Current AT weapons already have shaped charges to inject High velocity molten metal into the target with the goal of hitting something important. FS torpedoes will likely do something similar but followed by a burst of antimatter. The molten metal punches a hole in the hull which is then "filled" with antimatter that explodes, dealing massive internal damage. The extended lock time probably is calculating the optimal location and angle to direct this charge while simultaneously calibrating for whatever active and passive countermeasures are being used (these calibrations are likely ongoing until the moment it strikes the target). Also, if there is a local internal subsystem (coolant, water storage, bridge, magazines, etc.) it would be best to direct the explosion towards that as well to maximize damage to the target.
The problem with dumbfiring these torpedoes is that you might not squarely hit the target. As long as you don't miss completely you will do some shockwave damage but the impact/armor penetration damage would be affected by the angle of impact. Additionally, without taking the active armor into account the odds of randomly hitting an important sub-armor system becomes vanishingly small even if you do hit squarely.
That being said I would love to use Dumbfire torpedoes in pretty much any bomber mission in existence (Delenda Est is one of the few that is fairly enjoyable, but you don't primarily use torpedoes). You have to be 3 feet from the target to hit it anyway and nothing is more annoying than lumbering along in a bomber waiting for a target lock.
Good points---things I hadn't thought of--but the lore seems to contradict those notions (however much sense they might make in theory). IIRC--so I could be wrong here--the game repeatedly refers to most of the torpedoes as "bombs", and only rarely as "torpedoes".
But further, the shape of the torpedoes themselves--unless made larger for no practical reason whatsoever--are either flat (Cyclops) or dully round (Helios). Armor penetrators don't tend to work well when featuring a wide, dull, round head to punch through armor. Shaped charges (from the ones I've seen/my limited understanding of the principles) are either conical/pointy for the armor penetration aspect, or their intended use is for precise demolitions on unarmored (or lightly armored) targets. Further, when you shoot down a bomb well before it hits its target, it explodes exactly the same way--and with the same force--as it does when it hits its target dead-on. In fact, it's rather telling that these bombs hit their targets perfectly, yet the explosion is still fully spherical and evenly distributed. That's the opposite of a shaped charge or armor penetrating weapon.
Of course, it's all made rather moot by the fact that the ludicrously long aspect-lock and refire times for existing torpedoes makes bombers/torpedoes relatively impractical.
Gameplay-wise, WW2 era bombing dynamics are the most fun for FS-style gameplay and physics, and they aren't ridiculously boring/annoying/frustrating to use.
I actually went and learned some basic modding/tabling myself recently, and made a dumbfire torpedo weapon. While quite unpolished, the overall concept played out very well--they were fun to use and relatively effective while still being relatively balanced. It's like dive-bombing--you burn right for the target, releasing half-a-dozen torpedoes within a few seconds, aiming with your ship and skills, trying to get as close as possible to ensure a hit. They only do damage on impact, and shooting them down is just as easy under similar circumstances (unless the bomber is able to get really close). And while they do great damage against hull, they do poorly against subsystems; this is (in-universe-wise) because the torpedo essentially delivers a well-shaped nuclear blast (technically, three of them in a cascade) that is effectively a tight stream of intense nuclear fire/plasma/concussive force punching straight through the hull. As a result, the internal areas of the ship take severe damage in a long, narrow area, probably slicing through important stuff/power-lines, and making damage-control very difficult. Rather than blowing a wide, shallow crater into a ship's outer hull, it punches right through, long-and-narrow, with intense destruction. Thus, it does major hull damage but poor(er) subsystem damage (the drawback/difficulty not necessarily being so much in damage as difficulty in putting the torpedoes on target--assuming the ship isn't sitting still like an idiot and point-defense isn't slacking off, you're trying to launch a slow, non-maneuverable torpedo into a relatively small, possibly tucked-away area that is moving in multiple directions at a significant fraction of the torpedo's own speed).
Frankly, it just doesn't add up how little damage these massive, insanely-powerful "torpedoes" do in FS2. When three SGreens do more damage than a perfectly-delivered Helios "torpedo", there's a problem. SGreens are very small-scale beams that a Fenris cruiser can easily mount in a tiny space, while the Helios is an
anti-capital-ship antimatter bomb larger than some fighters! This is like a few old 5-inch guns with basic HE shells doing more damage (from much farther away) to a battleship than a modern, F-16-sized nuclear torpedo.
Like that, you're wasting around 50% of energy, and the rest is applied inefficiently. The best way would be to inject the antimatter into the target's hull, for it to detonate in the most vulnerable layer. Determining this would take a while of scanning, and it'd be different for each part of the ship.
Except that it A) can only lock onto subsystems (it can't lock on to a huge, flat patch of weak hull), B) doesn't do much damage at all--getting hit by an Apocalypse or Eos torpedo never seems to kill everyone in an entire section of the ship, or disrupt internal systems at all, and the torpedoes still explode in a perfectly spherical and evenly distributed manner when hitting their targets perfectly. In FS2 and BP--IIRC--the kind of damage done by standard torpedoes are like decent punches, not shortswords or daggers straight into the gut/thigh. It hurts, sure, and given enough punches you'd be dead, but the internals remain relatively intact and functional until you're on your last legs.
