Overview
Some advice you might find helpful when flying a dropship.
The Federal Dropship
“The Federal Dropship is the Federation Navy’s workhorse ship for tactical and special forces deployments. This is a well armoured and well armed ship capable of carrying large loads. Its versatile nature means that it is well suited to tackling even the most hostile environment.”
— In-Game Description
Benefits & disadvantages
Why would you fly a Dropship?
Pros:
+ Fairly cheap (starting at 12.2 mil, in Li Yong Rui space)
+ Better module protection
+ Armor
+ Medium sized, so can dock everywhere.
+ 7 optional internals
+ good hardpoint location
Cons:
– Bad jumprange
– Slow
– Not agile
– Drifts a lot
personal opinion:
+ Heavy (good for ramming, more on that later.)
+ You can buy a pirate paintjob for it, instantly increasing the bad ass looks with 423%
– Isn’t fun to fly unless you modify it.
– frequent use of FA-off
Core internals
The Federal Dropship (FDS) is basically an armored space tank, so why not boost that potential more with engineers?
Bulkheads: up to personal preference, i couldn’t choose between mirrored, reactive and military grade so went with military grade. also a modification past it’s limits.
Thrusters (6A):
I’ve went with dirty drives since these give you the most speed. my current top speed is 226m/s without boost. the disadvantage i suffer from the most is the reduced integrity. (also only have access to felicity farseer meaning they’re grade 3. for grade 5 i need palin)
Powerplant (6A):
I went with an armoured powerplant since in PvP they’re mostly after the powerplant. my modified powerplant (from hera tani) gives me a lot of extra integrity AND 10% more capacity! (disadvantage is a slightly worse heat management)
FSD (5A):
5A, REALLY advice you to buy this one and upgrade it the best you can. otherwise you’ll have a jumprange of 12 Ly or so, modified mine has 16Ly which still is bad but once you get used to it it’s not that much to worry about.
Life support (5A):
I know, most outfitters say you should D-rate this for more speed and jumprange. In my experience those 7’30” were in almost every case not enough to save me. so i went with A rated life support, 25′ of oxygen. It saved me a lot and also enables me to stick fighting longer.
Power distributor (6A):
I modified this so that the recharge is better, however my modified distributor doesn’t just give better recharge… no, it also gives more capacity (more than possible, it’s a straight upgrade from a regular 6A). I’m very pleased with this one.
Sensors (5D):
4.48km, enough for my needs.
Fuel Tank (4C):
buying a smaller one doesn’t get you anywhere unless you want to go crazy with dropship races.
Optional internals
Bi-weave shield generator (6C):
The shields on the dropship aren’t good. so i went with Bi-weaves so when they go down they come back up faster, 50% faster to be more precisely at the cost of 20% less strength. I modified it with reinforced shields giving me more shield strength while midly lowering my regeneration rate.
Hull Reinforcement Packages (2x5D):
My dropship has 2 5D hull reinforcement packages (hrp’s), both modified with the secondary effect applying more armour than normally possible. however the side effect is that the fds will become even more heavier meaning your speed will drop a lot and even more annoying: your jumprange you need to get to other engineers. So what i did was going with 1 5D hrp first and the other C5 internal a E5 cargo rack (32 tonnes capacity) with those you can haul engineer commodities. when you’re done modifying everything, get a E4 cargo rack, buy a 5D hrp and modify that one.
Cargo rack (4E):
the cargo rack gives me the option to haul 16 tonnes which i can use to modify the ship further, do missions or the most preferred option: collecting cargo from pirating players.
Auto Field-Maintenance Unit (3B):
This is a must. have one of these, preferably A rated but since i’ll have power issues with them i don’t have them. this allows you to repair your modules on the fly. note: when you repair a module, said module will be offline untill you either are done repairing or when you stop the repair yourself. (B-rated ones have more ammo than their same grade A-rated equivalents)
Fuel scoop (3A):
Read in another guide an amusing quote:
“A scooping a day keeps the fuel rats away!”
It’s true, have one on your FDS, your jumprange is one of the worst. you won’t come far without one of these. the 3A will have you scooping for 1’30” if you scoop at max rate.
FSD interdictor (2B):
normally i go with D rated ones, but the B has a better range and more integrity. so why not A? too expensive imo. paying more than 2 milion on an interdictor…
Hardpoints (personal preferance)
Large, gimballed Burst laser with scramble spectrum, efficient mod:
It causes random malfunctions on the target if the shields are down. This is really nice if the target doesn’t have much modules since you’ll have a higher chance the cargo hatch malfunctions resulting in him venting cargo… yaay! loot!
Medium railguns (feedback cascade & super penetrator… heh…):
the feedback cascade will slow down shield restoration by shield cell bank and also dmg the shield cell bank. the super penetrator … well, penetrates the target, damaging everything in its path.
Medium missle rack (no special effect yet):
I’m thinking on getting thermal cascade so the target suffers more from heat dmg and so module dmg.
Medium mine launcher (Reverberating Cascade):
Yes a mine launcher! If these mines hit a target their shield generator itself will get damaged, perfect for when you get interdicted, drop a couple of these mines, wait for their shield to blow up and then turn the tide!
Utility mounts
Shield boosters (2x0A):
one gives me more resistence to every dmg type, the other gives me 35% more shields. having my total shield strength on 309MJ.
Cargo scanner (0E):
I never go with higher grade scanners, the are too power hungry for what they’re worth. the reason why i have a cargo scanner? As mentioned earlier i’m pirating whenever i see an opportunity, interdict, send macro, scan, demand, let live (all this in a best case scenario, mostly they make a run for it resulting in drama. hey, their choice, not mine.)
Frame shift wake scanner (0E)
this is only for getting me a better grade 5 increased FSD mod. when i have it this will get changed to another 0A shield booster or a heat sink.
Flying strategy
As you might have wondered, “wow, nice armoured modules… but doesn’t that make you incredible heavy?”
…
you’re right. it does make me VERY heavy. however, i use this to my advantage. with this amount of mass you can easily be a weapon yourself. the only difficulty is to hit the target. So how do i fly this ship?
I use FA-off a lot, for short periods of time. that is:
FA-off->turn& boost-> FA-off-> boost again.
I also use the landing gear and cargo hatch a lot in fights.
“huh? why?”
Well, if you drop your landing gear your speed will get halved over a short period of time. I use the landing gear somewhat like an emergency brake in combat. i also use it when docking or by changing directions without building up to much speed.
to change your flight path without going full speed at the end of the manouvre try the following.
fly straight ahead, turn (notice that drift!), when you point in the direction you want boost AND SHORTLY AFTERWARDS deploy landing gear, preferably before the boost happens. this way you’ll move that direction but at a low speed, instantly, without having to fight the drift.
(very nice when you need to dock at surface bases)
My current weapons produce a lot of heat and i don’t have heatsinks, so keep an eye out on that heat.
Power management:
This is tricky, whenever there’s a small pause in combat: full pips to systems so they recharge. when they are fully charged (or enough for you) throw all the pips in engines again and the rest in weapons. when you want to ram the target ALWAYS full pips to systems, the rest in engines. this will increase your shield strength.
The drift issue:
My FDS drifts so much i’m often wondering weither FA-off is on or not. better use it to your advantage and keep boosting a lot to turn better.
Did you know?
… That the FDS can switch core/optional internals with a lot of ships?
The 5A FSD can be used on your dropship, but also on your FAS, FGS, Python, Asp explorer, … same for the thrusters, powerplant, … so if it’s modified, why try to create the same one when you can swap them out?
… That the FDS isn’t that hard to get in the federal navy?
You need to be midshipman in order to unlock it, this is the third rank in the federal navy.
… That even if hull is low, the dropship will still perform well?
This is due better module protection.
… That you can buy a pirate paintjob for it, eventhough if it’s far from a good pirate ship?
I just fly it because it looks so bad ass with the paintjob and because i love piracy in less popular ships.
Thanks for reading, i hope this guide will give you ideas how to make your Federal Workhorse more fun to fly.
PS: i’ll update this guide if i notice i missed important bits.