As we all know by now the Triglavian Collective has been hosting organized matches between capsuleers with varying formats and restrictions. One of the things we’ve learned about the Trigs is that they are quite fond of combat and use ship to ship engagements to determine which designs they should move forward with and employ en masse.
I was thinking about it a bit recently and concluded this: They are using this controlled capsuleer violence as a way of observing which of our tactics, weapons, and designs perform the best when pitted against each other with the intention of adapting the strategies for their own use. The Collective learning from some of the most skilled capsuleers in the cluster is an unsettling thought, given their already deadly effectiveness. This is especially worrying for the Caldari State, which is on the verge of being shattered by the Triglavian hammer, so I decided to look into what ships and setups have been seeing the most success in the Proving Grounds up to this point.
To my dismay the best performing strategies are ones revolving around missiles and drones, with the Caracal dominating the very first Proving Ground format, the Dragoon and Algos the next, and now the Cyclone-class battlecruiser has taken the spotlight in the arena. We here in the State know that combination all too well, it is the deadly setup favored by the Guristas in their ship designs. The Guristas have been a thorn in our side for many years now, and the Collective has proven totally overwhelming to the Caldari Navy in its current, woefully lacklustre form. If the Collective were to adopt the use of missiles and drones in a manner similar to the Guristas, I fear it would be the last nail in the coffin for State resistance against the invaders.