Neutron beams ARE great, if you are patient enough to use them correctly, i.e.fully charged. However, they cannot be spammed in "reloaded - minimal aim charging" state worth a damn.
For a surprisingly potent change try Proton Cannon, or equivalemt level Mruath Electo-Bolts, at any range where the fan spread of the unaimed, spammed broadside is a little less than the arc covered by the length of the target vessel. Spam the fire as fast as you can teitch your finger. You can achieve damage rates well beyond what the nominal DPS of those weapons says. I have absolutely whithered Greel and Viriax dreadnaughts in moments with a small ship slipped into a spot near the nose or tail of the whale where not all the DN broadside can bear. I mean, from pristine side to gone in 10 sec or less of furious spam fire.
Doesn't work quite so well for Hammerhead, but possible. Just not enough tubes. Also, a Level 5 or 6 frigate class taking down a Level 6 dreadnaught will take a bit longer, and will probably have to flip sides 2-3 times.
Ramming Shields are a wonderful aid for small ships taking down big ones. Get in close where not all of the big guys broadside will bear. Then, whenever you have to flip shield sides, or perhaps just when you firing finger gets tired, do your repositioning by scraping along the large ship's hull with your deflector on. This can take off as much as ~25% of his defenses by itself.
Sometimes you can find a projection on a big hull that you can just tuck your nose into. Then you just alternate between ramming deflector ON, and broadside spamming unaimed across the ~2m gap between ships while the R-Def recharges. Rince and repeat.
For anti-fighter weaps other than lasers, Ion Turrets do just fine when combined with Flak secondaries, or even better , EMP Flak. The EMP Flak bubble isn't quite as good as Flak against missiles, however, so I usually wait to install EMP Flak until I have Deflection Absorbtion installed.
I love the IDEA of the repair bot, and I often buy it just because it is cool. However, the truth is that well over 75% of damage is always Hull Plating, followed by Power Core, both of which the robot doesn't fix. Further, repairs are cheap relative to either mission payoffs or typical White/Green cargo sell down returns. So the practical thing to do is pay for ALL repairs every time you port, and save that precious component slot for something else (like the awesome, and expensive, Deflection Absorber mentioned above.)
Fault Tracker is a must have, especially for transponder mining tipoffs of mining in the later game. The FT assisted take on those can easily fill even a maximun cargo bay (well, maybe not on Deep Horizon or McKinley). However, there is no need to keep the Fault Tracker mounted All The Time. Discipline yourself to separate your mining runs from your merc and other runs, and swap it out for another combat enhancing subsystem.
As an endgame ship, when properly decked out, the Minotaur is AWESOME. Easily a match for any dreadnaught+supports you may encounter.
Note that it is important to take note of the arrangement of turrets, and how much they complement and combine with each other, as well as just the number. The biggest fault of the generally delightful Barracuda is not so much the light broadside (which the nimbleness largely makes up for), but rather the somewhat awkward turret arrangement (good for being chased, though.) All of the dreadnaughts suffer a bit from this, at least to the extent that the flat number of turrets is misleading as to how man of them can bear in the most importan directions. Minotaur's turret placement is excellent, as is Hellion, Sturville, and, to a lesser extent Radovich. I don't have much experience with Damocles, but it's turret placement seems pretty good. Of course, the Hammerhead's turret placement is wonderful...but there ARE only 2 of them.
