The true question is: do these weapons have enough advantage to justify to take them instead of LRM, SRM or medium laser? Rephrase: do all these weapons are equally useful that LRM, SRM or medium laser?
I will tell you why I think that LRM, SRM and M laser are more powerful than other weapons. It's not only because of damage by tons, like RealCadaver think, it's because of stability damage.
When you obtain the LRM 15 and 20, it's become really easy to make fall an enemy mech. Some people use the knockdown are their only weapon to win: they kill enemy pilot by that and that work because knockdown gives also an aim malus. That work and give a very good salvage.
But who said mech fall, said also free called shoot. There free called shoot are what make pinpoint damage pointless. I don't need pinpoint damage because I can choose the target I want. Damages by tons become very important because they allow me to destroy quicker the part I want to destroy. If I use an L laser to called shoot a CT, it will do only 40 damage. If I use 5 M laser, I will deal 125 damages. So, with 2 mech equip with SRM and M laser, you can destroy in one turn the CT of a mech knockdown, so destroy an enemy in one turn (often, only one mech is enough). That why LRM, SRM and M lasers are so powerful.
When I start to use this tactic, I really had the feeling to past in easy mod. Mission, when I need to "kill specific target than retreat" or "hold the position X turns" finished, will all enemies mech destroy and a lance almost intact in my side. I kill all enemies to the second to last mission with just some internal damage on my mech (I had one Higlander, one Battlemaster, one Black Knight and one Jaggermech). The last mission was a joke for me so much it was easy. I made missions with 5 skulls with a drop tons of 4 skull and that is still very easy.
When I compare with the time when I used all the weapon, I don't see a reason to change. Not because AC weapons, LL and PPC are useless. But because the others are far better.
I wish I could use all weapons in the game. I will like to do. But I am so used to optimize in games that it's hard to force myself to use something I consider bad. So it's why I want to LRM be nerfed, directly or indirectly.
I play with one LRM boat. All of my mechs always do some stability damage but the LRM boat has such an easy time of pushing stability bars to max that all they really need is just one source of heavy stab damage.
With a called shot to a core, an LRM 20 gets the shot that lands on the core and then each following missile gets 39% chance to land on the core if it hits in the first place. Random is random, though. If there were an LRM 1000, we could say you will very reliably get about 39% hits on the core after that first core hit but with 5, 10, 15 or 20 missiles per salvo, results are going to vary a lot more wildly with chance being as far from 100% as they are. Several larger weapons hitting at 90-95% is a much more reliable way to inflict heavy damage on a core. They aren't as damage/weight efficient, but they will absolutely kill parts faster.
So I don't use LRMs for damage unless a mech is in trouble and 70 LRMs will do the job. And I don't waste morale shots on them. I generally spread those two 15s and 20s across 2-3 mechs at at time, so that they're either getting knocked down or put in a position to get knocked down with follow-up attacks.
One of my favorite front-liner builds right now is KCs with double AC/10s (65-70 damage versions), 10-12 SRMs and jumpjets. But this is because my primary goal is shooting heads or all of the other things off for salvage. Knocking assaults down over and over again is a reliable but slow approach. I find it much more satisfying to target their heads from the flanks where if I miss, I don't land most of my shots on the core. Surprisingly often I get a lethal headshot on the first attempt or two. When, I don't, I'm doing heavy damage to arms/side-torsos, legs which I can work with if the headshots don't pan out. 10 SRMs at 90-95% to hit and 17% chance to hit the head do inflict pilot injuries quite regularly. So between that, the LRM spam causing knockdowns along with the regular stability damage, the sometimes immediate lethal headshots, I've got about 3 different ways to cripple mechs happening long before the pilot in a mech drink-mixer approach would get results. That approach does more reliably get healthy mechs from the pilot kills though, which is good if you want the most parts possible, bad if you want the most mechs possible (fewer other items means better odds to complete mechs for $).
mLasers are great. I generally pack enough ammo to get at least 10 shots and it's usually enough. When it's not, it's nice to at least have some energy in the mix, which is currently on my Atlas 2 exclusively. mLaser and SRM range is something of a sweet spot, I'll admit. Once you can target enemies from that far away, I find it's much easier to mitigate damage using jumpjets, evasion, defense gyros + taking advantage of terrain. It's why I don't use AC/20s as much as most people do. But once you have more than a couple the heat does build up quickly.
I like L Lasers for a bit more punch at longer ranges. The LRM boat is great for support as well as knockdowns but it's nice to have one other mech in the mix that's going to have an easier time of shooting out a right torso connected to some nasty weapons that one of my other mechs is about to get attacked with. Also, there's all those half and even quarter armor mechs you see regularly on base missions. L Lasers at 50 damage (+++) are great for popping heads off of those.
My Atlas 2 also runs mLasers and sLasers. The variety is very convenient for securing salvage from mechs that have cores and lots of other parts hanging by a thread.
But much of what my mechs are equipped for is salvage and avoiding excess damage. There are times when there's nothing better for the job than double AC/20s to the rear torso. Or an Atlas 2 distributing a combination of obscene stability damage AND focus fire on one part with quad PPC++es from potentially extreme ranges. Staying very far away and lobbing LRMs is just one way to do it and not the best way if you want to regularly complete 4 mechs per mission. But if I just wanted rapid killing-power, I'd probably adjust my mech build strategies again. Although I certainly pilot kill fast enough.
That said, I'm not likely to ever have a use for an AC/2 or an SRM2 on a King Crab. Those are weapons for mechs with tighter tonnage, maybe heat restrictions. Or an SRM2 might be handy for giving a grasshopper just a little bit of stability damage from the same range as its mLasers.
But there's no reason to try to find the ultimate weapon in this game. They balance along too many categories and so many have good synergies with each other or the mechs you put them on that ignoring most of them in favor of a couple isn't doing you any favors. Look at what the mech can do. Look at what weapons it can bring. Look for possibilities.
.
.png){kind=avatar}
