Working as intended. They secondaries were just never that good. They're sap secondaries, but they don't have any improved accuracy if I recall correctly. Watch some videos and do a bit of research on a ship next time to get the full story before you buy it. The armory says a lot of stuff that's debatable.

Accuracy needs a buff to make it a competitive alternative to other secondary focused BBs.

Currently Napoli is a superior secondary brawler.

Save some RB points and get the leg mod for C.Colo instead imo

SAP secondaries are pretty strong...if you can get a broadside, which the smoke should help you with. I've had games in Sicilia with 50-65k secondary damage, which I consider competent, if nowhere as good as what Schlieffen or Libertad can do. Of course, if you get a broadside you've kind of won anyway, as 16 15'' shells will still cripple people, so in a sense HE secondaries are just better because they keep you effective when your main battery wouldn't be.

For what it's worth, I like the Sicilia, but yeah don't expect a secondary monster, even with a full build. One thing to note though is that her AA is better than Colombo's, as it reaches out to 5.8 km instead of 4.6.

The Secondaries on Sicilia are a trap, they're a gimmick that WG seems to have been afraid of.

She does alot better when you spec her into the main battery and into the Consumables, she might work as a secondary hybrid build.

I am probably the one player who owns Sicilia and has no desire to obtain her TT sister and that things Ultimate Upgrade, i like Sicilia as she is. Mind you, the Secondaries will still punish something that gets close, sometimes, but they're not build-worthy.

Libertad secondaries deal the same alpha damage, are more accurate, have a faster reload, more pen and most importantly can set fires. On top of that Libertad gets an F-key that buffs its secondaries by a lot, a broken commander that buffs them even further and last but not least HE can't bounce as opposed to SAP. So on Decks where Sicilia secondaries would just bounce, Libertad has no issue of penetrating.

SAP secondaries sound interesting on Paper, but WG is so afraid of them, that they always make them very, very supbar to same tier ships with HE secondaries.

See the Libertad example above.

As one of the Top 10 Sicilia players on EU, who would love some good SAP secondary ship, i can tell you that it's certainly not Sicilia.

Just build it for main guns and drop CE for Furious and you will be fine. You will actively grief yourself when building for secondaries.

In classic WG fashion they tout the "enhanced" long range SAP secondaries but neglect to mention that they have standard dispersion which makes them nothing but pretty fireworks.

According to shiptool Sicilia is has the 6th highest effective secondary dpm among T10 BB, so its certainly not terrible. By raw DPM it ranks 3rd. Downside is SAP doesn't start fires, which is a large component of the damage for secondaries.

You miss the part where this 'marginal' improvement to penetration is enough to exceed several important breakpoints like 32 mm pen for your 127mm, and 38+40mm breakpoints for the 152mm guns, this is important cause now your guns pen most battleship hulls (and almost all cruisers) everywhere but the main belt.

Not to mention it has the nearly same hitting dpm on its guns as Libertad. Is lacking secondary range unfortunate? Yes, but you've also got smoke to close in with, and (as mentioned) you hit like a libertad when you get close.

(Also i'd very much argue that your 127mm guns going from 21mm HE pen to 36mm SAP pen is far from marginal)

they're very limited and only work well in specific scenarios (i.e. close range drive-bys against dds/cruisers).

the shell volume is good, but accuracy is meh, so a lot of times just like throwing mud and seeing what sticks.

when they actually hit though, they hit. One shell from the big secondaries can do 5k to a dd, which is really funny. A quick drive-by against a normal 30mm cruiser and you'll get 30-40k secondary damage in like 20 seconds.

close-range bow-in targets you do virtually no damage to, same if they are a BB with good side armor. a lot of people underestimate the superstructure pens you'll get from medium-long range though.

if you just want a feel, the secondaries feel around GK level, with much lower lows and much higher highs due to the nature of all-or-nothing sap damage.

"objectively" you should build for main guns and play like an AP colombo with better smokies and reload.

but if you're spending the RB for sicilia, going for the unique aspect of sap secondaries just makes more sense to me. Ships like iwami make more sense for main-gun build since they're more accessible and usually fill a void like credit farmer, but if you're going out of the way to dump 60k RB points, uniqueness is more important usually (shikishima crying in the corner).

if you want AP, colombo with legmod is more accurate, doesn't have the turret angle bug, and always has the broken sap in the back pocket if you at any point want to stop limiting yourself for whatever reason.

I've tried both, max secondaries vs. max guns (range mod + sansonetti proc for vertical dispersion cope), and the accuracy improvement is alright, but again, there are much better AP BBs.

Making the sap secondaries work feels much more rewarding usually, especially if we're taking the angle of "I purposefully restrict myself with off-meta/weaker ships to avoid seeming like a normie".

The dispersion for the secondary is normal for a t10. The dpm is very high and the reloads for the 152mm guns is compared with similar caliber secondaries on T10 fast while the reload of the 127mm guns is in comparison slow. The main gun dispersion is only like 2 or 3m wider than the average for T10 at 18km. The penetration of the SAP secondary is very good and better than all HE secondaries apart from the 234mm of Libertad.

Scilias secondaries work as intended against unarmoured and lightly armoured ships like DDs and CLs. They are not relevant for farming damage. You have 16 main battery guns for that. The secondary works as intended against destroyers and ships that try to get too close to you. Scilia is a side grade to Colombo which works better against DDs, worse against cruisers and slightly different against BBs. G. Verdi has the same playstyle imo.