I'm gonna play with it tomorrow until I win a match, then move on to the Lexington.
The Ranger is could be good ship, but it has a few major drawbacks, the worst of which is that it is often paired against the premium Saipan, which is a T6 ship, but can field three groups of 4 T9 fighters, so unless it is a 4 CV game, which two guys who really know what they are doing you are screwed.
The next worst thing about it is long reload times on the planes. Other than that it is good, much better than Indi.
I have gotten secondary weapons kills, I even managed to ram someone with it.
I'm going to spend about 30K in free XP tomorrow to jump to Lex though because there is an easy challenge that pays out a few premium ships, but you need a T8 ship to do it.