How to use secondary guns in World of Warships

Secondary guns, or (to use World of Warships’ official terminology) “secondary armament,” is a blanket term for any guns other than your primary batteries. As with your main guns, secondaries come in all types and calibers, and they’re an important consideration when choosing the ship you want to take into battle.

You know how to fire your main guns, but what about your secondaries? Most players will let the game take full control, allowing their secondaries to fire automatically at whatever ship is closest. But since secondaries can have a measurable effect on the outcome of a fight, any good captain should know how to use secondary guns in World of Warships.

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How secondary armaments work

Your secondary battery guns will automatically shoot at any ships within their firing range. Each secondary gun fires independently at the closest target in range, so your secondaries can shoot at multiple targets simultaneously.

Interestingly, secondary fire is modeled using a simplified ballistics system to the one that affects your primary battery. There are other quirks to how secondaries are modeled in WoWs that are different from your primaries.

For secondary guns, weapon characters like caliber and dispersion do influence the effectiveness. However, all secondary guns on a ship have the same maximum firing range.

Also, all secondary anti-ship batteries fire HE shells exclusively, except for submarine secondary guns, which fire SAP shells.

Can I control my secondary guns manually?

No, you can’t manually control your secondary guns in World of Warships.

You can, however, command your gunnery officer to select a priority target. Any secondary guns in range will focus their fire on your selected target.

How to set a priority target for your secondaries

You can set the priority target by holding CTRL and left clicking on the target ship.

The Manual Secondary Battery Aiming skill

The Manual Secondary Battery Aiming commander skill also lets you set a specific target for your secondary armament. This skill works a bit differently from the priority targeting described above. You still pick a target by holding CTRL and left clicking on your target, but a few special effects are activated when you use this skill:

• Base reload time and dispersion are reduced by 10%
• Dispersion is gradually reduced over the first 10 seconds of firing, up to 32.5% reduction.
• Dispersion continues to reduce for the following 35 seconds, up to 55% reduction.

AA guns are a particularly important secondary battery type that has its own rules. Here’s a guide on how to turn off AA in World of Warships (and why you would want to).

Assigning a priority target to your secondary guns is one of the most underappreciated features in World of Warships. Yes, your secondaries will fire on their own, but you can be much more efficient by forcing them to focus down a single target. Even if you don’t have a commander with the Manual Secondary Battery Aiming skill, priority targeting is something worth practicing until it becomes second nature.