Playing the first 'special' mission. Managed to take out most of the opposition with rockets and sensor locks but I ran out of missiles. At the end I was up against a heavy mech with a lot of close range weapons so I tried death from above with two medium mechs. Bit of a disaster, managed to obliterate the heavy mech after two jumps but lost two legs on my mechs.

Does it get better with assault mechs? Just wanted to share my experience on flying kicks.

Death from above is always a desperation maneuver. With assault mechs you can do more damage but you still take some damage to legs and this can leave you vulnerable. There are leg mods you can you use to either increase DFA damage or reduce the damage you take when doing a DFA but they are not worth the extra weight. You can only do one or two DFA per battle and you may have many enemies, including some unexpected ones that show up later. Thus, you are usually better off using regular melee attacks if you run out of weapons to use.

The damage you do with melee attacks and death from above depends on the mech, with damage tending to increase with more tonnage, with some exceptions. There are some mechs that are particularly bad or good at melee. The best medium mechs for melee are Shadow Hawks.

Melee attacks are also risky because they do not produce much evasion so you may get hit more often by ranged fire from other mechs even if you succeed. They can be devastating with the right mech and build and situation and are useful for dumping excess heat. Just don't rely on them too much, especially death from above attacks. They are fun to do and can be useful but it depends on the situation.

Death from above is almost like the original boardgame the pc game is from.

If you`ve ever played it, it was a risk of falling and busting yourself more than the mech you`re attacking. The piloting skill of the pilot helps alleviates this- Imagine trying to direct a gigantic metallic tank down on top of something else at from high. In this regard, they have the mechanics spot on.

In other words, increase your pilot`s skill not the mech type... But there is still a risk.

I use it sometimes with heavy mechs against lighter mechs.
With heavy mechs it does a lot of damage (150+), and in time limited missions where you have just so many turns to do something it proved itself useful more than once.
If for example just one hostile mech stands between me and victory and time is running low, I stomp that mech flat by jumping on it ... instantly killing it and getting some inconsequential damage to the legs but ending the mission right there and collecting the bonus at the same time.

It's actually somewhat less useful than the TT version.

The TT version used the punch hit location table, which meant you had two 1-in-6 chances to get a head hit in, at the price of excessive leg damage.

The game uses the "regular" hit table, so you'll most likely end up hitting the torso or arms. As someone already mentioned, it's a desperation move, not a viable standard attack. Quite frequently, you're better off jumping behind the mech and unloading whatever you have into his weak back armor.

Very useful when you're piloting a ton of overheating heavy and assault mechs on a desert planet and a damn firestarter gets close to you. In other words, desperate times.

Look for Leg Mods (and + / ++ models) that helps reduce the DFA damage inflicted on your attacking Mech. It doesn't stop all damage, but does a good job to make that desperation move more viable.