Punisher 2

Racing back to battle after the loss of Punisher 1, I was eager to re-enter the fray.


The fit:

3 Dual Light Pulse 1 (Multifrequency S)
Nosferatu

1 MN Afterburner
Warp Scrambler 1

Small Armor Repairer
Damage Control 1
150mm worth of low level plate

I had not yet had time to absorb all of the implications of my earlier battle, and my fit simply used some powered-up guns and a nos.


The hunt:

As a noted in an earlier post, my expected opponent was surprisingly reluctant to re-engage me (this was high sec), so I continued on my way, looking for a fresh opponent.

In Tash-Murkon I came across an Osprey mining with a Sigil. I was keen to test myself against another cruiser,  and I thought that the Sigil (which had no visible turrets) would be unlikely to interfere. The two pilots were in the same corp, but had no corp members in the system.

The Osprey pilot was a bit older than me, whereas the Sigil pilot was only a few weeks old. Satisfied that I stood some (small) chance, I flipped the can and then turned to orbit the Osprey.

In hindsight, the Osprey was clearly only packing mining lasers in the turret slots, but at the time I was surprised not to be taking fire. However, the pilot was packing 4 Hobgoblins, which began chasing me around. More worryingly, I began to loose capacitor fast, and I was quickly webbed.

I realised that I was being neuted, so I turned on my nos, afterburner and point. I turned my fire on the Caldari vessel and hoped to win the damage race. Again, the repper was able to keep up with the damage - right up until I ran out of cap. Then, my meagre buffer gave out, and I was gone.

As for myself, I had burned straight through the cruiser's shields, and was into their armour, which I understand is most of the battle against Caldari pilots. Not exactly a close fight, but it really taught me a great deal - more, I think, than my earlier battle.


Post battle review:

First, I failed because I used a fail fit. The gold standard for Punisher buffers is 400mm of Rolled Tungsten. I was packing 150mm of something very much not Tungsten. As I had been dealing reasonable damage to the Osprey, the whole result of the battle could have been different if I had fit my Punisher with a decent buffer.

This was also the first time I had ever had my capacitor attacked directly - and I didn't like it! I had placed too many demands on my capacitor (repper and weapons), and suffered accordingly. I immediately put 4 ranks of small projectile turrets into my training que. I do not ever intend to be so cap dependent again.

Equally, however, I could work on improving my cap regeneration to the point that I am not relying on a cap reserve. One or more capacitor power relays (perhaps with a nos) might be an alternative to adding the kind of buffer that would slow my (already lethargic) Punisher down. I would need, and want, to test both approaches.

I also need to critically evaluate my approach to drones. I ignored them this time, as I had met with very little success against drones in my previous encounter. However, Hobgoblins are much slower than Warriors, and if I had managed to destroy them my lack of cap would have been a non-issue; I had all the time in the world.

Finally, I need to be more conscious about why I am using modules. I turned on my afterburner out of habit, but there were no drones to avoid. I wasted valuable cap running a module I didn't need.


Lessons for the future:

General objective: stop sucking.

I want to train and test a projectile turret Punisher fit. I also need to always fly with a proper 400mm buffer, except where (experimentally) I am running a dedicated, cap stable, active tank.