Take out two side torsos while flanking and aiming for the legs (or just walking in and punching them from the sides for the knockdown) is the best way to salvage stuff before you get to Tactics 9.
Actually, does destroying the non-central torso parts do anything if the target has no weapons there? Unless you get the pilot to be KO'ed from the impacts, your'e better trying to destroy the head, the central torso, or the legs, as otherwise I believe the enemy unit will simply keep fighting non-stop. There are mods to simulate wound penalties and morale, but nothing in the vanilla, as usual.
The fact that people don't understand that facing works in the game is probably the reason why they think it gives a reasonable challenge of any kind.
The interface and graphics don't help either.
When you first start, the enemy are all recruits. That means they have 3 hit points. What you need to do then is to knock them down once and blow up both torsos and they are out for the count. You get a full 3 part salvage at the end of the mission. There are several ways to accomplish this:
1. Melee them from either side. You can usually knock them down if you time it right, so if you killed a torso with your melee attack, that is two wounds straight away. When they are down, do Called Shots to the remaining torso from that side.
2. Use stability damage to knock them down. This is harder as early enemies tend to be poorly armoured. Ironically, the higher their armour, the better chance for you to salvage things. Once they are down, shoot the torsos off.
3. Shoot the torsos off from the side and then Precise Shot the more damaged leg. You'd want to go with noon-spread weapons for this.
Note that all damage transfers, so if you are going to hit a side torso with only 10 structure left with a med laser, make sure the CT has at least 16 structure/armour left or it will blow. If it has less, use something else (LRM5 is good if you only need to remove 1-4 structure).
I killed Grim Sybil (who is a Defender with 4hp) by basically surrounding her 'mech with mine and beating her into the ground with melee attacks. It takes 3 melee attacks to knock down her Quickdraw, and my Blackjack was waiting for her to hit the ground before unloading two LB2-X into her head. Then, it was time to remove her torsos and her was dead. At the end of that mission, I got both the Shadowhawk and the Quickdraw (lucky randoms picked up the other two pieces of the Hawk).
Do NOT do this with that Victoria bitch. She is scripted to ignore Called Shots to the head (i.e., they never connect). Just nail both her legs instead.
