There was a great deal of good advice offered in the comments of my last post. I'm not ignoring it, but these next two fights occurred before I posted the last battle.
The fit:
3 Dual Light Pulse II (Navy Multifrequency & Scorch)
5W Infectious Power Malfunction
Cold-gas Arcjet Thrusters
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Inhibitor
Small I-a Polarized Armor Regenerator
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II
200mm Rolled Tungsten
The hunt:
I was in Rens again, but this time just to do some shopping. Major Thrasher saw me in local and asked me if I wanted a rematch.
I laughed and told him that I couldn't beat his kiting fit, so I was going to save myself the cost of my fittings. He then told me that he was using a cookie-cutter build and linked his profile for me.
Sure enough, it was a standard (albeit rigged) Rifter, so I agreed to the fight. I'm not going to post his exact build here, as it will be included in my next quarterly review.
The battle was very simple. He had control of the distance and so he came in close, pointed and webbed me, and orbited at 500m.
None of this was too surprising, but as I no longer run with a neut, I could not just cap him out and establish range. And as luck would have it, I had gone shopping in one of my remaining Dual Light Pulse builds, rather than my favoured Gatling Pulse Laser build.
As a result, he was able to get under my guns - barely. I was hitting him occasionally for minor damage, and he was hitting me most of the time, but was close enough to his tracking limit that he was getting regular misses as well. The outcome was inevitable, though, even if it did take a while.
Victim: Taurean Eltanin
Corp: Strategic Conflicts Incorporated
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Punisher
System: Rens
Security: 0.9
Damage Taken: 2589
Involved parties:
Name: Major Thrasher (laid the final blow)
Security: -0.6
Corp: Angry Bipeds
Alliance: Guinea Pigs
Faction: NONE
Ship: Rifter
Weapon: 150mm Light AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 2589
Destroyed items:
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small 'Ghoul' Energy Siphon I
Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S (Cargo)
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Small I-a Polarized Armor Regenerator
Scorch S (Cargo)
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Qty: 3
Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Dropped items:
Scorch S, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Imperial Navy Multifrequency S, Qty: 2
Post battle review:
Well, I'm obviously kicking myself for not flying my GLP build. Other than that, though, I'm not sure I could have flown the ship any better than I did. I had overheated my repper (not my guns though, as they were missing anyway - the result was not anywhere near close enough for it to have made a difference), and I had flown straight and level to get my tracking down as much as possible.
The maths were simply not on my side, and this is something I will look at in more detail in my next quarterly review.
Lessons for the future:
The first thing I did after the fight was sell all my remaining DLP II. It's cost me more to keep and use them than it has to sell them at a loss.
I also was not terribly impressed by the repper's ability to pay for itself over the course of this battle. Have I made the wrong choice in repper & nos v buffer and neut? I'll have to experiment a little.
Here's my two cents on your closing statement. You're going to find that a large buffer and neut benefit you more against another frigate in an up close slug fest. Reason being the fights are over so fast that you're repper doesn't get much chance to work. However, with that said, the Nos and Rep are going to benefit greatly when you're fighting anything with poor DPS (Kiting Frigates) or anything larger than you are. Get under a Cruisers guns and you'll still take the occasional glancing blow, or need to shrug off drone DPS while working through a Cruiser's EHP. You'll also find plenty of other people out there packing a Neut and the Nos is going to be your only defense against it. Since you're using Lasers, you have the added need of Cap for your guns, but I found myself in a few situations where a medium Neut would have meant a target escaped had it not been for my Nos keeping my scram running. I won't say that one is going to be better than the other for all situations, but wanting to be able to do everything was what led to the creation of my 400mm plate + repper and nos fit. When you feel like you've learned enough to know why something works or doesn't work is the time to start experimenting with a fit that works best for you.
ReplyDeleteI think you are absolutely right about the nos/rep v neut/buffer breakdown.
ReplyDeleteI really want the active tank to work, especially as I see myself flying faster ships in the future (like a Crusader) where I won't want a heavy buffer. However, I haven't yet really dedicated any training time to improving the efficiency of my repper. That will hopefully happen next week.
If you can afford it, I would start rigging you current fit with trimarks the extra buffer really helps, and would mean you would get a decent buffer without losing some of the agility when fitting a 400mm plate.
ReplyDeleteI use projectiles though which gives the repper more cap to work with.
I have found in some of the fights I have had in a repper fitted punisher is that you can keep the rep overheated for most of the fights if your against frigates.