On Battlefleet Koronus p.12 there is a turret sidebar in the fighter craft section that has a HUGE impact on torpedoes (for some reason we overlooked this when reading the torpedo rules . It gives even mediocre ships a good chance at shooting down torpedoes (especially considering the PCs are in a Falchion-class Frigate with 2-strength launcher).

How does this work in play as regards to balance? I fear it makes torpedoes really weak and hardly worth the extra paperwork and special rules required to use them.

Could you use a Critical Hit to damage (or set fire too) a turret system like you could another component? That might balance things out a bit.

In my group we have only had torpedoes used against us but that was pretty scary.. even with a decent crew rating you arent likely to shoot many down. We roll for a 45 and have only managed to shoot down one so far.

Being hit by even one torpedo is pretty rough. No void shield and the damage each does is pretty scary. We were hit by 3 in a single salvo once. Poor rolls and we would've only been damaged, high rolls we would've been hulked/blown up. Luckily he rolled a bit below average and was only using plasma warheads so we only took severe damage. If they had been melta or vortex we would've been dead. If it had been a virus warhead we probably would've had an empty ship. The boarding torpedoes would've done pretty much nothing though, yay tenebro-maze!

So, while I can certainly see the strength 2 torpedo launcher not doing much than a single hit most of the time, that single hit is pretty impressive. The higher strength ones are just a rain of death and destruction.

Once you know that they are there you should be able to select them with criticals just like any other component that is not specifcally called out as being non-targetable.