So two new variants came to us from RecGuide 23. The first, the 01-X takes the original fluff of the movable LRM20s to heart and mounts the LRM20s in turrets. The pulse laser batteries are removed and replaced with an (as in singular) ERLL and a battery of medium lasers. The surprising change is an upgrade to the engine, pushing it to a 4/6 curve. This engine change allows for more heat sinks to be stored in the engine, meaning you don't need to find critical space for them. This allows for much better heat dissipation on this variant. The downside is that you lose 2 tons of LRM20 ammo.
I actually like this variant on paper. Better speed, better heat dissipation and an energy weapon that can match the LRMs rather than only being useful up close. It was abandoned because of the complexity of the turrets, but I would be perfectly fine if they had just removed the turrets and slipped in more ammo.
The 02-B is more of a variant of the 01 than it is the 02 and features the same larger engine as the -X variant, though it doesn't increase the heat sink count as much. The weight for the engine is paid for by reducing all ammo, and swapping the LPLs for ER versions. I don't like this variant as much as the 01-X. You're going to want to use the LRMs with the ERLLs and using all 4 at once just isn't feasible. 3 can work, and give you some redundancy if you start taking damage, but I think it would just annoy me after a while.
So kind of a mixed bag, but not a complete waste of time.