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

Naming Surprises and Cheeky Disguises 5

October 19, 2020 by Pix Severus

Giving a name to your MTU is the hip new trend for capsuleers across highsec, what better way to enhance your impact upon D-Scan and improve your presence in local! In this post I’ll be taking a look at some more of these memorable mobile deployables.

First up we have someone who tried to name their MTU after the Egyptian god of the afterlife, and as we can see, someone already tried to send this MTU to the afterlife, due to the sliver of armor damage it had already taken when I found it.

I put this thing to rest for good shortly afterwards, although I do wonder if we’ll see Annubis XII at some point in the future.

This MTU was found in Aphi, a system well known for having a static COSMOS site with constantly-respawning NPCs that are farmed by AFKers and bots all the live-long day. There are often a lot of MTUs deployed here, but unfortunately you need a key to get past the acceleration gate to this site.

Here we have an MTU owned by MiGhTyFoUrTwEnTy who decided to name it after himself. This MTU turned out to be mightier than I had anticipated, as it had swallowed it’s owners ship.

Kill: MiGhTyFoUrTwEnTy (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Unfortunately I almost exclusively use blasters, so I was unable to make a jibe about how I pewpewed this MTU to death with my lasers. Oh well, moving on.

Here we have an MTU that was surrounded by Orcas. It’s time to crack-out that online translator again to see what this name means.

Romanian: mtu mersi
Translates to: mtu thanks

Well, thanks for that, I guess.

Here we have another MTU surrounded by Orcas, a common sight in highsec these days. This one looks to be a name without proper use of an apostrophe, needless to say I didn’t spot anyone named Sharva or Sharvas in local.

This name is detected as being Swedish by an online translator, but the words remain the same in English as they are in Swedish. Therefore I can only assume that this MTU is named after the mother of someone named Pers. Strange.

This time we have an MTU with a Turkish name, a first for me! Let’s translate it, shall we?

Turkish: Toplayici 1
Translates to: Collector 1

That sounds about right, removing the “1” from the translation results in the word “Picker”, which also sounds about right for an MTU name.

At first glance, it looked like this MTU was named ROBOCOP and I had plans to pepper this post with all sorts of iconic quotes from the movie. Instead, we have some Cyrillic letters to decipher to find the true name of this MTU.

Bulgarian: ГОВНОСБОР
Translates to: S**T COLLECTION

I… wouldn’t buy that for a dollar.

Finally we have the first MTU I’ve ever found with an emoji for a name. MTUs are dangerous space equipment, and I believe more of them should carry warning symbols like these.

No cheeky disguises in this post, but I can guarantee you will get one in the next episode of this series! As always, if you spot any interesting or funny named MTUs out there, please take a screenshot and send it to me (Pix Severus) via EVEmail. Until next time!

Naming Surprises and Cheeky Disguises 4

MTU Mailbag 8: The Fangirl

October 12, 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.

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.

Vocal Local 10

October 4, 2020 by Pix Severus

Sometimes, however, an MTU hunter can feel a little blog-famous.

It’s always nice to know that people are enjoying the blog, thanks Admiral!

Having just passed through multiple empty systems, I was delighted to finally see someone in local while passing through Eddar, a system in a very quiet region. With just the two of us in local, I left a comment about his ship’s name (which I can’t actually remember now, it was “metal” something) before moving on.

Having explored the surrounding systems fully, I then passed back through Eddar a few minutes later on my way to another region, and I’m glad I did!

This screenshot might look familiar to you, as it is the full version of an encounter with a named MTU featured in this post. After Orvom scooped his MTU, I decided to leave him to his mission running in peace.

Upon entering the system of Arnon I noticed a pilot named Rosaline plying her trade in local.

Rosaline Ramsey > Im back again, selling the infamous route to JIta. send me 10mil isk (tips welcome) and I will get you to JIta in 6 jumps from here.
Evi Polevhia > Earlier you said three. Get your story straight.
Deucey D > seems legit
Rosaline Ramsey > three was to forge
Rosaline Ramsey > customer told me it was three from exit point. 3plus three and all

At this point I’d left system, but after becoming intrigued with the conversation going on, I headed back in.

Maiali Aurgnet > no prob. thanks for the help
Deucey D > Maiali Aurgnet Account is 2 days old, wtf you have business in Jita for?
Rosaline Ramsey > :)

The locals seemed skeptical of the legitimacy of Rosaline’s business, which was selling fast routes to Jita. I saw no problem with it, and so I gave Rosaline my endorsement.

Shortly afterwards, I was contacted by Rosaline.

Let us hope she got herself a few more customers!

Here we have an encounter with another owner of a named MTU. Remember to tidy away your MTU after usage, folks, unless you want me to come and clean it up for you.

It’s always nice to return to Hek, where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.. Hek is a great place to spot well-known highsec players, some even say that if you visit Hek during a moonlit night you might just be blessed with an appearance of James 315 himself.

Yes, still going strong after all these years, an MTU hunter’s work is never done.

This fellow spoke-up in local after seeing me go suspect, I always reward those who do with a killmail to read.

Kill: Tindale (Mobile Tractor Unit)

Kill: Andas Cardian (Mobile Tractor Unit)

After poking around the system of Atonder for a few minutes, one of the locals spoke up, perhaps after becoming perturbed at my usage of combat probes.

Kill: lace Firn (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: GySgt Kossori (Mobile Tractor Unit) (Ouch!)

We ended up having a nice chat about MTUs, which funnily enough is one of my favourite topics!

Vocal Local 9

Finders Keepers 2

September 30, 2020 by Pix Severus

In a previous post, I told you about some of the things I tend to find lying around in highsec. In this post I’d like to show you some more of these abandoned acquisitions and lonely liberations.

After my return to New Eden in the summer of 2020, it didn’t take long for me to find my first batch of free loot, which came in the form of a number of ships, unpiloted and alone, in the system of Dihra.

Upon entering the system, I noticed a bunch of haulers clustered together on D-Scan, I thought this was unusual so I probed them down to take a look. When I landed on grid, there they were, a fleet of haulers, all unpiloted. After bookmarking the location, I docked in a nearby station and came back in my pod to board one of the ships and take it to the warm confines of my hangar. I repeated this process until all the ships were removed and were now my property.

There were more than just ships lying around this area, there was also a collection of Hangar Containers peppered around in a spherical formation, which meant that this was the remnants of a player-made structure. After right-clicking and selecting “show info” on one of the ships, I was able to find which corporation owned the structure, and which corporation was responsible for blowing it up.

Kill: Dark Space Exploration (Raitaru)

Inside the containers, I found a collection of cheap items, mostly Corvettes, Shuttles, and PI-related materials.

I grabbed as much as I could using the Tayra I had liberated earlier, before some of the locals started sniffing around the scene, after noticing me go suspect for looting yellow wrecks. In all, I got myself a fleet of haulers (which are always handy to have around) a bunch of shuttles and around 20m ISK in other materials. Most importantly though, D-Scan in this system was now clean.

In the nearby system of Uadelah, I found myself another fleet of ships.

I never have to pay for shuttles these days, there’s just so many lying around.

This next one was a case of finding but being unable to keep, as I’d stumbled upon a glitch in the matrix, so to speak. I’d spotted a lone Cruise Missile Battery on D-Scan in the system of Ervekam one evening, and thought I’d just quickly probe it down and scoop it, to keep the system clean.

POS modules such as these are supposedly going to be removed from the game soon, so I was looking forward to having one to keep as a memento of old times.

Upon reaching the item, I was unable to scoop it as it apparently belonged to “EVE System” or an NPC Corp. It actually belongs to Secure Commerce Commission, a member corp of CONCORD Assembly, very strange. Instead of finding myself a nice trinket, I’d found a weird bug in the game world, and so I departed feeling a little disappointed.

I am unable to find a mention of this bug anywhere online, it’ll probably just disappear when they finally get around to removing POSes from EVE though. I have reported this as a bug to CCP, but it is still there at the time of writing this, so you can go there and see it for yourself if you wish. Also, the message won’t appear unless you have enough cargo space (500m3) to scoop the module, so bear that in mind.

I wasn’t expecting to turn Finders Keepers into a series, but I find a lot of weird and wonderful things out there, from fleets of abandoned ships, to expensive drones and all manner of oddities. If you’ve ever found and kept anything interesting that was just sat out there in space, please let me know, I’d love to hear about it.

Naming Surprises and Cheeky Disguises 4

September 23, 2020 by Pix Severus

It’s time for another edition of what is becoming one of the most popular series on this blog, NS&CD. In this series we take a look at some of the strange, wonderful, or somewhat frightening names that pilots choose to give to their Mobile Tractor Units. I travel all over highsec, so if you live there and currently own a named MTU, there is a good chance you’ll see it featured here at some point in the future.

Before we begin, there have been some wonderful examples of named MTUs featured on Yadot’s blog recently, here and here, and I highly recommend you check those out!

At first I thought this name might be a reference to a certain American celebrity, but upon closer inspection the MTU’s owner (piloting a Skiff next to it) probably named it after herself. I do wonder what happened to Cardy MTU-A though!

Here we have a couple of named MTUs close together, the grammatically incorrect “A MTU”, and DENOS MOBILE. That second name looks Spanish, let’s crack out the online translator, shall we?

Spanish: DENOS MOBILE
Translates to: GIVE US MOBILE

Hmm, an odd one, but you should really be giving me your mobile. If any Spanish speakers can shed any light on this, please do.

Here we have a nice contrast. Quite a few MTU owners like to associate their MTUs with trash, calling them things like bins, trashcans, waste disposal, and the like. Some other MTU owners like to associate them with treasure though, and I personally share that sentiment.

Here we have another MTU that the owner decided to name after themself. MTUs aren’t named like this by default, so the owner had to go out of their way to name their MTU like the default name for a ship. By the way, you should never leave your ship name as default, finding a pilot on D-Scan through their ship’s name is an easy way to hunt them down.

I believe “Scoop” would be a more appropriate name for an MTU, the only swooping involved with MTUs is when I swoop in and blow them up.

These rare ‘Magpie’ MTUs with pretty names were surrounded by a swarm of Ishtars using Wasp II drones. It goes without saying that I was unable to claim them.

This seems like a good name for an MTU, I wonder if Cherry Picker 1 faced the same fate?

Here we have an MTU named after a popular sci-fi character, although I don’t really understand the connection here. Perhaps some Star Wars nerds can fill me in on this one?

Here we have what looks like a cheeky disguise, although upon further reflection it could just be a descriptive name, as in the MTU retrieves items through it’s tractor beam.

Although named MTUs seem to be a lot more common these days, cheeky disguises are still somewhat of a rarity. The search continues, and we have more episodes of this series coming up! If you spot any interesting or funny named MTUs out there, please take a screenshot and send it to me (Pix Severus) via EVEmail.

Naming Surprises and Cheeky Disguises 3

Pix Severus Pops 1000 MTUs

September 20, 2020 by Pix Severus

It’s been a long time coming, and it would’ve come a lot sooner if it wasn’t for my penchant for taking extended breaks from New Eden, but here we are. I have finally popped 1000 Mobile Tractor Units.

I’m not the first to reach this milestone, and I won’t be the last, there were even some pilots with over 1000 MTU kills before I even took up the sport. Some of the MTU hunters who have achieved this goal, most who I have spoken with personally, are listed below:

Novastarlee
Ganolen Morningwood
Ujken
Karynn Denton
Savage Rose

If you’re an MTU hunter with over 1000 MTU kills to your name, send me a mail and I’ll get you on this prestigious list.

What about the 1000th kill itself, was it anything special?

It certainly was.

My corpmate, Purgo, wanted to do something special for my 1000th kill, so he set up an MTU hunt in the system of Waskisen using an MTU dropped by his alt. I had to find the MTU and scan it down myself (so it was still classed as a hunt) and once I had reached the MTU, Purgo and Solacia Solette joined me in the ritual popping.

Kill: Iiae (‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit)

I’d like to give a huge thank you to Purgo and Solacia for making the 1000th kill a more meaningful one. I won’t forget it.

Pix Severus > thanks again for all this, it couldve just been some random empty mtu out there, but this one had meaning
Purgo > for sure man!
Solacia Solette > It was fun. I bet when you started this adventure you weren’t expecting to get a four digit kill count
Pix Severus > i certainly wasnt sol, but most of all i wouldnt have expected id make friends willing to do something like this for me
Pix Severus > youre both awesome, cheers
Solacia Solette > :D
Purgo > :D

1000 is a nice round number to collect some stats from, which should hopefully provide some more insight into what being an MTU hunter is like.

ISK Destroyed (MTUs): 13.2b

MTUs destroyed by type:
Mobile Tractor Unit: 962
‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit: 34
‘Magpie’ Mobile Tractor Unit: 4

Other Mobile Deployables destroyed by type:
Mobile Depot: 2
Mobile Micro Jump Unit: 45

Ships lost: 7
ISK lost (Ships): 318m

Biggest kill (ISK destroyed):
Kill: DAS BOOT Saraki (Mobile Tractor Unit) (478m)

Biggest middle finger from the loot fairy:
Kill: GySgt Kossori (Mobile Tractor Unit) (277m) (3.5m dropped)

Solacia, who is also Empty You’s Chief Statistician, kindly produced some more stats for me.

Thank you Solacia! The stats certainly show that I was getting a lot more MTU kills back in 2016 than any other time. Now whether that’s due to there being more MTU hunters around today, and less MTUs, or simply because I introduced other activities into the mix, I am not sure.

Finally, it’s time for the long-awaited ceremony.

I hereby award myself the Elite MTU hunter medal, and now count myself among MTU hunting’s elite.

If you’d like a medal, you are welcome to join my corp to receive one and leave aftwards. We have medals for 100, 250, 500, 750 and 1000 MTU kills, along with some other accolades.

I’ve been told that I’m responsible for a lot more MTU deaths than my personal 1000, due to the number of people I’ve inspired to take up this profession. My actual kill count would be thousands more by proxy if I counted the MTU kills of those who took it up because of my blog, or my guide. Indeed, there are a lot more MTU hunters around these days, compared to early 2016 when I started doing this, and there is a lot more MTU destruction throughout New Eden as a result. I don’t know if I’m responsible for that, or if it would have happened naturally anyway though.

I’d just like to thank everyone who has encouraged me to keep on popping MTUs over the years, whether it was through mail, local, or private convo. Another huge thank you, again, to my wonderful corp mates for helping me out whenever they could along the way.

So, what now? I’ve just hit one big ol’ milestone, perhaps it’s time to hang up the Hecate and settle down? Get a comfortable 9-5 ganking job, get married, have 2.5 drones and a pet Fedo. After all, the MTU owners of New Eden have had enough by now, haven’t they?

Hell no.

Lock up those MTUs, I’m coming for more.

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.

Empty You Empties 3000 MTUs

September 13, 2020 by Pix Severus

Things proceed apace for my little corporation since my return to New Eden this summer, in fact the MTUs have been popping regularly whether I’ve been around or not, thanks to the efforts of dutiful corp members.

I noticed some time ago that the corp wasn’t far off this next milestone, and so I promised a small prize of 50m ISK to whoever got the 3000th MTU kill for us. Yesterday, that prize was claimed by corpmate Solacia Solette.

Oh, let me grab those killmails for you.

Kill: phemmp power (Mobile Tractor Unit)
Kill: Dimas Achasse (‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit)

A nice, juicy Packrat seems very fitting for the 3000th MTU kill, thank you Sol! Also, I am indeed close to my personal milestone of 1000, and there will be a post about that coming shortly.

For now though, it’s time to update the corp description, as is customary. I actually do this for every 100 MTU kills the corp achieves, if I remember to do so.

A sincere thank you to every corp member who has contributed to this colossal kill count, even if it was just one or two, it all mattered. As we start our journey towards our next 1000 MTU kills, I find myself sitting back, closing my eyes, and thinking about the sheer MTU devastation we have brought upon New Eden. It is a good thought, one of my fondest.

Bonus!
Yadot has updated his blog again with yet more MTU hunting stories, it’s well worth checking out: dont even know what MTU is

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