Punisher 5

The fit:

In an effort to explore different options, and to give 400mm plate another try, I came up with this fit:

3 150mm autocannon
Small Nosferatu

Warp Scrambler 1
Stasis Webifier 1

Damage Control 1
Small Armor Repair System 1
Adaptive Plating 2
400mm Rolled Tungsten

Although I knew this would not be a fast fit, speed is simply never going to happen with 400mm plate. I thought I might try embracing that, and going for a web instead. Getting to the target might be difficult, but I should be able to hold onto them pretty well.


The hunt:

This fight found me, actually. I was sitting in a belt looking for a can to flip when a Stabber warped in and dropped a can practically on top of me. I flipped it, and the fight was on.

I webbed him. He webbed me. The fight was practically in slow motion. He was faster than me, of course, as he also had an afterburner, and he pulled away slowly.

We hammered each other, but as he got further away my combat log indicated that we were both now in falloff. I am guessing that he was using 200mm autocannons (or larger), because he seemed less affected by that I was. In the end, he reached a range where I was hitting for partial damage with every volley, but about half of his volleys hit for full damage.

It did not end well for me. I tried to change direction to increase my transversal, but the Punisher was so slow to respond that I never actually made the turn until far too late.


Post battle review:

I have to say that I really do not enjoy 400mm fits - I doubt I'll try them again in the near future. That being said, I can see how (in the hands of a better player) they are absolutely effective. The amount of punishment I absorbed was ridiculous, despite the fact that I was essentially a stationary target against a combat fitted cruiser.

In this particular case, things would have worked out far better if I had been packing lasers. Better optimals would have helped keep me ahead in the damage race, and I could have instantly switched to a higher range ammunition if I needed to.

As for the afterburner v web issue, I did not feel the lack of an afterburner. There was nothing that I wanted to do that an afterburner would have let me do. Of course, I did not need to approach my target (he approached me), so this kind of fit might work best for pilots that enjoy baiting their prey rather than chasing them down.


Lessons for the future:

If I can't control the range, I need a plan for dealing with it. I also feel that where you fit a buffer tank, you need to go all out on damage. I'm still using T1 guns, which is an issue, and I did not fit any kind of dps enhancement. A gyrostabiliser might be called for.

The fit is not pretty, or subtle. But I think if a pilot liked it, it could be turned into a real beast.

I have some other observations, but they relate to my fights as a group, rather than this one specifically, so I'll put them in a separate post.