EVE General Discussion

Question on the Mobile Tractor Unit before I think about spending isk on one. The way I understand it I could load one up in my BC at the start of a mission and warp in and drop it and then start the slaughter while it does it's tractor/looting then I could warp out finish the mission and warp back to the unit with another ship and salvage everything and loot the unit and collect it then rinse and repeat each mission?

Thanks for any answers:)

just remember to bookmark where you placed it.

yes.



well, there is a but: if you are slow, it works. if you are fast, it will be way to slow unless you do more missions, come back after 10-20 min and then do as suggested. Really depends on your missioning speed.
In crowded areas this can lead to...well, guys that scan the structure and grab your loot first ;) , maybe even pop the unit for lulz (at 20mil cost/unit it can drive missioners crazy ;) ).

No. It tractors and loots. It doesn't salvage.

Dang, I was hoping they had just made the Noctis irrelevant. Oh well.

So next question (I've been gone for three months) - do NPC rats target them if left on out on their own?

The same way each patch nerfs the drop rate for -insert item of your choice-. It's in your mind.

No NPC rats seem to not care about this can with a tractor beam welded on top... just drop it at the start of the mission kill the room and come back with a noctis and salvage the wrecks. Even better use the noctis to assist in the tractor work salvage all wrecks and the unit will empty the cans for you so you just have to focus on the salvage.

It seems to use the following logic, tractor in the closest wreck regardless of it containing loot or not,once close loot it. It will continue to do this till all wrecks are near it and empty at that point it will start looting the cans again starting close by working out from there.

I just lost mine to a "Tower Sentry Angel III" in the Angels Extravaganza Level 4 bonus room
I was abruptly disconnected, logged in a few minutes later to see that my Golem was popped and in-time to see the Mobile Tractor unit loot my wreck, then in turn it was blown up by the sentry
Rats wont target the Mobile Tractor Unit, but a sentry sure will

Just bear in mind that tractoring & looting using the tower is about ten times slower than with a Noctis. Each kilometre to a wreck represents another second of looting time with the Mobile Tractor Unit (the Noctis tractors wrecks more than twice as quickly). If you have a dozen wrecks at 40km, it's going to take 8 minutes to loot with the tower where it would have taken 40 seconds with a Noctis (and the Noctis will have salvaged half of it in that time too).

In any scenario where you have to warp back to station and bring out a specialist salvaging ship, you're probably better off hiring someone else to do the salvaging for you while you're off making more wrecks. The "Free Wrecks" channel, Pro Synergy, or OhGee the freelanth thalvager in are all far better options than the mobile tractor unit.

Of course some marauder pilots would prefer to tractor, loot and salvage while in the mission space. That's their perk :)

Yes, I have a KM and a GM response to say that this is currently in need of fixing.