Startup tips

[Judge_Omega]

Read the manual and the guide, they offer a wealth of information.
Recon mechs are not meant for slug outs, light mechs are vastly superior so you may want to have your jocks start out as green rather than as rookies. The guide explains how to do this.
Raise your first jocks leadership as high as possible before hiring anyone else.
Bring a titan or two built for soaking up damage with close/short ranged weapons and plenty of armor. Avoid large amounts of ammo near vital internals. Position them forward of the rest of your force. This allows your other titans to spec more for damage and can get by with skimping on the defense. (When battling the computer AI)
Specialize each jock in one particular weapon group, possibly choosing close combat as well.
Dont attack while you have heat levels above green unless you are exploiting a downed titan. Crouching offers dual benefits for ranged combat. Active scans can take a while with low scanning skills, you are probably better off just attacking. Setting the computer to play your rookies while you command your leader can greatly speed up the battle with minimal risk to true assets, press F3 in combat.
You can adjust the weight ratio to your favor before combat if you have real problems getting a team off the ground.