The Geras Scuffle

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 Becomes the Hunted

It isn’t often that your friendly, local MTU Hunter loses his MTU Hunting ship, but it does happen from time to time. In this post I would like to tell you about an encounter in which I was hunted-down whilst out hunting for MTUs.

MTU Hunting is a profession that comes with certain risks, you spend a vast portion of your time in space under Suspect Status, meaning that if you’re in highsec, anyone can shoot at you freely without the intervention of the space police. Also, when you have the yellow flashing skull next to your name in local, it lights you up like a Christmas tree, and it will draw other pilots to you, looking for prey.

There are players out there who specialise in hunting down Suspect-flagged players, and I ended-up encountering one such hunter who was very good at his job. I had scanned down an MTU in Ruvas, warped to it, and started firing upon it. I pulse D-Scan constantly while bashing the MTU, to check if anyone is dropping probes on me, and to see if the MTU’s owner is on his way back to collect his MTU. I saw nothing out of the ordinary this time, and the MTU popped, as they usually do:

Kill: Toha Hinken (Mobile Tractor Unit)

After I’ve popped an MTU, sometimes I linger around in the site to wait out the 1 minute Weapon Timer, before heading to the nearest NPC station to deposit any loot I’d gotten from the MTU. That is what I was doing here, and in fact, I’d set my ship on a course in a random direction away from the MTU wreckage with my MWD active, whilst waiting for the timer. Suddenly, an Orthrus piloted by Trigger Liu lands in the pocket with me, and he sets his long-point on me. With his drones now eating through my ship’s armor, I made a snap decision to burn towards him and unleash my ship’s 800 DPS upon him. It wasn’t enough though, I’d taken his shields down to maybe 50% before my ship exploded.

Kill: Pix Severus (Hecate)

After I died, I warped my pod out to a nearby planet, only to find Trigger’s alt sat there on the planet at 0 waiting for me, thankfully I was alert, bounced to another planet (at 100 this time) only to find yet another one of his alts sat there waiting too. This man meant business. I did eventually get my pod back to station, I have at least one docking bookmark in the vast majority of highsec systems, and it’s a good job I had, because he had yet another alt there waiting for me. Sheesh.

If you remember, I had set myself MWDing away from the MTU wreck, and was still burning away when Trigger landed, if I had continued burning away, it is possible that I would have pulled range on his point and escaped with my ship intact. Hindsight is a useful yet cruel mistress.

A few days later, my corpmate, Oylpann Kumamato also ran into Trigger, but thankfully managed to escape his clutches.

Trigger Liu
From: Oylpann Kumamato
Sent: 2017.05.30 07:17
To: Pix Severus,
The guy that got you with the Orthrus the other day landed on grid with me. I was in a safe in Kappas.
I was lucky I wasnt scanning or he would have got me. As soon as he landed, I turned and warped out.
I’m guessing he has a hard on for us.
I messaged him and told him he’s got a quick scanner alt and gave him props for killing my CEO (you lol).
No replies yet but I’ll let you know if he does.

Needless to say, this Trigger fellow is now set red to the corp, so that we can try to avoid him in the future!

There are a number of other suspect hunters out there that I have had near misses with, and it certainly adds a lot more excitement to the risky pursuit of MTU destruction. I learned a lot from this encounter, but I’m very sure I will lose a number of other ships as my journey continues!

Strange Times in Lower Debyl

In a previous post I detailed my corporation’s largest payday from POS bashing, in this post I will tell you about an incident that occurred just a couple of weeks later, in what was supposed to be just a routine operation.

The first time I ever saw the name Lower Debyl, I’ll admit I chuckled to myself, it is a strange name as system naming conventions go, and the fact that it has a sister system called Upper Debyl makes it all the more unique. This system is located just-off the back route between the trading hubs of Amarr and Rens-Hek-Dodixie. As an aside, that route is the best way to avoid ganking hotspots such as the Niarja pipeline, and the Uedama crossroads, if you have no intention of hauling to Jita.

Lower Debyl, in the Devoid region.

At this time, our little 3-man (6, with alts) operation was running quite smoothly, we had become quite proficient at this kind of structure removal, and taking down more than one tower a night was now not uncommon for us. This night was to be yet another twin-tower bash, as I had found two targets in Lower Debyl a week or so earlier whilst hunting for MTUs. Oyl and myself had moved our ships to the system the night before and we’d docked-up in a random NPC station, shortly after I’d wardecced the POS-owning corps, so now all that was left was for Niya to make his way there just after the war went live.

With Oyl still offline, I logged-in and immediately noticed a war target in local, a pilot named Sraoshra Dallocort, who was the owner of one of the POSes we were due to bash that night. We had encountered an online target only once before, a corporation that had fuelled their POS very shortly after the war declaration, and then stayed docked-up and offline for the duration, but this time it was different.

Pix Severus > ok our wartarget is online in Lower Debyl
Niyalyn > ooo
Niyalyn > you have anything cloaky?
Pix Severus > nope
Pix Severus > he is outside our station in a capsule, apparently
Pix Severus > he is asking me to kill him
Niyalyn > lol

With Niya just a couple of jumps out in his trusty Retribution, I decided to just sit tight for the time being, lest our target had some kind of elaborate and tedious station games planned. I did wonder if he actually was in a Capsule though, so I took a brief peek outside, to find him in his pod 30k from the undock, but sat on top of the station within docking range. This had to be some kind of setup, surely?

Niyalyn > going to stop 100km short and see what he is in
Pix Severus > capsule last i checked
Niyalyn > we’ll find out
Niyalyn > then again… today is a good day to die
Pix Severus > yes it is, Worf

When Niya arrived in the system, our target was flying a Succubus, a fearsome and nimble pirate frigate. So, it would seem that my earlier caution was very much warranted? Well, not quite. You see, just before Niya had arrived in system with me, Sraoshra had opened-up a private convo with me..

It would seem, then, that our war target friend had a bounty on himself, and he wanted to use the opportunity our war had given him, to try to clear it? I tried to explain the bounty mechanics to him, but all I had succeeded in doing was getting him to bring out his frigate so we could pop it. With Niya now in-system, I undocked and burned towards Sraoshra, who was yet again atop the station, this time in his frigate. A Hecate with a MWD closes the gap very fast, and I had him tackled just as Niya landed at the station. We wasted no time in exploding his ship:

Kill: Sraoshra Dallocort (Succubus)

Seeing this completely empty ship was the first confirmation we had gotten that he wasn’t trying to bait us into some kind of trap, so we held his capsule in position whilst I continued talking with him.

With that said, we podded him too:

Kill: Sraoshra Dallocort (Capsule)

I always do my best to remain polite with other pilots in New Eden, and this exchange was no exception. I expressed my sympathies that he only managed to shave off 7m ISK from his bounty, bringing it down from 55m, to 48m, and even offered him his corpse back, which he declined, so it went to Niya in the end.

Something still didn’t feel right about all of this though, and it wouldn’t be until we went to take a look at the POS that we would realise why. It would seem that Sraoshra had fuelled his POS, but had done it a little late, and his shenanigans up to this point had been his attempt at buying time for the POS bubble to regenerate!

Niyalyn > it has a shield now
Pix Severus > really?
Niyalyn > yes
Pix Severus > he fuelled it lol
Pix Severus > the cheeky..
Pix Severus > any guns there?
Niyalyn > no
Niyalyn > shield at 52%

We still had a chance though, if he hadn’t put any Strontium Clathrates in the POS, he wouldn’t be protected by a timer when his bubble went down.

Sraoshra had returned to the system after we podded him, but had now gone offline inside an NPC station, so myself and Niya got into our bashing ships and started shooting the bubble with our fingers crossed. We were still hitting the bubble when Oyl came online, and we also had quite the story to tell him, as you can imagine.

To bring down the bubble, you need to shoot the tower.

Pix Severus > we are currently shooting a bubble at pos 1
Oylpann Kumamato > shooting a bubble?
Pix Severus > story is in the mail
Pix Severus > its been a very strange evening
Niyalyn > it has

Thankfully, Sraoshra hadn’t put any Stront in the POS, meaning that we were able to take down the bubble, leaving the juicy innards for us to feast upon. Sraoshra had kept coming online during the bash, warping to it at 100km in his pod to check on it, and then warping off, so we were glad to finally be on the home stretch. We’d had enough of his shenanigans that night, and we were also pretty sure he had emptied the arrays, so we weren’t expecting any loot either.

Kill: Equilibrium 16 (Caldari Control Tower Small)
Kill: Equilibrium 16 (Reprocessing Array)
Kill: Equilibrium 16 (Compression Array)

Nothing dropped, as expected, but that was still quite the experience, so I consider it worthwile. For me, it was my first time actually shooting a bubble, and for Niya, he got a weird story to accompany his first ship kill in EVE.

That just about covers the main events surrounding my corp’s early days of POS bashing, although my memory might be a little fuzzy. I’m sure Oyl or Niya will remind me if I’ve missed anything important though! I think we did pretty well overall, considering we were just a motley crew consisting of a PvEer, a suspect baiter, and some guy who touches your stuff when you’re not looking. These nights I spent popping POSes and chatting with Niya and Oyl were some of the happiest memories I have of EVE to this day.

The next part of this series will be a collection of other smaller events that occurred during our latter POS bashing days, along with chronicling the growth of my corp, Empty You, as new members began flooding-in to take part in the action.

To be continued.

Yellow’s Infinite Shenanigans

In previous posts I have told the story of how I met, and hunted MTUs with, Yellow Parasol, a newcomer to EVE Online who wanted to try out all those cool things he had heard about the game over the years. This post will be my last post to feature Yellow, and will tell you about some of the other things he got up to during his time playing, besides hunting MTUs with me.

Yellow Parasol.

Firstly, however, there is one more story pertaining to an MTU hunt we embarked on together, which I forgot to add to an earlier post, in which Yellow helped me take out an MTU that was surrounded by mission rats.

One evening, whlst hunting MTUs with Yellow, I spotted a lone MTU on D-Scan in Tash-Murkon Prime just as we were leaving the system. If you don’t drop probes in every system, then it pays to spam the Scan button in the D-Scan window whilst moving around the system, as you can spot MTUs between gates/celestials that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Upon landing at the MTU, we were immediately greeted by the sight of a mission-runner in a Rattlesnake fighting a collection of NPC frigates, cruisers and battlecruisers belonging to Sansha’s Nation. The mission-runner quickly recalled his Gecko and warped off, leaving the NPCs to agress us.

Never not overheat your guns when engaging an MTU.

By warping in and out, we managed to force a situation where Yellow could kite the NPCs around the mission room, leaving me to freely assault the MTU. Yellow found the ordeal quite exciting, knowing that his little Slasher would be torn apart by the Sansha if he stopped his ship for just a few moments. It wasn’t long, however, until the MTU died, leaving Yellow to pull some extra range on the NPCs before warping to safety.

Kill: SwatDoc (Mobile Tractor Unit)

It will take more than a few Sansha to stop this hunting duo from getting their prey.

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Now it’s time to tell you about some of the other things Yellow got up to during his time in EVE, and let me tell you, this guy knew how to get himself into all kinds of trouble.

One evening, Yellow was travelling around some of the starter systems, anchoring mobile depots and small secure containers at gates for the purpose of advertising EVE Radio. Placing containers at gates is how I first met Yellow, so I was pleased that he had taken up the activity himself. Whilst placing one such container, he saw a newbie warp to a nearby asteroid belt in a Reaper, the unusual thing about this particular newbie was that he was under suspect status and could be attacked freely by any pilot. Intrigued, Yellow followed him.

Upon landing in the belt, Yellow immediately caught him with scram and web, and opened a private convo. The newbie that Yellow had caught seemed to find the whole situation rather amusing, and so Yellow decided to offer him a job. He told him that if he was to post his experiences in EVE Online thus far on the official forums, he would be paid 5m ISK and be free to go. The newbie complied.

Official EVE Forums Thread

From the newbie’s story, it became apparent that he was a budding MTU Hunter, and later he even joined Yellow on a little hunt.

kill: SnipexX Tivianne (Mobile Tractor Unit)

If any newbies are reading this, take note, don’t be afraid to take risks, and always share your story with others, this will lead to more fun for you, I guarantee it.

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During his time in EVE, Yellow experimented with many different aspects of gameplay. Fancying himself as a CEO, he created his own corporation, Paraganda – Information – Services – Solutions [BI66R] with dreams of creating a corp for newbies, to steer them on a path away from mindless grinding. He also became enthralled with the game’s mechanic for ship bumping, and spent a fair chunk of his time fitting different ships for the purpose of bumping into other player’s ships and sending them hurtling across space.

It was the combination of the above two experiments that resulted in him getting wardecced by the mercenary alliance, Archetype. after he spent a few hours doing nothing but bumping their gate camp in Dodixie. Yellow subsequently managed to get himself wardecced by a whole slew of other corporations using similar methods, something both he and I found quite amusing.

It was bumping alone that got Yellow into some more trouble, this time in the ice fields of Nakugard. After completing his latest creation, a bumping Tornado, Yellow decided to test it out on some miners in the system, causing a lot of drama in the process.

He managed to get the local miners so riled-up, that one of them even renamed their MTU.

After spending some time (read: 4 hours) bumping miners, one of them decided he couldn’t take it anymore, and ganked Yellow’s ship.

Kill: yellow parasol (Tornado)

One thing was for sure, Yellow made highsec much more entertaining, no matter which system he was in.

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During my days with Yellow, I was in the process of writing my MTU Hunting guide, something which took more than a few days to complete. After I had completed the guide, Yellow kindly created a thread on Reddit (a site I seldom used) to publicise it.

Reddit Thread

The thread generated some fun discussions about MTU Hunting, and also resulted in a huge increase of hits to my blog. The thread even had a response to it some time after, in which someone had used the guide to successfully hunt an MTU.

Reddit Thread Response

I’m very thankful to Yellow for creating that thread back then, my blog hits have stayed at a higher average ever since, and it’s nice to know that people are reading it.

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There are many other little stories about things that Yellow got up to during his time in EVE, such as his duels live on stream with EVE Radio’s DJ Accy, and the time he was tormenting miners in an asteroid belt and got his Venture ganked by someone in a Caracal. Not to mention the countless times he dragged me into conversations with random strangers, resulting in some hilariously confusing chats. I am also sure he got up to more mischief that he never even shared with me.

One thing I would like to mention is that shortly after meeting Yellow, I became suspicious as to his real identity, due to the fact that he had a very similar writing style, and shared many similar views to an old friend of mine. I questioned him directly regarding this, asking if he was, in fact, the person I had in mind, but he denied it. I decided at that point to just take his word for it, and go with the flow, and you know what? I’m glad I did. True identity or not, the experiences we shared are priceless nonetheless.

That just about wraps-up this little saga, and it is one that I hope might provide some inspiration to highsec players. Who would have thought that the simple action of anchoring a container and giving it a silly name would have led to this much fun? From Yellow’s perspective, the simple act of sending a mail to someone who anchored a container led him to take part in an activity that the majority of highsec pilots have never experienced. In EVE, small actions can make a huge difference, and I encourage you to do those small things, always and often.

The Yellow Parasol Saga:
1. Pix Severus was here o/
2. Yellow Parasol is a pretty cool guy
3. Adventures with Yellow Parasol
4. The Magpie
5. Yellow’s Infinite Shenanigans

The Hunt

Today we have something special for you readers, two stories from fellow MTU Hunter, Oylpann Kumamato, focused on his tireless work in educating the mission runners of New Eden about the dangers of rogue MTUs. Pour yourself a hot drink, put your feet up, and join him on two of such adventures.

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The Harb

The Hunt, what a name for the new expansion. I undock this afternoon in Simela and run a dscan and what do my sensors see? A ‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit, thats what.

I warp to a moon and begin my scan. At 100% I warp to the MTU. Theres a Harbinger Navy Issue sitting at 0 on the MTU and a bunch of empty wrecks. The guy doesn’t move or appear to be concerned about such a dangerous deployable sitting so close to him.

The Harbinger Navy Issue.

I start shooting the MTU. I get it down to about 50% hull and the Harb targets me and begins shooting! Being as he was at 0 on the MTU, I quickly change my 500m orbit to the Battlecruiser. His medium lasers aren’t tracking me at all so I remain in sharpshooter mode dealing 720dps to him. When he hits 50% shield he scoops the MTU… boo.

With him scrammed and webbed, he’s not going anywhere. He explodes:

Kill: Tavi Octavian (Harbinger Navy Issue)

Got his pod for good measure too:

Kill: Tavi Octavian (Capsule)

And the MTU dropped in loot! Bonus!

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The Mega

The Empty You Corporation has been on red alert over the past several days.

Due to “The Hunt” Event that CCP has launched, more than ever, we have seen an increase in dangerous MTUs left out in space, clogging peoples dscans with unwanted information and just waiting to suck in unsuspecting capsuleer’s ships.

On 3/23, Tristis Puella was travelling through the system of Malma, looking for MTUs for me to destroy with extreme prejudice.  The one she found on short scan just so happened to be at a Guristas Beacon of the new event.  No probes needed for this one.

Taking a break from my trusty Hecate, I had dusted off my Ishkur of Fantastic™ that had been sitting in my hangar for far too long, and I was anxious to give it a go against some deployables, especially after the recent changes to assault frigates.

I warp to the beacon at 50km and see the MTU about 30 kilometers off.  There’s a Megathron about 60 kilometers away trying to pull range on the swarm of Guristas frigates and battleships on grid. From the looks of things, the Megathron is taking armor damage.  I have to move fast to avoid another MTU disaster.  I don’t want this guy getting sucked in to his tractor unit!  I align with the MTU and hit my afterburner bringing me up to around 1000km/s.  I quickly reach the MTU and begin to orbit closely and open up with my Small Ion Blasters, and launch a set of Warriors to help. The Mega pilot is hanging in there, slowly taking out the small frigates with drones of his own.

The Megathron.

But what’s this?  He’s targetting me!  Can he not see I’m here to help?  After he takes out the final battleship, his drones begin to attack me!

At this point, I’m thinking there is no way to teach this pilot about the dangers of MTU Suckage other than letting him see for himself what can happen when an MTU gets ahold of him so I move away from the MTU and start a quick angular approach on the battleship to keep his large cannons  tracking me to a minimum. I scram the Mega once he is in range and I set an orbit of 500 meters on him so his cannons have no chance of hitting me, and start webbing and killing the Hornet drones he has loosed upon me. It was like a literal hornets nest inside that battleship.  I must have killed at least 10 before they stopped pouring out and attacking me.

With the drones gone, I concentrate my firepower on the battleship, setting my Warriors and Ion Blasters on him.  The Megathron gets to about 50% armor and starts to rep.  This isn’t good.  I fire up my small neut to try to remedy this problem.  Not knowing if he’s cap boosted or not, I hope for the best.  After a painstakingly long time he drops to about 75% hull, and then something unexpected happens.  He activates his Self Destruct! I now have 120 seconds to chew through about 5k hps of his hull. I overheat my guns and can’t help but smile as his hull disentegrates under my small guns and drone fire approximately a minute later.

Kill: sever3 (Megathron)

Of course, my worst fear happens and the capsuleer’s wreck is sucked into the MTU he carelessly placed in space:

Kill: sever3 (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Remember friends, only you can prevent MTU Suckage.

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Indeed! A huge thank you to Oylpann for taking the time to write his experiences down for us, and I am very sure we’ll be reading more of his stories on this blog in the near future.