Punisher 19.2

The hunt:

After a number of unsuccessful roams, I decided to have another go at scanning down mission runners.

At first, this was no more fruitful than my roams, largely because targets that I could reasonably expect to stand a chance against on were typically running level one or level two missions, which don't last very long. By the time I had fetched my scanning ship, scanned them down, and got back into my Punisher, and then warped into the mission, they had usually disappeared.

That changed, however, when I hit upon the simple plan of buying multiple scanning ships and leaving one near each mission hub that I liked to visit. A Magnate with cloak and combat probes runs to less than 200,000 ISK, so buying a handful of them was trivial.

With a scanning ship nearby at all times, I had a much better response time, and I was soon able to scan down and jump in on a Thrasher. Activating the jump gate, I found myself coming out of warp just over 10km from him. Turning on my afterburners, I was able to tackle him almost immediately after landing.

I had known, jumping in, that I was not going to be able to out range or out track the Thrasher and this would be a straight up battle of damage against tank. I moved into an easy orbit around the Thrasher and turned on my nos to maximise the effectiveness of my active tank. I also immediately overheated my guns to maximise my dps.

The Thrasher began targeting me, and wiped away my shields almost at once. However, he then ran into problems, probably because the rats in Amarr space tend to be weak to EM, which is the best resist on my armour. His damage reduced, he soon fell to my guns.

2011.04.25 18:21:00

Victim: Genix Permafrost

Corp: Republic Military School

Alliance: Unknown

Faction: Unknown

Destroyed: Thrasher

System: Avair

Security: 0.4

Damage Taken: 9852

Involved parties:

Name: Corpior Devoter / The Blood Raider Covenant

Damage Done: 6920

Name: Taurean Eltanin (laid the final blow)

Security: -0.8

Corp: Strategic Conflicts Incorporated

Alliance: NONE

Faction: NONE

Ship: Punisher

Weapon: Gatling Pulse Laser II

Damage Done: 2932

Destroyed items:

Dual 150mm Railgun I (Cargo)

Stasis Webifier I

Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Medium Beam Laser I (Cargo)

EMP S, Qty: 8377 (Cargo)

Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

1MN Afterburner I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)

Microwave S, Qty: 2 (Cargo)

Carbonized Lead S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Ultraviolet S (Cargo)

EMP S, Qty: 318

280mm Howitzer Artillery I

Tungsten Charge S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Piranha Light Missile, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Small Remote Armor Repair System I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)

200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I, Qty: 4

Radio S (Cargo)

Guristas Copper Tag (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Warp Disruptor I (Cargo)

Standard S (Cargo)

Small Hull Repairer I (Cargo)

Civilian Shield Booster I (Cargo)

1MN Afterburner I

Small EMP Smartbomb I (Cargo)

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I (Cargo)

Thorium Charge S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Multifrequency S (Cargo)

Small Armor Repairer I

EMP S, Qty: 242

Depleted Uranium S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

280mm Howitzer Artillery I

Medium Shield Booster I

200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I

Bloodclaw Light Missile, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

Post battle review:

A short, hard fight where things went pretty much as expected. No tricks or subtlety here, just brute force against brute force. Thinking of my last fight, this would be another example of where a tracking disruptor in my (non-existant) third midslot would have been far more useful than a web.

Lessons for the future:

Although I like to centralize my assets, having utility ships in key areas can clearly be very helpful. I suspect that this is something I will repeat when I re-settle; it costs me virtually nothing and offers me targets I would not otherwise be able to reach.