I'm a little surprised this has never been posted since this seems to be the obvious build before and after the quirk pass. The Awesomes are surprisingly tanky if you run with STD engines, so I'm a little surprised by all of the XL builds. With the 25% decrease in heat and cooldown, you can fire the PPCs in pairs for a fairly long time, which is devastating once you get a good rhythm going. The MLas is really only there because you're left with an extra slot, and so you can at least do something if a light gets within your minimum PPC range. An alternate version would be to move two PPCs to the Right Arm to be able to shoot up and down hills, though these are a bit lower than the torso mounts.
I took the chance during the latest 30% sale and bought the 8Q and 9M to finally master my beloved 8R. My built for the 8Q is nearly identical, ditching the medium laser (doesnt fit very well to 2x2 PPC cycles and a close up light kills you anyways) and went with 18/18 head armor (is that 12/18 intentional in your build?), 52/52 arm armor and 45/68 leg armor. Another option is to change the medium laser for TAG to gain some extra XP when your team has LRMs. It works out really well thanks to the massive quirks, just like you said... 5/5 from me!
I droped 2 heat sinks and the ml for 3 small pulse lasers. I found people will face hug you when they know you are a PPC build, especially those pesky little light mechs. This does a better job of solving the 90m dead spot than the med laser and making lights think twice about messing with you.(imo)
I'd strongly recommend 0/1 rear torso armor after the structure quirks. Tankier from behind than before, even after 99.9% frontloading.
Great build, although I forgo the lasers entirely and run 2 flamers in the arm so I can deal with those pesky facehuggers.
This is my version of the build. Got a small pulse instead of the medium. But apart from that it is quite the same.
I've seen 4xSNPPC being used a lot, not the regular PPC, I think most people forgot it existed with the buffed LPPC and super cooled SNPPC