If you take out both legs you can salvage two mech parts.). I usually have a precision damage all laser or all laser + autocannons mech for when I want to go for a pilot kill (if you destroy the head of the mech you can salvage three mech parts instead of the one from a centre-torso kill. There's also autocannons which are high damage, lower heat and precise so the best of both worlds but they are heavy as shit so the trade-off is you'll have less weight to play with over all. What weapons you use on a mech is generally more about what each frame can take in terms of weapons and how much tonnage is available, and it's also good to have a variety of the high damage but spread out missiles versus the lower damage and high heat but precise lasers. Also light mechs generally don't have strong melee capabilities.ΔΆ) In general, not really. There's a new Target Acquisition mission type which they're supposedly good for because their one advantage is speed so they can cross territory quickly, but so far I haven't actually seen any of these in which a medium couldn't cover the ground in time and has better armour and firepower. Smaller mechs don't really have a purpose in this game, and the heavier the tonnage the better the mech is a general rule of thumb with some minor exceptions.