Lots of good suggestions here, but wanted to point out something here that I've easily forgotten.
Those sentient things build up resistance to damage types, so if you're wailing at it with a single weapon you might not be doing any damage after a certain point. You'll either want to swap to a different weapon that has a different damage type, or you need to switch to your operator mode and hit it with your beam. That'll clear off any built up resistances.