I edited you post with my replies in BOLD

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions...

"Munchkin: One who, on being told that this is a game about politics and intrigue in 17th century Italy, asks to play a ninja."
— Andrew Rilstone

1. We plan on implementing some form of shields for rebel fighters in the future.

2. TIE fighter manueverability and speed capabilities are based off of lore.  Further tweaking may be necessary to ensure balance once shields have been implemented to the rebel craft, but that will involve testing, and most likely won't appear untill R2 or later.

3. We will be testing the implementation of lock-on missiles/torpedoes for a future release.

4. See 3.  Weapon strengths/weaknesses will be tweaked according to lore sources.

5. Due to engine limitations, sacrifices will have to be made for certain capital ships to allow boarding and interior access.  We will be testing our options concerning interiors, and will hopefully reach a good compromise for a future release.

6. Star Wars lore states that the B-wing carries varying weapons loadouts based on pilot prefferences, unfortunately this may not be entirely possible in the BF2142 engine.  We picked one of the lore accurate loadouts for R1m however, different weapons loadouts for different ships may be found on various maps in future releases.

7. If not already implemented, this feature has been tested and will most likely appear in future patches.

8. The TIE Bomber isn't anywhere near balanced with the B-Wing in Star Wars lore, and the team has decided to stay away from mirror balancing between sides as it can cause boring gameplay.  In answer to your requests:
       a) The TIE Bomber currently has 2 laser cannons verticaly opposed from each other on the center of the craft as per Star Wars lore.
       b) According to lore, the standard TIE Bomber configuration is a single seater, other variants may be implemented in future releases (same with the Y-Wing).
       c) As Un-Co noted, we tested a vertical bomb chute on the TIE Bomber but decided that forward firing torpedos were a more likely weapon loadout for space battles versus enemy capital ships.  Other loadouts may be present in future releases (possible loadouts include gravity bombs for ground maps, concussion missiles, etc.).
       d) See c).

9. This is largely dependent on '5.' but expect canon craft to be implemented before we begin work on EU vehicles such as the TIE Boarding Craft.

10. Our efforts will be directed towards movie-canon craft being implemented before begining work on EU vehicles.

11. Various performance tweaks will be made for upcomming releases based on balance and lore.  However, the A-Wing outperformed the TIE Interceptor according to lore sources.

12. Unfortunately engine limitations have prevented us from accomplishing this feature as of yet.  If we discover a work-around we will implement this feature.  No promises though as the BF engine can be very challenging to work with at times.

13. The Y-Wing's turret currently has the ability to switch between ion and laser fire by pressing the 'F' key.

14. Our ambitions for the depth of space gameplay our incredible, but these things take time to test, retest, implement, cause CTDS for no apparent reason, fix, retest, and finally be added to a release so please be patient and stay tuned.

Thanks for posting your opinions and we welcome feedback for every part of the mod as we're making it for you, the player.  Feel free to post your wants and desires for future features in the 'Wants List' forum.

WOW! That is a big list! Nice to see the replies from the devs though. What I like about the game so far is the attention to detail in everything to date. My experience so far with the space battles is one of a very good mix of lore and balance.  A lot of the dog fights are coming down to pilot experience as well as craft capability which I think is probably one of the best Star Wars ship combat games I have experienced in a long time.

of course everyone has expectations and I see a lot of posts like this one asking for different craft or changes to the current ones. Certainly there is always room for improvement in any game, yet I cant help thinking to myself that some are expecting too much. This is R1, I wasn't expecting perfection, the fact that you have managed to blow me away with it so far speaks volumes for both your teams efforts and what can be expected upon the final release.

Congratulations guys and keep up the good work!!

Bite my shiny metal Tie Fighter!