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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
MTU Hunter 