Azrapse: Thanks for a peer confirmation. I was starting to think that I was crazy because I was seeing that happening too, and nobody else seemed to notice it.

The AI always shoots torpedoes towards freighter-class ships or bigger, never smaller. And only once per attack run. They don't release two torpedoes or more while approaching. Instead they lock their targets at the maximum distance available, release one torpedo, then get closer to attack with their lasers.
When they are too close, they break off, get some good distance, and face their targets again, releasing another torpedo. Repeat.

Making the AI shoot torpedoes at fighters could seriously affect balance for most missions, as much as making the AI release more than one torpedo per attack run would.

I do agree we could add some extra intelligence to the AI in regards to using their warheads, but we must be careful to make sure it doesn't affect the original missions, only new modes like skirmishes, multiplayer, campaigns, etc.

I will use an example.
Imagine you need to protect a corvette from 3 incoming TIE Bombers on your X-wing, that appear at 10 km from it, and about the same distance from you.
When they approach the corvette and are at 6 km from it, they will release 3 torpedoes, 1 each.
With some luck, and master use of your ELS settings, you manage to close your distance to them on time to destroy one torpedo with your lasers and then engage the TIE Bombers, perhaps killing one or two in a tense dogfight, where only one of them sneaks past you and starts another attack run on the corvette, releasing another torpedo.
A corvette explodes with 6 torpedoes, so the player performance described above would be sufficient to make it survive, since the corvette took perhaps 4-5 torpedoes before all TIE Bombers were destroyed.
The player would end quite stressed up and tense, but also very much excited by the dangerous situation and feeling good with himself for having managed to protect the corvette.

Now, think what would happen if the TIE Bombers were actually smarter and all of them released 12 torpedoes as soon as they had a target lock on the corvette, as real players would do. There would be 36 torpedoes coming towards the corvette, and there wouldn't be anything the player could do about it. Not even sending 6 X-Wings would prevent that from happening. Not even by reducing the amount of bombers to half or to just one. Sure the player could blow up a couple torpedoes in the way there, but probably not enough to make a difference.

Many missions, both in X-Wing and in TIE Fighter, involve many flight groups of ships being sent to destroy one single capital ship or two, that you need to protect, by rushing here and there in the battlefield and taking care of the bombers before they deal too much damage. Those missions feel epic and challenging, but they really are balanced and not by chance, but because the AI is intentionally held back with artificial limitations such as those.

You end killing tens of ships and feeling like an ace in those missions, while the reality is that those ships are basically fighting with a hand tied behind their backs, so to speak.

That is why I think X-Wing and TIE Fighter could work in multiplayer as long as the multiplayer is coop only, and not versus. The experience is much different when you face perfectly balanced and choreographed AI rivals, than when you face cutthroat human players.
In my opinion, XvT experienced worse sales, and was mostly considered one of the worst in the whole series, because of that.
The engine was an improved version of that in TIE Fighter, the graphics were better, the sounds were better, the mission designers where the same people. Then what failed?
The game wasn't the same at all with human rivals.

I think a little bit of it would happen in this one, if the AI would be much more "logical".

countbuggula: So maybe it might be worth it to look into implementing both versions (eventually?) and giving players the choice. AI uses less torpedoes, but ships can't use countermeasures, or AI uses lots of torpedoes but ships can shoot them down. Might keep things relatively balanced, because the player still has the advantage of being able to dumbfire missiles to avoid the counter-battery fire.

Azrapse: Certainly, there was an arms race from TIE Fighter to XWA, in regards to the warhead gameplay. While in X-Wing and TIE Fighter they behave basically the same, in XvT they added so many more ways to be shot down by a missile that they had to add something to counter that. The countermeasures were added to balance that out, then also capital ships shooting down incoming torpedoes.

Ironically, you barely see that kind of action in the original movies, or not at all. They were basically WWII combats in space, and torpedoes and missiles appear as little else than dumbfire projectiles.

We get to see the first real homing missile action in Attack of the Clones, between Jango Fett and Obi Wan over Geonosis, and even there it seemed to be such a rare event, because Kenobi had to improvise with the ship's spare parts and use them as chaff. He didn't have any kind of countermeasure system equipped. So homing warheads cannot be that usual in the galaxy.
Apart from those confusing missiles-that-actually-are-pods-filled-with-Buzzer-droids from Revenge of the Sith, the other time we see missiles in action is during the attack on the Starkiller base, in The Force Awakens. The T-70 X-Wings there doesn't seem to have any kind of countermeasure system either, and they fall like flies. And that happens 30 years after Return of the Jedi (and X-Wing Alliance's timeframe).

My point is that X-Wing and TIE Fighter feel closer to the spirit of the movies by limiting the spamming of warheads (if we ignore the Missile Boat, that is the beginning of the missile spam, but at least it's restricted to the player ship doing it).

I think something was lost forever when fighters started blowing up each other several kilometers away, instead of dogfighting with their lasers.

Back to your suggestion, I think you make a valid point: either we leave the things as they were in the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, or we move into the XvT/XWA games handling of warheads. Maybe some toggleable option that lets you choose between WWII-style combat or Cold War-style combat.
Definitely, missions from X-Wing and TIE Fighter are balanced around the WWII style, while missions in XvT and XWA are balanced around the Cold War style, and this options should be locked in one or the other mode automatically. For other game modes, it could be left to the user's choice, or as part of a difficulty setting.

It doesn't make much impact in the programming, from my part. I am pretty sure capital ships could easily aim at and destroy all incoming warheads without sweating even at this point in the development if I go and add a couple lines of code here and there. It might be worth a try, just for the fun of it.

Azrapse: Even when we are a bit silent here, we are working non-stop on the game.
I am looking forward to uploading some new video to YouTube so that we can show the improvements since the previous one.

StyleWan: May I ask that is the iMuse system working well at this stage ? Thank you.

Azrapse: Well, in fact, the iMuse system was the first thing done thanks to Tarvis and Laserschwert.
You can play with one of the earliest web builds here (Open in a browser other than Chrome, and accept the Unity Plugin if needed). If you open the iMuse panel to the left, you can press the different theme buttons and event buttons to have the music seamlessly respond to that.

You can see it in action in the previous video we realeased in July. (Now the game looks much better than that)

StyleWan: Great ! iMuse is the soul of X-Wing and TIE Fighter !

StyleWan: Really really really great work !!!

May I ask that do you have a lower limit of the frame rate in mind ?

I really hope that I can play the game with a frame rate not lower than 60 fps all the time, with a moderate system.