Finally decided and done it.

[Sylow]

1. Weapons
Are those ok or should I alter the loadout?

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Generally the combination of laser and multi-cannon is a good choice. It's nothing fancy, but it is reliable and has good endurance. A very solid choice. Only the combination of one small and one medium of each can be considered. Against smaller ships that's a perfectly sound choice, but when fighting something bigger, you are better off with two medium MCs and two small lasers.
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2. Shields
Stay with regular 3A or go for bi-weave? Stronger and slower vs weaker but faster in recharge?

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Personal preference. I use bi-weaves a lot. It reduces the downtime between fights. But generally, when just looking at one fight, you usually are better off with regular shields. During a fight, capacity usually beats recharge. This changes when you run a hybrid setup, which also can take plenty of damage to the hull, but that's not what you usually do with a DBS. It's just not a hulltanking ship.
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So it really is on your performance. If your shields at the moment are more than enough for the job, but you want to reduce breaks between fights, go bi-weave. If you find yourself close to loosing your shields sometimes with your current shields, then stick with them, as bi-weaves would have failed you and you would've had to retreat in that fight.
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3. Engineering
So far my engineering focused on trading/exploration, no XP on combat eng. What would you suggest? Defensive means for the ship or offensive for weapons?

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In the end: all of them. But if you want priorities, on a DBS I would go for:
- Thrusters. Get Dirty Drives, the highest grade you can get. Use the Drag Drives special. (There's only a few very light ships which benefit more from another special. )
- Engineer the shields for thermal resist.
- Have two shield boosters with resist augmented engineering.
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Those things will make your ship more agile and more durable. The DBS can afford to carry two shield boosters, too. If you run out of power, engineer your power plant. As the DBS wants to be fast, you go for the overcharged power plant. Only engineer as far as you really need it. Going for a higher grade than what you need generally is a disadvantage.
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Last not least, if you have access and materials, go for charge enhanced power distributor. This just helps any aspect of the ship and is very important if you run bi-weave shields. But even with regular shields, with charge enhanced power distributor you can put more pips on systems (making you take less damage) and keep your weapons firing, even when having less than four pips there. It's really helpful.
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Only once all of these are done, I would look into weapon engineering. Upgrading weapons also adds a lot of punch, but I would consider it lower priority. Thrusters and power distributor just do so much for your ship. Defensive engineering scales extremely well and thus is a massive advantage. It adds so much more than weapon engineering, I would always first look at that side.
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[Ethaidan]

Willing to unlock - pretty much everyone that is required. Seeing how schematics are spread out it means almost everyone... Looks like another 6 month of playing and unlocking before I can actually start doing what I wish.

Actually, you're in a better place than if you already had them all unlocked. Jumping into combat now, with very little engineerg could actually help (it did for me). Keep on fighting while you work towards unlocks - when you learn how to fight/survive with minimal engineering, then everytime you unlock something that upgrades your ship... things get easier, and by the time you get that fully G5ed dedicated bounty hunting ship... most PvE will seem too easy.

I did most of the unlocks (and a lot of PvE combat along the way) in a AspX - great jump range, enough optionals for a decent shield (c5 Prismatic), extra optionals for HRP/MRP, cargo, etc. Six weapons, four utilities, and a reasonable rebuy. Moving from that to an armoured trade Python was a bit laughably indestructible, and then on to Chieftain, Krait and Clipper for dedicated combat... I'm kinda glad I didn't start combat in a G5 combat ship.

If you can dodge a hammer, you can dodge a ball.

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

I avoided any form of pew pew and none of my ships had any weapons for the first nine or ten months following the launch of ed on the ps4. Choosing to make billions and getting all the ranking and the two none pew pew elite Federation Pilot's status first.
Being wealthy I could well afford the numerious rebuys of smaller ships that were more conducive to combat because of the unengineered which I hadn't participated in at the time manoverablitity of suggested ships by person(s) here on this forum. I bought a Vulture first, chose one of the many suggested loadouts from folks here and entered my first Low RES. As informed, started assiting the cops, and eventually ventrued out on my own on any ship NPC that had less or equal combat status. During my learning process, I only visited the rebuys screen a half dozen times, but the rebuy was next to nothing if one has billions and billions of spendable cr's an nothing to spend them on. Took me 6 to 8 hours a day not including breaks which were numerioius and 6 days a week to go from complete noob to Elite. I also attempted numerious other ships in the process and since.

Currently with the exception of my current ship the Challenger, which will probable change when the Mamba is available. NONE of my other three ships (Python, two Conda's) have any combative weapons on board. Well that's a lie, my Phthon does have some dumb dumbs, but I only use them to soften up the bases when doing scan particular base missions. Never in actual one on one pew pew. I choose to if and when I happend to loose a mini game which is almost never, to RUN. And run I do without the slightest hesitation and have yet not been able to escape.

If I can learn how to be somewhat proficent at pew pew, than anyone can. I can say the same thing about engineering which I avoided like the plague until a couple of month after the update to engineering. If I can do limited engineering, anyone can.

 

[Sylow]

Honestly, haven't thought about it. Atm I have 240-ish M Cr free and no bigger plans on future purchases. Mamba looks nice but I think I'll get her after some exploration trip.

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Don't. In the current state, it's not a great combat ship. And even if they switch it back, to more speed and a bit less pitch, it will be a very specialized ship. If you know how to bom-and-zoom and know how some ships are used in PvP, it can and probably will be a good ship there. But it'll be pure hell for somebody still learning to fight. There's many better choices available.
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As for engineers - call me slacker. I have Felicity Farseer for her G5 FSD, visited her counterpart... Elvira? but haven't progressed. And that's it. Oh, I have unlocked Guardian FSD booster and while doing so I have some mats toward other unlocks.

Willing to unlock - pretty much everyone that is required. Seeing how schematics are spread out it means almost everyone... Looks like another 6 month of playing and unlocking before I can actually start doing what I wish.

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Based on what you wrote:
- Get dirty drives 3 with drag drives from Farseer. That one already goes a long way. The G5 from Palin are of course the optimal thing, but that's a loooong way to get there. G3 really already are quite good and do the job very well.
- Unlock the Dweller. That's also a first tier engineer and gives you grade 5 power distributor upgrades, along with some not so bad laser upgrades. It's not grade 5, but even grade 3 or 4 is strong.
- Getting the Dweller up far gives you access to Lei Cheung. That allows you to get your shields fully upgraded and shield boosters to grade 3. That's already a huge boost on your defenses.
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Then comes a bit of a longer stretch. The Blaster also is first tier and thus quickly unlocked. That gives you access to Multicannon engineering and when reaching a sufficient rank with him, to get Selene Jean for armour and hull reinforcement package engineering. That engineering is awesome for ships which do some hull tanking, for the DBS it's of low importance. But if you still level up engineering on her, you get access to Didi Vatermann. She can get your shield boosters to grade 5.
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But anyway, the above is the most basic: Farseer, The Dweller, Lei Cheung. Just having those three available already can push your ship a lot.
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[Ashnak]

Then let me suggest an Alliance Chieftain. Apart from the Guardian Shield Boosters (if you have the FSD booster, you know the drill - same story, slightly different mats), all done with the first five Engineers. 67 MCr. with 3 M insurance. As long as you can keep alive for at least four excursions into a High RES (and with those shields, you can at least run from basically anything), you should be able to make some profit. The limit here is the ammo for the Frags - keep in mind that those are close range weapons. As in, wait till you can see the white in their eyes.
Of course you can easily increase the price by e.g. going for reactive armour.

Unlocking:
The Dweller wants you to have visited (and traded with) 5 black markets.
For Liz, dumping a few million Cr. worth of exploration data in an Eurybia Blue controlled station should do the trick. Hauling those 200 tons of landmines is the bigger problem.
Todd wants Bounty vouchers. 15 of anything and another 100 kCr. worth. Do him last, and collect those vouchers with your BH ship without the engineered knetics.

My current opinion of the Mamba is somewhat split. Before the burf, she was a worthwhile ship with some quirks. Not combat capable without some heavy engineering due to her low heat capacity, but a very nice ship once you adjusted to her uniqueness and didn't just treat her as a FdL body kit. After the burf, she's just meh. Not really worth bothering with, as the only thing left are her looks.

 

[Sylow]

Then let me suggest an Alliance Chieftain. Apart from the Guardian Shield Boosters (if you have the FSD booster, you know the drill - same story, slightly different mats), all done with the first five Engineers. 67 MCr. with 3 M insurance. As long as you can keep alive for at least four excursions into a High RES (and with those shields, you can at least run from basically anything), you should be able to make some profit. The limit here is the ammo for the Frags - keep in mind that those are close range weapons. As in, wait till you can see the white in their eyes.

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Due to frags, not a setup which I would advise for a combat beginner. Frags are a great tool in the hands of a competent pilot like you. You know how to control the distance and position and when to use those weapons for maximum effect. In the hands of a veteran like you, they are awesome weapons.
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But I would never tell a beginner to use them. The real beginner has his hands full with many things, which experienced pilots don't even think about any more. Things which are second nature for a veteran are a lot of effort for a beginner. Thus it really makes sense to stick to a more simple weapons setup, like the OP is using.
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[Ashnak]

Ok, then replace the frags with MCs.

 

[Sylow]

First still on the Chieftain or Challenger: the Chieftain indeed is a great ship. And if you can afford a few rebuys, it's also a very good ship to learn in. I just generally point people to cheaper ships first.
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My line of thinking is that everybody makes mistakes when new to combat here. Which lead to the rebuy screen. So I advise to aim for a low rebuy while learning the basics. If money is not that tight, the Chieftain and Challenger are indeed a great choice, they are good ships. I recently in the beta also got me a Challenger, moved everything over from the Chieftain and gave it a go. It's actually a very good ship, despite some people disliking it. It's really mostly the question on which weapon/hardpoint layout you prefer.
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As an unrelated sidenote: this thread has "clickbait" as tag. Whoever has put that there, I would be interested to know, why. In my eyes it's a legitimate thread, asking for advice. Only the thread title could be a bit more informative.
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[ilo]

Well this is news to me! I thought all ceremonial comm signals were empty due to a long standing bug. I'll have to give this a try, for science. And materials. And cash. But mostly science.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/279120-Ceremonial-comms-detected-how-it-works

some more info there.

 

[Darkslayer]

Because the multicannons will do most of the hull damage, and shield damage isn't affected by hull hardness, you'll get better results versus big ships (and no worse versus small) if you go for 2 medium multicannons and 2 small lasers


On that size of shield biweaves are almost always better - especially if you're using HRPs to toughen up the hull a bit anyway


McQuinn is very easy to unlock if you haven't already and can really boost the multicannons. (Overcharged as the base, Corrosive and Autoloader would be my recommendation for experimentals)

Dirty Drive engineering helps both offence and defence. Likewise a charge-enhanced power distributor. As a trader/explorer unlocking the necessary engineers should be pretty easy if you don't already have them.

As a trader you should be able to get shields from Lei Cheung - thermal resist with the faster recharge experimental would go well with a biweave

What he said!

 

[Darkslayer]

Oh add a chaff and bind it to a button combination. It make a huge difference on a small ship.

 

[60mm]

I have earned >99.9% of my credits via combat, as I have only engaged in non-combat activities to satisfy the engineers. Have ~4k bounties claimed. Here are my thoughts.

Weapons
Your selection will work fine, hard to go wrong with Lasers and Multi-Cannons though they are certainly not the most effective for prolonged Bounty Hunting.

For maximum effectiveness and efficiency, I find having Railguns in your loadout to be key. I bounty hunt for kills and credits, so having to wait for a target's chaff to dissipate is simply not an option. Being able to keep up the attack is crucial so Fixed weaponry is in order. Plasma Slug Railguns are fantastic for Bounty Hunting as you can spam them all day long. 10% Damage Reduction is well worth the 40% Thermal Load Reduction. As you progress towards picking fights with higher ranked and more dangerous ships, Feedback Cascade becomes crucial for efficiency. The amount of time they will save you is immense.

To go with my Railguns, I always have a gimbaled weapon to help deal with gnats like Vipers. Beam Lasers with Thermal Vent compliment Railguns nicely. I fly the Krait Mk2 and employ 2x Long Range(g1) Plasma Slug Railguns for general work, 2x Long Range(g1) Feedback Cascade Railguns for SCBs and a Long Range(g1) Thermal Vent Beam Laser. Can bounty hunt for a couple hours and tear through any opponent quickly.

Shields
Bi-Weave is best simply for efficiency. Less time between fights. If you are having problems losing your shields Bounty Hunting, it's your piloting that needs to improve.

Engineering
Fast Scan KWS and Long Range Sensors can really boost your income in RES w/Security. Being able to find marks and get a KWS off quickly can pull in a good extra chunk of money. I often swoop in on a ship about to be killed by Security just in time to get a last millisecond KWS, and that is with these modules engineered so.

Other
Shield tanking is much more effective in Bounty Hunting, so I wouldn't worry about Hull Reinforcements. You can use that slot for a Guardian Shield Booster.