In Star Wars lore there seems to be two dominant sorts of missiles, the proton torpedo and the concussion missile. The following text will deal with how I see it best to implement these into the game staying true to lore but not making game play impossible.

The proton torpedo is known to most as the blue glowy things Luke uses to bust up the first death star. But having read a few books in the x-wing and Han Solo series I understand that they have a more widespread use. First of all, these are guided missiles. You lock onto a target, launch the missiles and hope they hit. They are”fire and forget” weapons, meaning you don’t need to keep track of your target ones your missile has been deployed. Shoot and turn back home, so to speak. These torpedoes seem to work both in space and in atmosphere and are capable of hitting almost any target. So if you want to bust up a tank or just a little imperial shuttle, the”protons” are a good choice. As for the tracking system, i.e. the way you lock your target, I think it should wary depending on target and weapon platform. In BF2 you have three basic ways of doing this. The Air-To-Air missiles, the TV-missiles in choppers and the TV-missiles in the planes. So depending on what you fly, if you’re a pilot or gunner, if are in space or atmosphere and so on, you will have different ways of using missiles. Flying a craft with gunner, you find that any way would do fine. However, if flying an x-wing, switching to TV missile and the guiding your missile to its target, might prove a bit hard, leaving your craft out of control and maybe causing you to slam into something big and hard.

Here the lore messes things up even more then practical game play issues! In the death star trench, you see pilots getting out some sort of binocular/computer/goggles targeting thingy. This seems to limit their view, but not totally making them blind to what’s happening around them. It also seems to take forever to actually get a lock on the target. Here the target is small and does not stand out all that much, so maybe using this system to lock onto a tank or even a big capital ship would prove a bit faster. This is the way we see pilots using the guiding system in the movies, but in books it seems a bit more straight forward. In the X-wing books, the pilots lock onto TIEs pretty quick, and never is the binocular/computer/goggle thing mentioned. So here are two ways I would deal with it. First: Having the scope for any target. This would make it hard to get a lock onto a fighter, promoting lasers and giving everything that warm cozy star wars feeling. Second: using the scope thingy for anything but fighters. Fighters would be locked using a similar locking system to that of the Air-To-Air missiles on the jets in BF2.
One thing that needs close attention is the matter of how good the torpedoes actually track their target. Hitting a tank or a huge space cruiser should be dead easy, but then dealing with fighters, it’s a different story. The way I see it, a TIE for instance, should have no problems out-turning a proton torpedo. Hitting a fighter turning hard would not work with torpedoes.

So, what would happen if you ended up at the business end of a proton torpedo? Well if you are in a fighter, small shuttle or even a medium size tank, you’re pretty much dead. If the torpedoes hit something larger, like capitol ships, it’s a different matter. In one of the Han Solo books, a handful of Y-wings takes down the shields of a ship about the size a Corellian corvette, using their torpedoes. I think that gives a good clue on how destructive they ought to be.

On now to those concussion missiles! These things are really not designed to use as anything else than “air-to-air” missiles. I’m sure if you shoot one into a storm trooper, he will be in all sorts of pain and trouble, but their main use is in “air-to-air” combat. I’m guessing these things can be fitted to most fighters, maybe except for the TIE-fighter. However they are to be seen as more or less standard in the A-wing and often used on the TIE-interceptor. The Millennium falcon also has two launchers mounted and I would even argue that Calrissian uses them to hit the reactor of the second death star. Not much is mentioned about their tracking system but as I see it there is only two options for it in-game. One possibility being they are fire and forget weapons like the protons torpedoes, or the require a constant lock on the target in order to hit. In the first case, this would mean you lock your opponent and fire. Then the missile takes care of the rest, hopefully hitting its target. In the second case, the pilot deploying the missile will need to keep the target locked even as the missile heads out for the kill. This is the way I would like it, but that’s just me. So what’s the damage? I think Han Solo blasts a few TIEs with just one hit, at least in the books, but maybe that’s giving them a bit too much power. Any way something like one or two hits(I’d say one, the tie is a low budget fighter) to take down a TIE, and maybe two or three for a shielded fighter seems fair to me.

Thanks again for your time!