheritance”, which was something I didn’t know until I checked the corp wallet and saw an extra 700m+ ISK sitting there. As it was just Oyl and myself left in the corp now, I split the ISK evenly with him, as something to remember our fallen comrade by.

Mr. Swarm did contact me a few weeks later to explain why he’d left, he’d had some real life issues to deal with, and by the time he came back to the game, he realised he wanted to try something else. He also explained that he’s been playing EVE for a very long time and this was the 6th time he’d biomassed a character, which he does, I assume, to not get trapped in doing the same thing over and over. That’s fair enough I guess. I offered him the inheritance ISK we received when he biomassed, but he told us to keep it and use it to fund more MTU hunting, so that was nice of him.

Carnivorous Swarm’s legacy still lives on within the corp, as he still has the highest value MTU kill of any member since his departure. Prepare yourselves for this one, it’s a beauty:

Kill: Anejo Cazadores (‘Magpie’ Mobile Tractor Unit)

He also provided a couple of excellent stories to be published on this blog, one of which is already up here, but the other is unfortunately lost to the void, as the pastebin link expired (I didn’t know they did that). One last contribution he made to the corp were his ideas for medals that the corp could offer. All of our corp’s medals are achievement-like to help encourage hunters to keep on hunting.

Carnivorous Swarm, I wish you the best of luck in whatever you are doing now, and if you’re reading this, why not pop-into the channel and say hello sometime?

Around the time Carnivorous Swarm left us, Oyl had suggested to me that it might be fun to try something a little different inbetween popping MTUs, something quite similar that we can do together, and something that he had prior experience in.

To be continued.

MTU Mailbag 2

April 20, 2018 by Pix Severus

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 Mailbag