The best thing you can do is to make projectiles faster. Since the effect is instant it will not affect the gameplay, but will make a little more sense.
I think the good example is rocket launcher - things explodes before even rocket reaches it's destination.
Another option would be to track missiles even after they were launched, this would allow players to dodge rockets (probably not huge issue considering the power of rocket launcher), and do explosion when rocket reaches the place.
It would however be really useful then, if it was possible to attack empty space, and it would be all technically much more complicated.
One more off-topic - is it possible to replace missiles with models as well? It would be the place where improvement would be notable even when zoomed out, because projectile can be visible from more angles that it's sprites are able to cover.