Give me a
reason to fly small ships and I'll happily put as much time and effort into them as any other ship.
Back when Palin's "Thargoid junk" missions were a big deal, I put a lot of effort into finding the perfect ship for it, which, ultimately, led to me building my Viper III "Blackbird", which can whizz across the surface at 900m/s (thus giving any waiting gankers a surprise) and then scoop stuff straight off the surface and then jump back into SC within a couple of seconds.
The DBX was the ideal ship to use for exploring Thargoid crash sites, and Guardian sites, because (due to it's small size) it was easy to land close to the site on rough ground.
I've built a pair of Cobra III's (The "Selina Kyle" and the "Felicia Hardy") especially for pilfering from megaships.
They're good for that as a result of having a decent sized slots for a shield and enough small slots for things like Recon Limpets and Hatchbreakers.
You could do those missions in a medium ship but a small ship is a smaller target and you can easily get in amongst the megaship's superstructure to avoid fire.
Most recently, I've started doing planetary scan missions for G5 mat's in a ship, which led to me building a DBS "Coyote" specially for the job.
The DBS works well for this because it's small (and, more importantly, narrow) so it can squeeze into tight corners and scan things where you're
supposed to go in an SRV.
Also, It's hardpoint placement provides terrific convergence for launching dumbfire missiles at ground targets such as anti-aircraft batteries.
Also, also, it runs really cold so it's often possible to pop a Heat Sink and then complete the missions unnoticed.
Imagine what we could do if FDev actually put some
thought into creating stuff to do in small ships?
And, yes.
The Dolphin also has the slots to make it ideal for a lot of things.
I just can't bring myself to fly the space-bus.
