Punisher

"One of the most effective weapons at distances up to 500 meters. High rate of fire and capacity. Low accuracy makes this weapon ineffective at longer distances"

Introduction
The Punisher is a light gun with an effective range of 200m and a maximum range of 500m. At its maximum range of 500m, very few bullets will hit the target decreasing its damage substantially.

It has a medium counterpart, the  Punisher Mk2, which is a version of the Punisher with higher damage. It is essentially a Gatling gun, and it has the highest firing rate of any weapon in the game. It is lethal at close range but due to bullet spread, it becomes increasingly inaccurate as the range increases.

All Punishers (as well as Molots) accelerate fire rate up to 1.5x usual speed, if fired continuously for longer time than 3 seconds. Accelerated state is disabled if firing is stopped for more than 1 second or ammo is depleted.

Being one of the first weapons available to new players, it is a very common early game weapon and remains useful for much of the game. Best used in sets, a Patton equipped with four Punishers is very effect sustained damage dealer early in the game.

Many players eventually replace the Punishers with Magnums later on when they become available, as they can fire continuously without reload (2 shots per second), have no spread at longer ranges and can penetrate Ancile shields. However, Punishers have a longer range and a faster firing rate, which means that the weapon can still compete with Magnums should they be used. Punishers are usable in higher tiers for disabling Ancile - due to big area covered by Ancile it catches almost every bullet up to 500 meters, and due to high Punisher firing speed, Ancile is quickly disabled, allowing allied forces to take on unprotected bot.

Update 2.9

 * Damage increased +7%
 * Firerate decreased -23% (from 11\17 rps to 8.3\12.45 rps per second)
 * Actual burst DPS went down from 2,010 to 1,709, exactly -15% nerf
 * Actual cycle DPS went down from 1,184 to 1,099, approximately -7% nerf

Update 2.7.0

 * Punisher and Punisher Mk2 now enters an accelerated firing rate after 3 seconds of sustained fire. At accelerated state, the firing rate is 1.5x of the normal.
 * Accelerated firing shuts down when firing is stopped for 1 second.
 * The gun barrels glows orange-yellow during accelerated state.
 * MK1 and MK2 are now differentiated by DAMAGE, and not by firing speed.
 * Due to high CPU load on mobile devices, Pixonic decreases RPS, simultaneously increasing the damage, thus leaving overall DPS same as on accelerated prototype.

Update 2.5.0

 * As part of the name prefix removal, the name of the weapon was changed from GAU Punisher to Punisher

Update 0.9.1

 * Accuracy increased by 14%

Update 0.9.0

 * Damage decreased by 24.5%

Update 0.8.0

 * Damage increased by an additional 10%

Update 0.6.3

 * Effective Range: 300m -> 200m

Update 0.6.1

 * Damage increased by 10%

Trivia

 * The Punisher could have been inspired by the GAU 8 Avenger, a gatling gun similar to the Punisher that was equipped on an A-10 Thunderbolt, or "Warthogs" – it fires 30mm rounds.
 * In some of the test versions the Punisher, along with the other firearm weapons, do 2.6× the amount of damage on physical shields.