Quint UAC/2s augmented by a secondary battery of ++dmg MLas only gets you around 455 damage. Quint UAC/5s alone manage 450.
Gents,
If you haven't tried a Marauder with 3 UAC2's and two to 4 medium lasers, you haven't seen the most broken head shot machine ever invented.
Honestly I don't bother with Medium lasers on the Annhilator or the Marauder. There really is no need. My back up is a pair of Small Lasers on the Marauder and none for the Annhilator. You just usually eat away the armor or shoot off the head before anything becomes a threat to get in medium range with 3-5 Ultra-2s. I just jack up the Annhilator's front armor, put enough on the back to take a couple medium lasers. It is all AC/2, a massive amount of ammo, a mortar, and a couple jump jets for that extra maneuverability. The Marauder is just 3 Ultras and several tons of ammo with jets. Marauders are pretty much all you need when you have high gunnery and tactics skill.
Knock down + CT called shots would routinely kill assault mechs in one round for me...
You can still do it, but it overall has less of a chance of happening in one volley from one mech when compared to ACs. Environmental conditions in lunar or volcanic drastically reduce the effectiveness of your heat sinks and ACs and Gauss come out ahead in those environments because there is little, if any, environments to duck into cover. Missile weapons are more likely to cause collateral damage which I want to avoid in order to create more salvage.
Got my mortar last night. No clue what I'm going to put it on.
Anything you can. fit it on and have a few medium lasers in reserve. I had a Griffin that had 3 Medium lasers and a Mortar. It would spot and wait for the AI bunch up and then launch the mortar. Usually that would create holes in their rear armor and would flatten light mechs to the point all that remained was mop up duty.
I fought an Archer today. Went back to my original game and had one spawn on the mission- the 2S variant. Man, that thing was painful to fight (the heaviest mech I have is a Thunderbolt).
Archer's are quite a bit more painful than LRM Jagers or Thunderbolts. If I find one, I go out of my way to kill it as quickly as possible.
Last night I finally got my first Annihilator out of the shop last night. Put in an AC10, UAC10, LBX10, and an AC5. First shot it gets, I head cap a hunchback. Second shot I take is an aimed shot at the center torso of a thunderbolt. Head capped it too!
Kind of disappointed to find it in a store though. Seems like all my upgrades come out of the store in spite of having salvage set to generous and cash set to stingy. Warhammer, Annihilator, Atlas II, Marauder, and Archer all came from the store. The first 3 were before I ever saw one on the battlefield.
I am starting to wonder if my settings got reversed somehow. Salvage rewards don't seem much more than normal and I'm getting oddly high payouts. Any way to verify it?
The majority of good stuff in the game is going to be store bought now. There is not that much reason, if any at all, to salvage anymore unless you are going for goals in career mode or certain chassis. On the current careers mode I am in I took cash payouts over salvage. You will still get other mechs slowly and I got a single gifted mech, an Assassin in the most current career mode. I wasn't able to obtain that many COIL weapons in the last play through. I have a a few of them this go around and the Assassin is the MVP with a single mounted Large COIL. If I don't vaporize a light mech or leg a medium in open terrain it is a shock.
I've fought P-Hawks twice now.
Those things are mean.
The AI seems to use them fairly effectively. 2 of them served me well for a bit on my last play through. I haven't obtained one in this play through. Once I do though I'm going to see how dastardly a couple of coil weapons on one mech can be.