The torpedoes in Privateer seem to work on a different principle. In fact, we don't actually know if they'd be able to do anything against a capship bigger than the Kamekhs we encounter in Privateer. So, for all we know, they could be nothing more than glorified dumbfires.
Anyway, at this point it would be fairly easy for us to rig up a torpedo dumb-firing option (we're literally talking about ten minutes of work, though it would have to be done for every mission separately, which would take... a little longer). We won't do it, however - it wouldn't make sense to only give the player this option in some missions and not in others (and this would be a necessity - after all, we can't very well provide this option in capship missions). In addition, allowing this would mean letting you all in on one of Prophecy's dirty little secrets - that missiles always have missile lock
. If I force the game to fire a torpedo, it won't actually fly straight as a dumbfire, but instead it will turn towards a locked target. I seem to recall that in some WC games, you could fire missiles with only a partial lock, in which case they would actually act as though they weren't properly locked on - that's not the case in Prophecy, however. The reason Prophecy doesn't let you fire a missile before you acquire lock is because the missile already
has acquired lock. So, as you can see, we really can't let you fire torpedoes whenever you feel like it, that would be simply unfair
.
As for using the Sabre in the gauntlet... I must say, I too would love to know how you're actually supposed to fly this ungainly creature in the gauntlets
. Sadly, it's one of those ships that get the short end of the stick when it comes to scaling fighters properly - it was a powerful ship in WC2, but now it's got a lot in common with the Bearcat. Still, it's not completely useless... it's a better fighter than the Gladius, certainly, and in its fighter loadout (which you don't see in the sim, because the sim only allows us one loadout per ship - so we chose to make the Sabre useful in the capship missions by giving it the bomber loadout), it actually carries quite a lot of ordnance. I don't feel quite as comfortable in it as I do in the Rapier, but it's still a very powerful ship.