Missions & Complexes

You just proven my point. T2 BS (marauders) are way overpriced and they are overpriced because of the manufacturing cost. Overfarmed explo sites won't help with it either.

I don't have any. Sold my golem, bought 4 rattlesnakes and put them in four corners of the hisec.

I don't think so but I'm out of rational arguments and I will not got down to ad personam thus to me this discussion has run its course. Fly safe.

Apparently my experience with the Golem is a lot more pleasant than yours. I don't have the skills to fly a Kronos or Vargur, but I can fly a Golem and a Paladin equally well. Actually my skills for the Paladin are somewhat superior, because my gunnery skills are substantially better than my missile skills (at the moment). Nevertheless I get better overall results with a Golem.

Damage application is something you can train and fit for.

While there is some delay to impact, I still hit targets within 120km (or so) before the launcher is ready to fire again. I don't think I ever lost a single volley within this range.

Maybe the Golem has the least amount of EHP/tank of the Marauders, but this doesn't matter at all since my omnitanked Golem is way overtanked for PvE anyway.

Yes a Target Painter is necessary imho. But I don't think the skill requirements are a good argument against flying a Golem. Likewise you could say that a Golem is bad, because it's the only Marauder that requires missile skills. Also micromanaging a single Target Painter (that's all I need) is a non-issue.

Effectiveness against cruisers and frigates depends on choosing the correct ammo. Oneshotting cruisers is possible. To be able to oneshot frigates you usually need to switch to Precision. With regard to effectiveness the Paladin outperforms the Golem against targets which are weak against EM/therm and at range. However, if you go against Guristas, Serpentis or Angel Cartel for example, the Paladin sucks and is nowhere near as effective as a Golem (not to mention the performance against targets which are close). In my experience (largely from running missions in Caldari, Amarr and Ammatar space) the Golem is better overall by quite a bit.

However, I'm aware that the style of running missions has significant effect on how you experience ship performance. Personally I dislike leaving stuff behind, so usually I clear, loot and salvage everything (yes, I know that that's not the most efficient way to run missions). Since I'm lazy my preferred method is warp in, hit Bastion, launch MTU, aggro everything (getting them closer to speed up looting), clear the grid.

Furthermore I'd say that fitting a Golem is more difficult compared to fitting a Paladin, which could be held against the Golem. The ideal fit (for me) costs roughly 700m ISK (estimated price in the fitting window). It is perfect for PvE imho, but the bling might draw some attention to it. Since ganker presence in my area seems to have increased lately, I switched to a different fit, though. I sacrificed some damage application and the third Salvager to bring up the tank to near PvP standard while using cheaper mods (which require more CPU; roughly 350m ISK for the whole fit; and the fit is still good enough).

Bastion module

Wow, 8 pages of stuff, and no definitive answers!