If a ship moves through, or touches an asteroid and it rolls a hit or crit, do the shields absorb that damage? I was initially thinking yes, but then it occurred to me that star fighters might only have ray-shielding, which is useless against physical objects. Thanks!

Shields absorb the damage from asteroids. If an effect ignores the shields, it says "deal a damage card ", instead of "suffer damage" or "deal damage".

If a ship moves through, or touches an asteroid and it rolls a hit or crit, do the shields absorb that damage? I was initially thinking yes, but then it occurred to me that star fighters might only have ray-shielding, which is useless against physical objects. Thanks!

Fluff =/= rules. As Ubul stated, <booms> & <kabooms> knock shields off first if rolled when hitting obstacles.

You are only dealt cards if an effect specifically tells you to.

When suffering damage it always has to remove shield tokens first if they are available.

one would think that a giant rock would phase through starwars shields, but unless it says you are dealt a card your shields soak the damage.

Wonder how awesome/horrible the game would be if obstacles ignored shields....hmm...

If a ship moves through, or touches an asteroid and it rolls a hit or crit, do the shields absorb that damage? I was initially thinking yes, but then it occurred to me that star fighters might only have ray-shielding, which is useless against physical objects. Thanks!

You should never try and apply any background fluff to this game. You're going to get either horribly confused, or just plain disappointed.

They have kept the game as simple as possible and basically ignored a lot of the fluff in order to maintain that simplicity.

one would think that a giant rock would phase through starwars shields, but unless it says you are dealt a card your shields soak the damage.

Wonder how awesome/horrible the game would be if obstacles ignored shields....hmm...

If you are going to use that logic then why should ordnance have to deal with shields? Now there are a couple things that will deal card damage but those are rare exceptions.

I don't think Ordnance are the same magnitude of size... Some obstacle are larger then ship, this is funny to think that an energy shield absorb anything in this case..

So don't think of it that way. THink of it as a swerve to avoid the MASSIVE ROCK and the shield absorbing some of the little rocks orbiting it. Or think of it as diverting power from the shields to the engines to get out of the way. Or something.

If you're creative and start from the point of the mechanics being right, it's usually easy to find a good enough explanation for perceived inconsistencies.