I'd like to thank everyone who left a comment on my last post - they were very heplful, and gave me some much needed perspective on my choices.
In the end, I decided to go with the Arbitrator. I've got a couple of reasons for that.
First, the Arbitrator happens to be one of the most awesome looking ships in the game outside of the frigate class. It looks the way I've always thought a starship (as opposed to a spaceship) would look, right down to the hangar bay in the nose. It's only become more beautiful since the V3 treatment. I'm going to love flying it.
Second, the Arbitrator simply opens more doors in both the long and short term. As fun as hunting frigates in a Caracal sounds, at the end of the day I'm just hunting frigates. In a cruiser. While I won't turn up my nose at below class kills, limiting myself to below class kills exclusively is just not my style
So, my shopping alt has purchased a stack of 20 Arbitrators, and Red Frog Freight will be delivering them to Ranellies. In all likelyhood, I won't be getting into them (or EVE generally) until the end of the summer, but that's just fine - Amarr Cruisers V alone is going to take about 20 days. And then my drone skills could use some love.
In the meantime, I'll probably make the odd post or two about fits for comments and criticisms. EVE FNG's Arbitrator guide has been very helpful, but as ever I'm probably going to mangle his good advice and come up with something suboptimal and "unique".
