Easy salvage:
Blow the legs off a mech, rather then the torso. Or, better yet, use a head shot.
Easy head shots:
Salvage a “Clan Targeting Computer” and equip it on your mech. Then target a mech’s head and fire a large pulse for a one hit head shot kill.
Easy kills:
Blow off one leg of a mech. Since a mech’s legs are much weaker then the torso, it makes killing enemy mechs much easier.
Sniping:
With ER Large Lasers, your mech can be a very effective sniper, especially on targets with patrol orders. Use Zoom mode and fire. You will not get any one hit kills, but can get a few hits in.
Safe ammo storage:
Put your ammunition on the arms when you build a mech. Normally, when your arm gets blown off, the items in it are also gone. However, this is not the case for ammunition.
Best configuration:
Select the chassis Daishi. Un-quip everything (including Double Heat Sinks, etc.). Put 1 Er Laser (L) Clan in the head, 2 Er Laser (L) Clan in the center torso, 9 Er Laser (L) Clan and 1 Er Laser (M) Clan in the left torso, 2 Heavy laser (M) Clan and 1 Laser (S) in the right torso, 2 jump jets in each leg, and in the right/left arm you can put anything (ammunition, equipment, etc.). If you stay in the water on The Road to Madre, you will not be shut down as easily from heat.
Cool down quickly:
If there is deep water on the map and you find yourself badly overheated, move towards it. The water will bleed off the excess heat. More importantly, you can stay in the water and use it as a heat sink so you can fire your weapons more frequently.
Heatsinks:
Mechs generate a lot of heat both internally and by firing weapons. The heat must be dissipated by heatsinks. The default heatsinks are not very efficient. The Clans have double heatsinks which are good. Inner Sphere copies of the double heatsinks use up three critical mounting points, making them less efficient than the Clan version. You cannot mix different types of heatsinks on a single mech. You must salvage enough of the Clan double heatsinks to outfit the four mechs you use. The result is more robust mechs that are able to utilize more of their firepower.
Unlimited salvage glitch:
Use the following trick to salvage the same mech repeatedly. Save the game immediately after you finish collecting your salvage after a mission. Load the game. When the game is reloaded, the items will be back again for you to salvage.