You "should" have:
1 bot for getting 1-2 beacons at the start of the game. This is enough to put you in a position to compete for "top 3 beacons" for getting more silver, as long as you take a few more beacons during the game. This bot has to run at around 60 to keep up, or have movement abilities like dashes or multiple jumps.
2-3 bots for your preferred playstyle, ideally they'd be 2 bots that are great for fighting on beacons like ravanas or falcons or something similar. Thunders and Punisher T's are the best cheap weapons for this, Avengers are also good but cost gold.
0-1 healer bots. There's a lot of honour and silver to be had from healer bots, especially for low damage hangars. They're also great for your team and for practicing battlefield awareness.
0-1 bots for fighting titans. The selection here isn't huge and fighting titans with normal bots is more of a luxury choice, but an option could be a bot that at least can stay on the field while titans are out, like the stalker, loki or pursuer. If you can't fight enemy titans with your normal bots you should either be protecting friendly titans or taking beacons in the titan-period of the game.
In gold league there's a few fujins around that can make it seem like energy weapons are a big deal. They are, but Fujins aren't. Upgrade your existing punishers or thunders to level 11-12 and you can simply blast through fujin shields. Long range rockets are very uncommon as of late, since their damage output is very low and the top bots are very fast, hard to hit and prefer close range weapons, giving you very little opportunity to use them.
So by weapon type instead:
1-2 huge burst setups (storms, glaciers, thunders) that deal damage in <5 seconds. That's about the amount of time you'll have to hurt a ao jun or leech properly, and you want them to die in that time.
1-2 high steady damage setups for close-medium range (tasers, atomizers, igniters). These are for Ravanas, where you'll need to toggle-fire for long periods. The huge burst weapons suffer a bit here, since a decent pilot can use the ability to avoid a lot of damage from them.
1-2 strong accuracy mid range setups (atomizers, tazers, pulsars, marquesses) for shooting phantoms.
0-1 lockdown setup, to help manage titans and rushing bots. These are expensive and more of a tech choice, but they're very useful.
0-1 corrosion setups, for dealing with heavy resistance such as fenrirs, falcons, blitzes and non-arthur titans.
In general you should shift your weapons toward closer range fights and high damage. This will earn you more money and in general most of the fighting takes place in close quarters.
You should avoid:
Trebuchets, ballistas, arbalests - these are very weak.
Fluxes, gekkos - these are only effective when maxed out, which you don't have the resources for, and even then they're not great.
Tulumbas, Pins - these are also only effective when maxed, but it's cheaper to do so than the above. It's however very hard to time the burst damage on these to get good return from them.
Hydras, Chimaeras, Spirals - TDM only and require heavy investments to even be decent. They're a tech choice, not a money maker.
Vortexes, Aphids, Thermites - These are strong if invested in, but they're really hard to hit well with. If you like the playstyle you might want to get aphids now and start practicing though.
Tempests, Molots, Molot Ts - These are.. ok, but they are very specific as to at which range they're actually better than the Punisher versions, and not a lot of fighting happens at those ranges.
Zeus - This is just not a good weapon.
Just keep in mind that these suggestions are just that, suggestions, and they're based on being effective and dealing a lot of damage, which is what I like. If you like sniping or laser guns or homing rockets, you do you. Point of the game is to have fun and do what you like.
