I’m not sure if this is a regression from when targeting was recently fixed or if it just got missed from the start, but if you have omnidirectional secondary weapons and a selected target, the secondaries will only fire at the target, regardless of factors such as distance or closer targets. I have yet to check this with limited fire arc secondaries, but I expect similar behavior. Primary weapons either autoselect the closest hostile target in range under these conditions or fire straight ahead if there are none.
Does this happen with linked-fire weapons (e.g., the Minotaur's omni)?
Yes it does, noticed it in the last beta, currently using the minotaur. I was tracking a Ventari destroyer that was about 200 ls away and some Sung patrol came by. They decided to use me for target practice. My secondary TEV9 kept firing in the direction of the Ventari that was 200 ls away, until I finally targeted one of the sung fighters that then got instantly destroyed. They were a bit difficult to hit with the Howitzer....
I was thinking of making a mod that played around with this, so this is inconvenient.
Additionally, when a fixed weapon is set to secondary or any linked-fire option other than 'always, it only fires if an enemy or the target is in a very narrow arc. At least it seems to correctly take relative motion into account, but it's overly conservative considering the target could be accelerating.
Fixed in 1.8 Beta 5. Thank you!