Maybe it's just for being on an ice planet but the laser cannon feels good against bots. It's decent for taking out gunships (aim for the thrusters, most medium pen can damage them), okay for medium-sized bots. No stagger but gives you a lot of time to find the skull. If you can find the visor hurtbox on a Hulk you can even take them out. I do recommend making sure someone has anti-tank weaponry, although I've been pairing this with an airstrike/110 rockets/500 bomb combo so I have anti-armor to drop.
Mostly it's just nice having one weapon that feels good and fun against bots because where I've been struggling is just... nothing feels good. Not that the level 7 missions are too hard but it's just felt like a slog to deal with medium bots since I am not a quick scoping kind of person, so everything felt like it took too much ammo to deal with.
With bugs there's no problem because the answer is Arc Blitzer. Always Arc Blitzer. They still haven't fixed the occasional misfire bug and it still cleans house.