While most of r/Eve spent the past week watching the Imperium push into lowsec, a second war has been grinding along in the north-east. On 3 November it produced one of the biggest fights of the month: a dreadnought brawl over a Fortizar in MTO2-2, in Perrigen Falls.
Context: the lowsec side of the story is covered in our earlier pieces on Goonswarm in Amamake and the first big fight in Sahtogas. This article is about the nullsec campaign running in parallel.
The campaign: Deepwater Hooligans against BOSS
According to the after-action report posted on r/Eve, Deepwater Hooligans (BIGAB) has been pushing against Brotherhood of Spacers (BOSS) for some time. A separate thread the day before, "Meanwhile bigab is burning BOSS space", described BIGAB reffing BOSS structures and taking sovereignty while the lowsec war dominated the headlines.
MTO2-2 matters because, in the author's words, it is BOSS's escape route through the regional gate into Venal. The AAR says BOSS lost its sovereignty hub in the system on 2 November, which took away their ability to jam cynos there. On 3 November both BOSS Fortizars in MTO2-2 reached their final timer.
The fight
BOSS chose to fully commit to defend the first Fortizar and, according to the AAR, called it their "Alamo". They brought friends: mostly WinterCo and other Dronelands residents such as Hard Knocks. BIGAB called its own allies, including the Russian coalition HOLD MY PROBS, Legion of xXDEATHXx and others.
The AAR describes the opening as a subcap fight, with about 320 battleships on the BIGAB/PROBS side (Machariel and Apocalypse Navy Issue) against about 365 on the BOSS side (Tempest Fleet Issue, Raven and Nightmare). The PROBS pilots then dropped dreadnoughts on a hostile FAX, BOSS answered with its own dreads, and both sides ended up fully committed.
The author's account of the next part is the story most people will remember. WinterCo logged roughly 80 more dreadnoughts into two POSes in a nearby system (UJX), ready to reinforce BOSS. BIGAB had scouted those POSes and sent interdictors to log off on top of them. When the WinterCo dreads logged in, they were surrounded by bubbles. The AAR says the bubbles were eventually dropped and the dreads joined the fight a few minutes later, and that FRT then lost several dreads jumping to a bubbled cyno beacon in BIGAB staging.
By the AAR's count BIGAB and allies were outnumbered 159 dreadnoughts to 196 and still took a decisive lead, while the subcap fight also tilted their way after the BOSS FC anchored on top of three smartbombing Nestors. BOSS and allies extracted what they could and the Fortizar died.
The numbers
Our own battle report covers MTO2-2 and NIM-FY between 20:00 and 23:00 UTC and logs 1,233 killmails and 1,434 pilots. These figures are calculated differently from the external reports, so they will not match the numbers quoted in the Reddit thread.
Side | Main alliances | Pilots | Ships lost | ISK destroyed | ISK lost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BIGAB / PROBS and allies | Deepwater Hooligans, HOLD MY PROBS, Legion of xXDEATHXx | 642 | 381 | 1,372 B | 528 B |
BOSS / FRT / SYN and allies | Brotherhood of Spacers, Fraternity., Synergy of Steel | 792 | 847 | 990 B | 941 B |
The BIGAB side destroyed about 1.37 trillion ISK, which lines up with the "1.4 trillion" in the thread title, and lost less than 530 billion. The BOSS side fielded more pilots and lost more than twice as many ships.
What to take from it
Treat the details as one participant's account: the AAR was written by someone on the winning side, and the thread had no comments when we read it. What the battle report does confirm independently is the scale and the lopsided loss count. It also shows that a coalition-sized dread fight is still possible away from the lowsec headlines.
For BOSS the practical problem is the one the author spelled out: no sov hub, no cyno jammer, and an exit towards Venal that BIGAB now pressures. Whether the second Fortizar and the rest of the region hold is the thing to watch.
Sources
r/Eve, "(AAR) 1.4 TRILLION ISK DREAD BRAWL IN NULLSEC - BIGAB/PROBS vs BOSS/FRT/SYN": https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1xn76hv/aar_14_trillion_isk_dread_brawl_in_nullsec/
r/Eve, "Meanwhile bigab is burning BOSS space": https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1xmjn9i/meanwhile_bigab_is_burning_boss_space/
Screenshot from the AAR (WinterCo dreads trapped in the POS): https://preview.redd.it/h85ttq7v2hzh1.png?width=706&format=png&auto=webp&s=5c38061b4c0849060557ec86a8cd0324ef64db30
Battle report on capsuleers.app: https://capsuleers.app/tools/battle-report/a8bfa162-2829-47b2-901b-9d8e63f5df81
