I've always viewed rocket launchers (and explosive weapons in general) as the weapon type that starts out really good but gets less effective later on. This isn't representative of the original games from which these weapons came, but it is a characteristic of DoomRL: here we have some powerful equipment that aren't linked to any particular traits, so they start strong but don't last. We could potentially add traits, but to be quite honest, I don't think it's worth dedicating another basic, advanced, and three masters, just so that explosives can be used more often. They already have plenty of good uses and there are already plenty of builds in the game. I'd be more tempted to, for instance, drop Scavenger, move Fireangel to the Technician survival master slot, and come up with a new Technician shotty master.
We can think about tweaking the stats a little (especially when it comes to item destruction) but I don't think generalizing the alt fire to a homing shot is a good balance move: one of the weaknesses of the rocket launcher is that you CAN miss and, since missing can have dangerous effects, you have to be careful about your shots. It's this kind of decision-making that makes the tactical side of the game more interesting and challenging.