That Hercules4 video certainly gets around - I've used it several times to defend the dropship's compat abilities before.
Ok, I like the dropship (loved it for the first few days I had it)...but
I sold mine a couple of weeks back after I spent 3 hours one evening trying to catch up with my wingmen - every time I missed the battle or duel by about five minutes.
This ship gives you a taste of the big time (for budding pvp'ers), having five good hardpoints and a great power plant, so you can mix and match gimbled and fixed weapons, stick a couple of missile launchers on the wings, shield booster/cell, heat sync, chaff, right up to your neck, and using 'flight assist off you can find your target quite ok.
A vulture with its power issues and two hardpoints is therefore an easy target for the experienced player in a dropship.
For NPC it's too much of a slug. Even though it takes down power plants in Condas faster than the Vulture, it just doesn't get around fast enough. My NPC credit earnings went down while I used it, and even though I was sad to part with it, the vulture was just that much quicker in warzones and RES zones.
The Clipper is a far better all round ship and the Empire certainly knew what they were doing there, however, the Clipper is limited by it's need for gimbled, which in the pvp environment where fixed or mixing fixed and gimbled tends to be the way forward, the Clipper can be problematic - therefore, if the dropship had three of 4 extra ly jump range it would be great for all those things it is good for, like being the heavy fire power in a wing of commanders (can equip it like railgun python if wanted etc) but getting it anywhere is horrible...horrible...horrible...
I suppose if you only stayed around the same few systems in a heavily populated cmdr area, it might be ok, but life is too short for the dropship's jumprange. Added to that, it's dangerous - make sure you check your scoopable stars!
Basically, I still love it but it's a hopeless cause unless they increase the jump range - how do the feds every get their troops anywhere? I think pricing it at around 12 million would be right.
