As I endeavor to come up with a way to make ordnance work, it has occured to me that changing how Target Lock works slightly might make it a more attractive option on lower PS ships, thus giving a buff to generics that don't see much play anymore.

Target Lock Action: Place a Blue Target Lock token on your base.
During the Combatphase, if you have a blue token on your base, you may check for range to enemy ships and THEN place your red token. For the purposes of rules requiring when TL is acquired it counts when you place the red token.

I got lazy and didn't do the full language but you get the gist.

Now for what i want to know: Are there any ramifications to this change that i haven't considered?
This is obviously a buff to lower PS ships and a counter/nerf to higher PS ships since they'll be taking more accurate fire from enemy ships.

Pilots that commonly deal with TL as an intrinsic part of their function:
Nera, gets buffed against higher PS, she no longer has to use her EPT on Deadeye.
Dutch, gets buffed since HE and lower PS allies have a better chance of being in range for the TL.
Blount, gets buffed as he no longer has to use Deadeye if he wants to use missiles.

Kagi, gets buffed as hes more likely to be in range when TL go off so he can protect his allies.

Honestly, i get that this change would make Deadeye useless, buts its a useless talent anyway, so to hell with it.

Cons:
Higher PS now has to worry about much more accurate return fire from lower PS pilots. Nerf

You would have to offset the target lock change with an additional change that would cause the target locks to be removed at the end of the round like any other token. The problem I see is for something like having 4 blue squadron ships take target locks round 1, then round 2 move into range and take a focus. this gives them 4 target locked 3 dice focused attacks as their first round of shooting. Using 4 blue squadron pilots is already nasty enough on it's own without giving them an additional advantage or a re-roll on their initial attack. Next issue is you are taking away the advantage of the higher pilot skill pilots. they can no longer be safe due to moving 2nd and knowing they do not have a target lock to worry about, but still be able to take advantage of their own target lock ability.

I feel this change would completely change how the game is played, buy making ordnance much more effective.

Secondary thought is it would make ST-321 title almost useless. This change would effectively allow anyone to do the same thing. In fact it may be worse to take this title as you have to decide who the target lock goes on when they are still out of range compared to your suggestion to allow someone to assign it at the beginning of combat once a ship is within range.

which brings up a question, would this happen as a new step in the process before anyone shoots or at PS level? Causing a ship to never waste the TL on a ship that is destroyed by a higher PS pilot.

Good catch on the removal part. Or at least remove the blue token if you don't have a paired red token.
ST-321 would still let you lock form across the board, outside of range 3.

The step process gets tricky as the rules would start to conflict with things like FCS or Dutch since you now get the Blue token in the Activation phase and the Red token in combat phase. It'd be one of those rule lawyers things. Ive been awake far too long so after i get some sleep i'll revise the rule into a more legalese form.

I know this hammers high PS, but honestly ordnance is completely unusable on generics, and this is one of the only ways to get it back on them. And High PS still gets the usual advantage of getting out of arc and shooting first. The game seems like the designers didn't take the fact that low PS ships will rarely get TL optimally when they designed the game, just like they didnt realize that INTENTIONALLY bumping your or your opponents ships would become a thing (they said it in one of the Team Covenant interviews sometime around Worlds)

Ships with TL-requiring ordnance just need to be able to lock at range 5. It seems extreme, but I can't imagine how else to buff all the bad torps and missiles. Yesterday I played against Blount with ion pulse and he never got them off even after 5-6 rounds.

So, treating it as if it's an upgrade card for wording

Target Lock

Action: assign a blue target lock token to your ship. At the beginning of the next combat phase choose an enemy ship at range 1-3 and acquire a corresponding red target lock token on that ship.

At the beginning of the end phase, discard any unpaired blue target lock tokens.

FCS, Weapons Engineer, Targeting Coordinator, Tarn, Dutch and a few other cards interact, but not in any troublesome way if you make clear that acquiring a target lock means getting a red target lock token on a particular ship.

Give it a house rule try. It wouldn't make Deadeye useless by the way, it still makes focus even more flexible.

Nerfing all the high PS pilots to let the lower PS ships fire some missiles seems like a very bad decision.

Having four Blue Squadron Bs, or even eight Bandit Z95s, all firing with TL/Focus as an alpha would make for very boring games.

I can't really get behind this as a buff for ordinance, as it seems to be more of a stronger nerf for High PS pilots.

Besides, who would throw a Proton Torpedo on a Rookie when you can get more consistent damage from a Blue Squad B-wing with FCS? The Rookies do better with next to zero upgrades on them (R2 astromech is always a good choice if you have some points left over) but their purpose is less about being ordinance carriers and more about policing up wounded enemies with (most likely) an un modified shot. If they survive, of course.

The easiest way to buff ordinance is to take Pilots in the game who can reroll dice after an attack through either their latent talents (Salm, Trelix, anyone +Jonus), using an EPT that allows rerolls ( Predator, Lone wolf), or just take the insurance policy in Munitions Failsafe. Even if the target is able to evade all but one of your dice, that one un evaded result is a Crit from the Proton Torpedo. If there ever is a point discount on ordinance I would still doubt that it would see widespread use because any points not spent on the PS bid is normally spent on either more ships, upgrading those ships to better ships, or adding EPTs and additional protection to your high PS pilots.