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2 heavy mortars or 1 HM+1 hurricane or 2 hellbores or 2 cerbs or 1 HM+1cerb
2 pulses
3 core primaries
2 flaks
4 solaris gatlings
Depends on what you want exactly. At long range you use the 2 pulses, heavy mortars and a hurricane. At closer range you use core prims and hellbores. Solarises for snubs and gunboats. Hurricanes are better the bigger the fight, and are always going to force the enemy to pay attention to them which can relieve pressure off of you. Downside is that snubs who do pay attention will just CD them, but you'd be surprised how often they end up working well regardless of easy counters on paper. Hellbores are arguably the best all-round at duels and groups but lack the range of HMs which is why sometimes others can outrange you. HMs are good against everything. Cerberuses are preventive measure against other light battleships and can give you the chase advantage.
Hellbores are pretty unnecessary on the Mako, despite being popularly used on it. The Mako has a light core, with an extra primary slot -- its longrange is more than adequately covered by its primaries.
Its heavies should either be:
2x Cerberus to prevent people from rushing into you, or to allow you to rush into them
1x Cerberus for the same purpose, + 1x lightning or reaper missile for reliable, unavoidable damage against battlecruisers and light battleships
1x Cerberus + 1x Heavy Mortar for longrange capability
The vast majority of the time, you will be better off simply using your 5 primaries.
As for your secondaries, I suggest 2x flaks and 5x solaris. 5 core secondaries will be too slow to provide an adequate defense against snubs, with not enough guns to provide an adequate defense against gunboats or cruisers. The Mako is small enough for 5x solaris to provide an adequate defense against snubs.
I personally prefer using straight up 5x core primaries, however if you prefer to mix in 2x pulses, then you may want to supplement your lost primaries by using 1x Cerberus + 1x Hellbore.
1xHM
1xReaper
2xPulse
3xPrimary
2xFlak
the rest Secondaries
I've had good success vs. cruiser and BC with this loadout, but I struggle with BSes. I'm tempted to switch out the Reaper, but the Hurricane is expensive to use and consumes more power.
My BS now has a Cloaking Device, so no more cms.
I'm wondering if I should just go with a full anti-BS loadout: HM, Hurricane, 5 Primaries (since 2 Pulse don't put much of a dent into a BS shield), 2 Flak and the rest Secondaries.