I have a lightly modded Rust Server through gameservers. I have simple loot (Because better loot's preconfigured rarity/loot table needs so much adjusting is gross) and gather manager, and ALL airdrops are ridiculous in the amount of loot contained within. Nothing I have done seems to change/reduce this. I have removed plugins and tested to the same result. Is there any specific location in which entities can be changed like this outside of the "oxide" folder? I have altered gather manager's dispenser amounts etc and no changes have shown. Are airdrops now in vanilla dropping 14+ items pretty regularly. I had maybe 5 out of 50 that had 7-11 items, the rest were 14+

Hey! As I remember it's a vanilla air drop loot. Try using other loot plugins to change it's loot, maybe FancyDrop / BetterLoot will help u

Its easy you just use FancyDrop plug and limit the amount of airdrops/amount of containers/amount in container. You say you cant cant handle the relatively simple adjustments in betterloot plugin to reduce the amount available in airdrops/Helicrate/cargo ship/ loot barrels and containers so you will have to find another way, As I dont play on vanilla (and have no interest in it) I dont really know how much they drop, You are using simple loot (which looks like more work than betterloot) you could also try Lootplus ,
I dont use the rarity in betterloot for more than half a dozen items which are high tier such as M249, Targetting computer, Auto turret, CCCTV and L96 Rifle,  The rest I reduce/remove from items list in DATA folder betterloot.lootlist.