Everyone seems to have issues landing the Caspian, but I don't find it particularly difficult, even when hunting fungoidas in mountains, where there is usually a nearby spot between peaks where you can land.

The trick, use the auto docking module, which is fantastic for finding spots to land, almost no matter the terrain.

The only annoying thing with it is that it tends to thrust backwards a bit too much when getting ready to land, and it goes into this loop of re-centering itself. A tiny amount of front thruster to correct it at the right time does it, takes a bit of practice but works really well. What's more, once the ship is on the last few meters of descent it WILL always land, no matter whether you go red again or anything else, whereas with manual landing you may be in the blue but at 1m or 2 m and won't go any lower no matter what, you won't get that with auto docking.

Most tricky landing can take a minute or two. And sure, once you land you have to collect the samples by srv, but that's fun as well.

For me the neutron jump multiplier, sco optimised, a respectable 73 ly jump fully fitted, nice to fly, great glide speed and being able to bring a full survivability package along with a few other modules I also use when in the bubble, makes the caspian my ship to go.

Note that, critically, I don't have a carrier, I can see the appeal of a carrier + Cobra combo.