On the evening of 5 November the Hydra Freeport Tatara in Amamake went down. The defenders themselves say so, and it happened in one of the biggest fights r/Eve has seen this month.
This is a follow-up to Amamake Holds: 592 Billion ISK Burned, where the Sotiyo and the Fortizar fights were still undecided.
What happened
An "Amamake Watcher" thread posted a few hours before the fight said the Hydra Tatara was facing its hull timer that night, and that the Sotiyo had survived its earlier armor timer after the LowSec Voltron showed up in EU prime (thread).
The timer did not pass quietly. Bluemelon, the Freeport spokesperson we have quoted before, wrote the next morning that "the Orcs broke through" and took the Tatara. He says his side threw wave after wave at a Goon capital fleet he puts at about a thousand ships, that the fight was crushed by time dilation, and that about 30 billion ISK dropped. He adds that the Freeports are not finished and thanks the lowsec Voltron, The Initiative and the NPSI fleets who came to help (thread, image). That is one side's account, not a neutral report.
A Goon-side post the same evening only said the Imperium joined with fewer people and still won (thread). A pilot who was on grid posted a picture gallery and wrote that the winners were "the ones who weren't there", meaning the looters, and that the time dilation spoiled the brawl (gallery).
The numbers
We rebuilt the fight on capsuleers.app for Amamake, from 18:00 to 22:00 UTC on 5 November: open the battle report.
2,172 killmails, about 6.49 trillion ISK destroyed, 3,839 pilots.
Goonswarm Federation and allies (Goonswarm Federation, Brave Collective, SONS of BANE): 2,381 pilots, about 3.59 trillion ISK destroyed and 1.32 trillion lost.
The Initiative, Snuffed Out, Escalate. and others on the defending side: 1,458 pilots, about 2.91 trillion ISK destroyed and 1.52 trillion lost. The Initiative alone brought 937 pilots, Snuffed Out 285.
Two cautions. The two sides do not add up to the total, because pilots from groups we did not assign to either side are on the killmails too. And the kill counts of the two sides overlap, since many killmails have pilots from both teams, so we quote ISK and pilots, not kills.
Even so, the picture is clear enough: the defenders lost more ISK than the attackers did, and the Goons brought more than 900 more pilots than the whole defending side. Last time the same battle report showed an almost even fight. This one tilted.
The Voltron's problem
The LowSec Voltron has spent the week being mocked on r/Eve for its internal friction, including satire about alliances shooting each other's structures (example). Treat those posts as mood, not fact. What is factual is that, by our numbers, the defence leaned heavily on The Initiative, a nullsec alliance, rather than on lowsec groups.
Goonswarm also still has the Fortizar in Siseide and the Sotiyo in Auner to fight over, and the Amamake Watcher thread expects those timers in the small hours of EU time.
Also this week: layoffs at Fenris Creations
Outside the war, r/Eve spent part of Wednesday on a report from the Icelandic outlet Visir: nine full-time positions were cut at Fenris Creations after a review linked to the development of EVE Frontier. According to the story, a managing director of Fenris Games Publishing said it will not affect other games or operations (report, r/Eve thread).
Sources
r/Eve: Amamake Watcher, episode VI
r/Eve: 3.5T Amamake brawl pictures
r/Eve: Amamake right now
r/Eve: Nine full-time positions laid off at Fenris Creations and Visir
