Fed Dropship loadout

[Urbanski101]

I bought a Fed Dropship years ago and it's been sat at Jamesons still in it's bubble wrap.

The time has come (with the engi discounts) to fully tool this girl up. I'm thinking of using her for combat, possibly assassinations but also with a mind on Odyssey and ground assault but I'm happy to switch out hardpoints depending on activity.

Does anyone have some interesting builds for a dropship, I'm particularly interested in the hardpoints and trying some different weapons. I've always gone down the Pulse/burst/beam with MCs and I want to avoid that this time. Happy to look at all fixed weapons, PAs, rails, or maybe a mix, frags, missiles etc...

I've never done PP so I don't have access to the PP weapons but I have most relevant engineers unlocked.

Cheers

Edit: should have said PVE only

 

[Orby one]

I've had the same idea, but using a gunship. Inspired by the video by Vindicator Jones, it has 5 dumbfire missile racks and 2 sml beams. I've been practicing ground attack runs in anarchy systems. It's quite a bit harder than I expected. Lol.

 

[Gauntlet]

As above, I have the Dropship and FAS in Jameson's untouched but built a VJ inspired Gunship with all advanced missile launchers except for in mine I have a large beam underneath. It's pretty effective for those surface data missions for wiping out any defences. You don't even need an SRV for the mission either and can just scan the data point from the ship. It's going to be a blast (hehe) in Odyssey

 

[Edwyndham]

For PvE? There's a lot of stuff that can work. For my PvE haz res dropship I repurposed an (outdated, niche) FdL build and went with 1 gimbal corrosive OC MC on the large, and 4 shortrange blaster rails split between super pen and and feedback cascade. Set up firegroups for MC + all rails, MC + right-side rails, MC + left-side rails, the latter two I switch between when engaging smaller targets, the former when splatting a python or larger. A couple heatsinks needed if you hit the trigger too much. Fun and does the job, tanky enough to take on 3 deadly/elite assassination targets at once, easily. Alternatively just switch the rails to Long Range if SRB isn't working for you. Not a good build for PvP.

For PvP piracy my favorite ship currently is the dropship with 5 flechette launchers. Wrecks a fleeing trader's thrusters in 3-5 well-placed shots. Holds its own against ships that over-rely on shield tanking, since they ignore shields (usually just to a stalemate, with their modules too damaged to continue, they leave). Gets absolutely rolled by hulltanks though, Chieftains eat this thing for breakfast. For PvE you should be able to take out a big assassination target (corvette, conda) or two, however the projectiles get shot down by point defense so it depends on their loadout.

 

[Imo]

I had a dropship back then with all gimballed multi cannons. You have a blast with them especially when you engineer the guns.

 

[goemon]

can't help you with interesting hardpoints, as one of my dropships is backgroundsimulation focussed, so min-max MC+pulse loadout. another is ax combat+research, also used it yesterday to rescue from the burning stations. i just love the atmosphere in a dropship.

but i have a fed dropship for thieving (not pirating) hafnium, sap8 containers, anti-matter-containment and such from convoys and private courier ships, and blocked rares from rare traders. i have detailed some of the process here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/questions-for-experienced-salvagers.549271/post-8574426

that's the build: https://s.orbis.zone/bwwe

it has more cargo than my usual thieving dbe, more cargo and better internal slot sizes than my thieving cobra, and a smaller auto-resolve distance than my thieving AspE or PVE piracy python.

 

[S0rkvild]

Dropship is really sweet when it comes to loadouts. She is also very stable platform to practice railgun sniping.
I've been using different loadouts on my FDS's...

All multicannon build. Nothing can go wrong here. Altough large multi is kinda meh due to longer spin up time, but that can be countered by applying rapid firing mod.
Four plasmas + large beam.
Four frags + one railgun.
Four multicannons, +one large beam
Four fixed bursts (g5 focused) + large multicannon (corrosive)
Three railguns + anything you like.
Four medium cannons + anything
Two gimballed beams, two multis, large missile pod.
Gimballed cannons + plasmas (same speed combo)
Four seeker pods (or packounds!) + anything.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

For planetary assault i use a C3 high cap dumbfire, 2 C2 MC and 2 C2 plasma. The MC and plasma are more for killing ships that annoy me. The single dumbfire is more than enough to lay waste to generators, turrets and skimmers. The dropship is especially good for ground attack because all 4 utility slots are on the belly. Use double point defense to shut down missile attacks. Thermal resist bi weave with either military or mirrored armor shuts down the laser attacks. I'v never seen a base use kinetics. Fly dangerous o7.