"One of the best ways to use the Martyr to break a turtle is to send it at a distant ally's base where the lane is within explosion range of the turtle base-- and have your ally send a single drill in the same lane but opposite direction to detonate it. The only way to stop this is with a sacrificial pirate, or to run away." (not quoting because it would be very hard to find in such a long text)
I was giving this thread a re-read for the old times sake, and this thing irritated me as people tend to think if this was true and play accordingly. I have also heard people other than Kevlar talking about this. So let me correct you folks, but the only way to stop this is not with a sacrificial pirate. You can just target the sub with the single drill coming from the opposite direction, and thus denying the Martyr from engaging in combat and also wasting a ton of time of that Martyr.
If the opposite player is smarter and sends multiple subs of 1, just get out a Pirate + Nav to kill them all in quick succession. If you don't have Pirate/Nav (90% of the time , both) as a turtle, you won't live long anyway, because then the offense has tons of ways to kill you.