Waiting for rockets to finally work

Lately I've been polishing up some training I had left behind when I decided I had had enough of getting killed by Taranis pilots and wanted to get in on the action. This was followed by intense training for the Broadsword and the Vagabond, sprinkled with a smidge of Cheetah and Rapier, and finally with good battleship skills, followed by Field Command Ships. All of this had the effect of putting a serious hole in my training: missile skills. Until recently the damage I was doing with missiles was just a little extra over the awesome output of my guns. I can fly a nicely tanked bait Drake but even for this particular battlecruiser my damage output would be anemic enough to pass it up. But among the things that are coming with the Incursion expansion is the long awaited rocket fix... ABOUT GOD DAMNED TIME !!!!

One ship that I have the feeling will receive some love because of this is the Republic Fleet Firetail. Having already suffered a lot at the time of the Quantum Rise speed rebalance, it received a quasi death blow when the Dramiel was raised to Uber Tackling King status. I don't know (and seriously doubt) if the Firetail will de-throne the Angel frigate, but with rockets being a lot more effective I suspect that the 2 gun/ 2 launcher setup will make the Firetail a great assault frigate. Other ships will also feel the love given to the rockets: the Flycatcher and Heretic interdictors, the Malediction, Crow and Claw interceptors, the Hawk assault frigate, the Gurista Worm frigate... those are a few ships which will surely become very popular once Incursion hits. I have already patched up missile training to the point that I can finally use T2 rocket launchers, and after a bit more support skill polishing I'll be training up Caldari Frigate V, followed by Amarr Frigate V. This will allow me to fly all of the ships named here with T2 setups.

Once all that is done I will come at yet another crossroads in my EVE career. Do I go the Caldari or the Amarr way? Do I get my Gallente Battleship IV and T2 weapons? Or do I keep deepening my Minmatar skills? Some of the minnie ships are really nice and useful like the Scimitar and Claymore, but I see myself more of a loner even in a fleet setting. E-war frigates... never been interested, plus if I want to play that type of game I have access to Huginns and Rapiers now. Marauders? Meh, I'm not enough of a mission runner, and my Sleipnir kills L4 missions quite quickly; the only things that would make missioning more fun would be a Loki or a Machariel, but my EVE play style makes me a poor guy so I'll be in the Slippy for a good while. Besides, I want to keep the Machariel as a gift celebrating Minnie BS V and Gal BS V... still have a while to go!

And finally, do I want to have a couple of big ships if only as haulers? Of course I'm talking Orca and Nidhoggur here; whenever I have lots of ships and stuff to move to an area I hate feeling dependant on other players. I know the Nid is the ugly duckling of the carriers, but because I have no intentions of taking a carrier into combat that makes it the perfect hauler for me, especially if I ever decide to go back to Null-sec. If I do such a move it will be after some careful corporation shopping though because I have zero interest in Sovereignty or Capital Ship warfare, and I'm quite happy here at MAPU. The Orca is an awesome asset in Hi-sec space, but over a month of industrial skill training makes me shy away from it. But having "borrowed" one I've seen how useful it is. Of course if I get one it has to stay docked up when (not if) Helicity Boson throws on Hulkageddon IV; I'll be too busy losing sec status anyway :))

My parental weekend is over, and I'm done with POS bashes for a while so I can see only one thing in my EVE future: FUN! :))

Fly safe? Why should I ?!

o7