How to do a Missile Launcher?

#1 Mentioning the StateBaseImage gives me an idea- animate the missile launcher with all the missiles, and then one less missile as it shoots. Then, set up the state machine so that the states correspond with how much ammo you have, and link that to the different animation states. Then, when you fire a missile, create the missile projectile in the same place as where the missile used to be (after changing the state to missiles-1), and bam, it should work.

Is this the easiest way to do it? Are there easier ways? Thanks!

#2 The crossbow is a good example of the weapon state machine in action. If I'm following your idea correctly you can link the different states to animation threads for your weapons. You can find some free models on here for a couple of different rocket launcher, a couple of machine guns, a mini-gun, a laser, and a grenade launcher. The mini-gun and grenade launcher would be a good example of how to animate you weapon to different states.

For documentation of the state system check out the section for ShapeBaseImageData about a third to half of the way down on that page.

edit: note that some of the weapons I mentioned don't seem to be easily found anymore - I got tired of searching or I would have left you some links.

#3 I wouldn't reccomend animating ammunition... nor putting ammo into the state system. Unless you really want to. Ammunition for the default crossbow is handled by a simple scripted inventory system. Look into the inventory command in Crossbow::onFire to see how that's used.
If you want to have some visual gauge of how many missiles the player has left, you might try mounting individual missiles on the player, and unmounting them when the player fires.

#4 Go here for a rocket launcher tutorial: www.codesampler.com/torque.htm