What’s in a Name?

In a previous post I talked about the early days of my corporation, Empty You [EMTU], and some of the people who helped to shape it into something other than a lonely one-man operation. In this post I would like to continue the story from where I left off, and tell you about how the pieces began to move, resulting in fun times for all involved.

My relatively new corpmate, Oylpann Kumamato, had suggested to me that we could try POS bashing alongside hunting MTUs; it would be an activity we could do together as a corporation from time to time, providing a break from what we usually do.

A POS Bash, the Marmite of activities in EVE, some love it, some hate it.

It sounded a little like MTU Hunting itself to me, both activities involving removing abandoned (or not) structures left behind by players, that could contain any amount of loot inside. Any MTU hunter from this period could tell you that POSes were also a major annoyance when it came to scanning, this was because MTUs used to be classed as a “Structure” in EVE’s scanners, the same category as POSes, so when scanning down MTUs you always had to work harder to find the MTU amongst the large amount of extra scan signatures that came from a nearby POS. For this reason alone, I was very interested in the opportunity to take some of them out.

With my interest piqued, I asked Oyl for more information; How would we go about this? Did we have the firepower to take one of these bases down in a reasonable amount of time? What are the highsec mechanics regarding this? These questions rang around my head as I remembered a story I read a while back about a player who travelled around New Eden destroying POSes, claiming 10s of billions of ISK in loot from some of these long-abandoned structures. This was treasure hunting on a galactic scale.

Oyl sent me a link to the EVE University Wiki about POS Warfare, and I got to studying. POS stands for Player-Owned Starbase, and it is exactly as the name suggests, a base owned by players. A typical POS setup consists of a Control Tower (the “core” of the base) and will be surrounded by modules such as Refining Arrays, Assembly Arrays, Labs, Hangars and any number of defenses including sentry turrets, and the like. After some time, I would find that most POSes in highsec would consist of just the Control Tower, and a Reprocessing Array and/or Compression Array, for the purpose of refining/compressing ore. The info I wanted the most though was about the big blue shield that surrounds these bases, and I found that if the POS isn’t “fuelled” there would be no shield, leaving the structures within open to attack without any of those pesky timers that CCP seems to love so much. I would later find that the vast majority of POSes in highsec are unfuelled, therefore abandoned and ripe for the picking.

We had a plan, but how to get started? Well, Oyl had that covered, he told me in corp chat about a potential target in Hentogaira:

Oylpann Kumamato > Hentogaira I – Moon 10 take note. if you want to pew this stuff.
Oylpann Kumamato > might be something in there, might be nothing, but there’s lots of modules and a tower to crack.

After a quick discussion, we wardecced the corporation that owned the POS in Hentogaira (you need to be at war with a corp before you can shoot their base in highsec) and discussed the types of ships we were going to bring to the bash the following evening (you also have to wait 24 hours after declaring war before the war becomes active). The corp we declared war on was called Whats in the name [WITNC], a 2-man corp that seemed inactive. Their POS consisted of a small Caldari Control Tower, but more importantly, it had both a Reprocessing Array and a Compression Array, which had the potential for loot. Just FYI, Control Towers drop nothing, but modules such as refining/assembly arrays, labs, and hangars have the potential to contain items.

Oyl wouldn’t be on until a little later that night due to work, so he said I should probably start shooting the Control Tower as soon as I got on, to get a head-start on what could be a long grind. After a night’s rest and a long day at work, with the upcoming activities on my mind throughout, the time eventually came for me to logon and start this thing.

I got myself into a Talos, a Gallente Battlecruiser, which was pretty much the only ship with large guns that I could fly at the time, filled my cargohold to the brim with ammo, and then made my way to Hentogaira. Once I arrived at the POS (I had created bookmarks in the system the night before) I targetted the Control Tower and began blapping. It turns out that I’d perhaps not brought the best gun/ammo combo for taking on a Caldari tower due to it’s resists, seeing as it took around 30 minutes just to take the shields down 10%, with the 1117.3 DPS my Talos could pump-out! These things I would learn as time went on though, and for the moment, I stuck to my guns as it were, and kept on blapping.

My Talos was named “Please be Offline”.

Whilst shooting the POS, I noticed Niyalyn had come online, and was in the MTU Hunting chat channel. After a quick greeting he asked me what I was up to, and I told him that I was shooting a POS and that it was taking a very long time to grind the shields down. This immediately interested him, and he offered to come along and help shoot it, something I was not expecting due to him being purely a PvE player up to this point in time. I had also mistakenly thought that someone couldn’t just join a corp that is at war and immediately take part in it, I don’t know where I got this misinfo from, but I’m very glad I was wrong. I accepted Niya’s aid, he joined the corporation, and then wasted no time in flying some 20 or so jumps to join me.

Note: When I told Niya about the shields, I was referring to the Control Tower’s own shield, not the big blue one that usually surrounds a fuelled POS. All POS structures still have their own shields, just like ships do.

Niya arrived in a Retribution, a small but powerful Amarrian Assault Frigate, probably so he could get here faster to see what was going on, but perhaps he also didn’t completely trust me at this point (I wouldn’t blame him, what with my ganker past and all), and didn’t want to turn up in something big and blingy only to lose it in some kind of elaborate double-cross. After shooting the tower for a while though, he decided he would bring a bigger ship after all, and went to fetch his Nightmare, an even more powerful laser-based Pirate Battleship. While Niya was off fetching his new ship, Oyl came online and joined the bash.

Oyl had previous experience with bashing a POS, something he had done with The Devil’s Warrior Alliance a while back, so I was somewhat relieved to see him there. He suggested we take down one of the arrays before Niya got back, assuring us that Niya would get on the killmail for it regardless of him not being in the system with us at the time, and so we did, and he was right:

Kill: Whats in the name (Compression Array)

The array was empty, but this was a first POS structure kill for me, and for Niya it was the first ever slice of green on his killboard. We decided to wait for Niya to get back before shooting the Reprocessing Array, and continued shooting the tower until he returned. When he returned, we blapped the next array:

Kill: Whats in the name (Reprocessing Array)

After this array went down, we noticed lots of cargo containers had spewed-forth from it, which, as it turns out, contained ice, lots of ice. How much ice you might ask? Over 700m ISK of it! Oh, and just FYI, loot dropped from POS structures don’t show on killboards. Oyl logged-on his hauling alt and began ferrying the ice from the POS to a nearby station while we continued shooting the Control Tower, and it wasn’t long before it, too, fell:

Kill: Whats in the name (Caldari Control Tower Small)

Boom!

During the evening, we spent a lot of time chatting with each other about all sorts of things, from our favourite drinks, to current events. Oyl linked us this killmail at one point, an Itty V worth over 100b ISK destroyed. Apparently the pilot wanted to quit the game for good, so he extracted all of his skill points, loaded them into his paper-thin hauler, and then asked to be killed on the Jita 4-4 undock.

After the tower died, we took out a couple of defensive arrays and a battery before calling it a night, as it had gotten quite late. I went to bed that night with a smile on my face. The next day I returned to the scene to mop-up a few of the left-over batteries, as I had nothing better to do. Oyl got the ice hauled to a market hub via a courier contract, and sold the ice shortly after, splitting the ISK evenly between us. I had suggested to him that he should take a larger cut because he paid for the wardec, but he refused, telling me that this was how he’d done it in the past, and we should do it way too. I agreed, and from that point we would split the wardec fees and share all loot evenly between us.

So there we have it, our first POS kill as a corporation, and not only did the wardec pay for itself, we actually made a nice profit from it! More importantly, though, we were now back up to being a 3-man corporation again, thanks to Niya joining us. We also had a purpose, we had found an activity that was relatively fun, easy, and profitable, it was also a nice way to pass a few hours while having a good old chat with friends.

In terms of profit, we had earned enough ISK to pay for the next 14 or so wardecs, the question is, though, would it stay profitable?

To be continued.

Yellow Parasol is a pretty cool guy

In a previous post, I detailed a side-activity of mine, which is to leave containers at gates in each system I have hunted in along with the simple message: “Pix Severus was here o/”. I received many mails and other such communications from capsuleers who had seen my containers, but one mail in particular created an opportunity for even more fun whilst hunting MTUs.

One night, while travelling to a market hub to offload some of the vast quantities of loot I had accumulated on my MTU hunts, I received a mail from a fellow named yellow parasol:

Another example of a standard type of mail I tend to receive from pilots who have seen my containers, I reply to all of them of course, and this one was no exception. After a little back and forth via EVE mail, where we shared some greetings and mutual encouragement, I decided to do something for this obviously-enthusiastic newbie:

This humble gesture from an MTU Hunter pleased yellow parasol very much indeed; he immediately set-off to find the can and see it for himself. After he had arrived at the can (I had moved on elsewhere to continue to hauling my loot) he sent me a follow-up mail:

I sent the ISK back, of course, with a little extra on top. I was very happy that such a simple action (anchoring a container) had created such fun times for a new player. That wasn’t to be the end of his luck with the container, however, his wallet continued to grow for some time after. It was at this point that I asked him to give me his EVE story thus far, and he obliged:

What an action-packed couple of days for this EVE newbie! He had lost ships, chatted with players, and in the end had gained a substantial amount of ISK for his efforts. New players take note: this is how you begin your EVE career.

The following day, I received yet another mail from yellow, he had taken up the sport of corpse collecting from the moment he began playing, and it seems he’d had some extra luck with this activity that day:

Just three days into his EVE career and he’s already popping reds at gates, what a champ. It was shortly after this mail that I decided to help broaden his EVE experience further by inviting him on an MTU hunt. Due to conflicts in schedules, it took a few days until we were both online at the same time, but the hunt did indeed go ahead eventually.

Kill: Sylvous (Mobile Tractor Unit)

The above kill was a first for both of us, for him it was his first MTU kill, and for me it was my first non-solo MTU kill. We racked-up an impressive 8 MTU kills in total that evening, with a further 5 the following evening. By the 3rd day in his MTU Hunting career, yellow had killed his first MTU solo.

This story isn’t over, not by a long shot, but this post is becoming far too long, so stay tuned for the continuation.

MTU Autopsy

There is a lot you can tell from examining the contents of an MTU after it has been destroyed. Picking through these remains can provide you with a wealth of knowledge about the pilot who deployed it. In particular, their chosen activities in-game are laid bare, not to mention their penchant for leaving things lying around in space, but it can tell you much more than that besides.

One example would be finding ore in an MTU that was once sat in an asteroid belt, this tells you that the owner is a miner who uses the MTU to stash ore once his ore bay is full, and probably returns for it in a hauler after he has finished mining. Even a new player could tell you that though, so let us go deeper and examine some of the more interesting MTU corpses and see what story they have to tell.

After careful examination of this MTU wreck, I can confirm it’s dead.

Kill: Misacun Fabler (Mobile Tractor Unit)

After I popped this MTU in an asteroid belt in the system of Vahunomi, I was surprised to find more than just rat droppings in it’s contents. As we can see from the Strip Miners and Mining Laser Upgrade contained within, the miner had lost her mining ship, and her ship’s wreck was sucked back into her own MTU. There’s more, the presence of Light Neutron Blaster IIs and a T2 magstab tells us how this miner died, she was ganked. The ganker had destroyed her mining ship using a blaster-focused ganking ship (most likely a Catalyst), and after CONCORD destroyed the ganker’s ship in retaliation, that wreck was also sucked into the MTU. If we look at her killboard, we can see that she died in that very same system multiple times, before and after I had popped the MTU, to New Order Agent Liek DarZ. This tells us that the MTU’s owner either had a habit for mining AFK, or was too inexperienced to protect herself from being ganked.

Kill: Yogurt Arkanum (Mobile Tractor Unit)

From this recent kill we can see numerous mission items contained within the MTU’s wreck, which tells us that this MTU was being used by a mission runner. The presence of one item in particular, The Damsel, can tell us exactly which mission was being run, The Damsel in Distress. We can also tell from this wreck that the mission runner had failed his mission, as The Damsel needs to be looted and handed-in to the mission agent in order to complete it. We can only speculate as to why he never finished the mission, but the lack of any ship deaths in Barkrik on this fellow’s killboard would indicate he wasn’t ganked.

Kill: Dread Aldent (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Sometimes the things you find inside MTUs can be quite baffling, such was the case with this MTU I found in the highsec system of Sigga, containing ore that can only be mined outside of highsec, in systems of 0.2 security and lower. Did a miner haul this ore to highsec and leave it in an MTU in a safe spot after mining it in lowsec? Did he buy it on the market and leave it there? Unlikely. The best explanation I can come up with is the possibility that this ore has a chance to spawn in highsec Mining Missions, but I don’t know for sure, so if any experienced mining mission runners are reading this, please let me know!

Kill: Zog Gor (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Here we have another gank victim, this time the MTU’s owner was flying a salvaging ship, which we can tell from the 3 Salvager IIs and 3 Small Tractor Beam IIs it once contained. The presence of T2 blasters and magstabs would indicate that yet again, the gankship used here was most likely a Catalyst. If we take a look at Zog Gor’s killboard, we can see that he lost his Noctis salvaging vessel to New Order Agent Alt 00 in Barkrik the previous day. This pilot had already completed his mission, left it, and returned in a salvaging ship to loot the field. Unfortunately for him, there was more than just loot waiting for him upon his return.

I have already covered the phenomenon of a mission runner losing his ship to mission rats and having his own wreck sucked back into his MTU in a previous post, so I won’t cover that particular example here. There are some more interesting MTU autopsies that I can go over, but I will cover those in a later post. If you have found anything interesting inside an MTU, please tell me about it, along with a killmail, and it may be featured in the next episode of MTU Autopsy.

The Damsel

Around the time of this post, I had another noteworthy encounter with an MTU that was sitting alone in an active mission, this time the mission was one that is well-known to many EVE players, even those who don’t run missions, The Damsel in Distress.

This is actually one of my favourite level 4 missions as it has a good payout for the amount of time it takes to complete. However, you need a battleship with a good tank to be able to do this mission effectively, meaning that my MTU Hunting ship was going to need some backup

The system of Atoosh, in the Tash-Murkon region.

After arriving in the system of Atoosh, on my way to the outer reaches of highsec, I did my usual system scan and quickly found a lone MTU. Once I had landed on grid with it, I was immediately aggressed by 9 Mercenary NPC battleships and a cluster of cruisers and had to warp off or risk losing my ship. Due to the strucutres in the mission, and the name of one of the NPCs (Kruul) it was clear to me what mission this was, and that the mission runner had prematurely spawned the 2nd wave of battleships by shooting Kruul too early. This mistake could be why he wasn’t there actually doing the mission, but was instead docked-up inside a nearby station.

I decided that it was my duty to help my fellow capsuleer by completing the mission for him, and taking only his MTU as payment, a fair trade I’d say. I logged my mission runner alt and spent the next 20 minutes warping her slow faction battleship, a Raven Navy Issue all the way out there. By the time she reached the system, the mission runner had logged off for the evening, but that didn’t matter, we had work to do. After trading bookmarks in the station, I warped my alt to the active mission and got to work, and within a few minutes she had destroyed all the mission rats along with the structure where The Damsel was being held captive.

*Thud thud* Muffled Voices.

There were now quite a number of wrecks littering the field along with various containers, one of which contained The Damsel. “Wait! Oh no!” I exclaimed, as the MTU began sucking in the container where The Damsel now resided, the only thing between her and the cold vacuum of space. “If she gets sucked into the MTU, there is a chance she won’t survive the explosion when I pop it!” Alas, it was too late, I couldn’t reach the container before the MTU had sucked it in, and The Damsel’s fate now hung in the balance. With a dry throat and a feeling of consternation, I warped in my MTU hunting ship and began the task of popping it regardless. Would she survive?

Kill: Base Sixteen (Mobile Tractor Unit)

She did indeed survive, thankfully, and I welcomed her onto my ship along with the rest of the loot. I then docked at the station (the same one where the mission runner lived) and contracted The Damsel to him so he could complete the mission. With my work now complete it was time for a rest, and so I logged off for the evening.

When I logged on again the following day I found that the contract had not been accepted, but instead the mission runner had decided to place a whopping 80m ISK bounty on my head! Well, that’s gratitude for you I guess, but I won’t let one sour capsuleer deter me from helping others in the future. At this point you may be thinking to yourself “So what happened to The Damsel?” After all, the mission runner didn’t want her, and I’m not heartless enough to hand her over to the slavers..

She rides with me now.

The Holy Grail?

One of the ways I like to hunt MTUs is to set a very long route to the outer edges of highsec, and skirt along the border of lowsec, visiting as many systems along the way as possible. This can result in some very long (100+ jump) routes with many added waypoints, so I don’t miss any systems. I was on my way back from my first such excursion when I happened upon the holy grail of abandoned MTUs, sitting only just inside D-Scan range, mid-warp between celestials in a system called Akhragan.

Kill: Wulfgar WarHammer (Mobile Tractor Unit)

There were only 3 people in local, including myself, and the MTU’s owner wasn’t one of them. Speaking of the owner, I instantly recognised his avatar as he used to post on the EVE Forums a couple of years back. Anyway, this MTU was well and truly abandoned, there were no wrecks, and the mission it was placed in had long since despawned.

Loot Fairy was kind.

After I had finished celebrating getting my long-awaited payday, I analysed the killmail. This fellow had deployed an MTU in his mission, lost his faction-fitted battleship to the mission rats, and then had his own ship wreck sucked back into his MTU. Not only was there a chance for his high-value mods to be destroyed upon the loss of his ship, but there was a further chance of it through the MTU loss too. To add to that, the MTU’s owner didn’t return to scoop it for some reason, did he ragequit, perhaps? Finally, MTUs despawn if left abandoned for 2 days, who knows how long it had been sat there, it could have been minutes, even seconds from despawning before I found it. With all these variables taken into account, getting such a payout from an MTU was very lucky indeed.

A few months ago when I first started this project, if you had asked me what I thought the holy grail of MTU kills was, I would have told you that it would most likely be an MTU filled with faction loot. Well, having found it after my 101st MTU kill, it was time to move the goalposts. The new holy grail of MTU kills is to find one filled with officer loot.