[ZombieAcePilot]

Jumping into a drone is dangerous. Drones are fragile. If your drone gets killed, you might get killed from biofeedback if jumped in.

Re-reading the rules I'm not actually sure it's that bad.

You have to resist half the boxes of damage that the drone took when hit. As drones don't have overflow, the most you would take is half the drone's condition. For the smallest drones you'd be resisting 3 biofeedback damage, and even for a steel lynx only 6. Depending which RCC you go for, you have 4-6 Firewall and 5 device rating. As the drone is slaved, then depending on your GM's take on PANs, you are defending with either Willpower + Drone device rating or higher of Willpower and RCC device rating + higher of RCC Firewall + Drone Firewall.

Though reading that, I realise that the interpretation of the rules for PAN when Persona is formed on the slave device is important. The difference between resisting 3-4 P with 5-7 dice or 9-11.

(ie, does the Persona get to use the stats the slave device would defend with just before the Persona was formed on it, but Persona means the slave device cannot be separately targetted, or does it mean the Persona has to use the stats of the slave device when not slaved.)

Yeah, VR riggers should always get a liegelord or equivalent RCC and run encryption, biofeedback filter and shell. Gives a reasonable dicepool to cancel out any harmful dumpshock that makes it through.
Also worth noting that even a BOD 3 drone can take up to 9 armour without loss of handling/speed etc, so a lynx or bumblebee can take 18 armour for a total resist pool of 24 which is pretty respectable and higher than most non-combat-specialist PCs have, plus they ignore stun.

This is wrong information. It takes double the armor in slots to add to any vehicle (which drones are). Even if you have more slots than your body rating (none do for protections mods that I know of), the max armor is equal to base armor + body. So a drone with three body and 3 armor has a max of 6 armor, period. Most could only slot 1 extra armor for a total of 4.

You are referencing optional rules that may not be in play at a table. The base rules for vehicle modification are not optional, they are the core assumption.

[prionic6]

The RCC is deck-sized.

SR5 p. 266: "About the size of a briefcase"

[Csjarrat]

Not quite;

These rules provide detailed options for drones and
can be used as an optional rules system for adding mod-
ifications to them. Players who do not want to use a sep-
arate system can use the rules provided in the Building
the Perfect Beast chapter (p. 150).

the emphasis seems to work both ways. you can use them, or you can elect not to use them. there is no suggestion that one takes precedence over any other.

However, you are correct re: armour:

A drone may bear the weight of Armor equal
to three times its Body without a decrease in ability

The steel lynx starts at armour 12 so can take up to 24 armour. though 19 armour is where the penalties start to kick in.
The bumblbee starts at armour 14, so can take up to 28 armour, but will take penalties from 17.
I was one pip of armour off on the rotodrone (the archetypal BOD3 drone), they're capped at 8, not 9. They still have the average resistance dice of 11 and ignore stun, so that's not too bad, especially if you can gain some -ve modifiers from glare of underslung flashlights and fast movement