Are there any useful secondaries in the game?

[Kamiyama]

Even hard to get alien secondaries?

The missiles suck. They do next to no damage and you run out.
You have to be up close for the mines to work, and that exposes you to 20 round leviathan broadsides.
Flak is useless.

Right now I think EMP flak as the most useful in the game, and that's only effective at slowing down fighters for your turrets.

Are there any good anti-capital secondaries in the game? Like a secondary beam weapon maybe?

[mcqueen]

Mines. Probably more useful to fast and manoeverable type player ships. Drop a few in the path of a cap ship then be ready to attack when they impact...before the enemy shields can recover.

[ArtificialQT]

I love my HS Missiles.

[Kamiyama]

If they add new weapons to the game, I would love a secondary beam weapon, even if it had a long recharge (like once every 5 or 10 seconds or some such).

[Ottomic]

I have a blast with EMP flak. Dive into a group of bombers and watch them just float there while your turrets rip them to shreds. Regular flak is undoubtedly useful, but you don't really need it if you get some proper deflectors.

Rest I haven't really tried. Too much fun using EMP flak, sorry :P, but! I don't see a reason you shouldn't be able to throw some missiles to a capital if you get close from behind and broadside its butt, so to speak. That's where you want to approach capitals from.

[Puppet #7]

HS missles are great. You wanna use them to thin fighter waves or add that extra punch while youre burning down a capital.

Their damage scales pretty well to, especially once you fly ships with 3 or higher ports.

[Tman]

Mines. And pair them with the ramming deflector and you're golden. Just ram ships and while you're hugged up close to them, let lose mines. It's a great end-game strategy so might as well start early ;-)

[n=1]

Mines (especially at Mk6) are awesome for slaughtering capital ships especially if you have a lot of secondary ports. Mk6 Mines on my Minotaur makes short work of any dreadnaught. Only caveat is they're completely blind so you can actually get destroyed by your own mines.

EMP flak is great for taking down those pesky fighters/bombers. Sometimes I do wish cap ships at least had more than one secondary slot, so I could toggle between blowing up big ships or swatting small nuisances.

[Purple Sauce]

If you have problems with using the HS missles the problem lies with you, not the equipment.

[Kamiyama]

No the HS missiles hit for crap. The problem is with the missiles.

[Kamiyama]

Spitballs launched out an airlock would hit the enemy harder.

[ImHelping]

Mines are SUPER GREAT.

Dumbfires are not actually good despite their higher damage numbers. Especially against mission spawned ships which are tougher than naturally spawned ones (Kills a Dreadnaught with a bounty on it in 30 seconds. Needs a long drawn out slugfest with a "Low difficulty" mission spawned one).

I stubbornly used them instead of mines all the way through mk5. It's just not worth it. Mines are more practical, and more easily spammed both because you get more shots than Dumbfires.

My Manticore and Minotaur could literally fire over 100 mines, and have over 100 mines left.

Plus, some ships have awkward launch angles for them. Testing firing while stationary, My Manticore would launch them at a reasonable slight forward sland, making leading with them at least intuititive.

However my Tennhousen and Sturvile would launch them at a larger backwards angle, meaning you could miss a slow moving dreadnaught on a "sure thing" angle. Then there are Grell Dreads, which your dumbfires will harmlessly pass through the middle of.

TL;DR: Mines Rule, Dumbfires suck. So says a guy who used Dumbfires enough up to never miss with them up through MK5.

Other Secondaries and Vs fighters stuff.

The heat seeking missiles are actually pretty nice if you want to plop out something to help kill Gunship swarms faster, instead of something to kill Dreadnaughts faster. Later in the game, small fragile fighters will be less common than tougher gunship sized fighters.

Speaking of VS Fighters. When it comes to turrets, you can't afford to dedicate one to fighters only when you are on smaller ships and need the extra firepower to kill dreads faster, Destroyers with 8+ Broadsides, or anything with 7+ turrets you can spare one though.

Flak turrets are pretty garbage. Strong WHEN They hit, but most of the time they will fire, miss, and the explosion will miss as the slow moving gunnship reaches the opposite end of your ship. (They are more useful when manually aimed, but you won't have the time to spare manually aiming them later in the game when you are fighting a dozen gunships, 5 destroyers, and a dreadnaught on a Low Difficulty Mission).

Swarm turrets are strong vs fighters, but very slow firing (and later in the game, you WILL run out of ammo mid mission if you dont find ammo pickups).

If you want to set a turret as Anti-Fighter, on the top back of your ship put either a pulse Turrer or Beam turret (mining or particle), and set it to "fighters only" in the tactics menu. This did such a better job at softening up or killing off damaged fighters compared to when I was trying out a single flak or single swarm turret.

Scatter turrets are nice but their range is juuuuust too short to be useful without a Turret Extender component.

[ArtificialQT]

No, the HS Missiles are awesome.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by A.I.:

No, the HS Missiles are awesome.

HS missiles are cool, yes. I like them when I don't want something for straight up Dreadnaught killing assistance (which mines are better at).

But it's super satisying firing HS missiles when there are a bunch of gunships and/or frigates around. As much as I like mines, they won't chase after fighters.

Dumbfire missiles on the other hand, let me down so bad compared to everything else even when I got to the point I never missed with them.

[Laz3456]

Personally I found mines very effective against fighters buy flying away from them dumping a zig zag pattern of mine then turning round to fire a broadside or two to get them to chase me causing them to fly into the mines. Mines are also THE secondary weapon if you have a ship like the Vanguard because they cover your un-protected rear.

In the Sorcerer I just lay a huge mine field and then sit broadside on raining destruction while the poor fools wade through my minefield.

Cheers,