Thanks for a peer confirmation. I was starting to think that I was crazy because I was seeing that happening too, and nobody else seemed to notice it.

The AI always shoots torpedoes towards freighter-class ships or bigger, never smaller. And only once per attack run. They don't release two torpedoes or more while approaching. Instead they lock their targets at the maximum distance available, release one torpedo, then get closer to attack with their lasers.
When they are too close, they break off, get some good distance, and face their targets again, releasing another torpedo. Repeat.

Making the AI shoot torpedoes at fighters could seriously affect balance for most missions, as much as making the AI release more than one torpedo per attack run would.

I do agree we could add some extra intelligence to the AI in regards to using their warheads, but we must be careful to make sure it doesn't affect the original missions, only new modes like skirmishes, multiplayer, campaigns, etc.

I will use an example.
Imagine you need to protect a corvette from 3 incoming TIE Bombers on your X-wing, that appear at 10 km from it, and about the same distance from you.
When they approach the corvette and are at 6 km from it, they will release 3 torpedoes, 1 each.
With some luck, and master use of your ELS settings, you manage to close your distance to them on time to destroy one torpedo with your lasers and then engage the TIE Bombers, perhaps killing one or two in a tense dogfight, where only one of them sneaks past you and starts another attack run on the corvette, releasing another torpedo.
A corvette explodes with 6 torpedoes, so the player performance described above would be sufficient to make it survive, since the corvette took perhaps 4-5 torpedoes before all TIE Bombers were destroyed.
The player would end quite stressed up and tense, but also very much excited by the dangerous situation and feeling good with himself for having managed to protect the corvette.

Now, think what would happen if the TIE Bombers were actually smarter and all of them released 12 torpedoes as soon as they had a target lock on the corvette, as real players would do. There would be 36 torpedoes coming towards the corvette, and there wouldn't be anything the player could do about it. Not even sending 6 X-Wings would prevent that from happening. Not even by reducing the amount of bombers to half or to just one. Sure the player could blow up a couple torpedoes in the way there, but probably not enough to make a difference.

Many missions, both in X-Wing and in TIE Fighter, involve many flight groups of ships being sent to destroy one single capital ship or two, that you need to protect, by rushing here and there in the battlefield and taking care of the bombers before they deal too much damage. Those missions feel epic and challenging, but they really are balanced and not by chance, but because the AI is intentionally held back with artificial limitations such as those.

You end killing tens of ships and feeling like an ace in those missions, while the reality is that those ships are basically fighting with a hand tied behind their backs, so to speak.

That is why I think X-Wing and TIE Fighter could work in multiplayer as long as the multiplayer is coop only, and not versus. The experience is much different when you face perfectly balanced and choreographed AI rivals, than when you face cutthroat human players.
In my opinion, XvT experienced worse sales, and was mostly considered one of the worst in the whole series, because of that.
The engine was an improved version of that in TIE Fighter, the graphics were better, the sounds were better, the mission designers where the same people. Then what failed?
The game wasn't the same at all with human rivals.

I think a little bit of it would happen in this one, if the AI would be much more "logical".