The short end of it is "everything has shields, even if it doesn't have defense". One could simply just call it "structural integrity" for vehicles that do not actually have defense.

The mechanical change would be that if the "shieds" or "structural integrity" is compromised, armor drops to 0. A certain level of damage would still need to be applied (10 damage per point of hull trauma for personal scale weaponry) to actually damage the vehicle.

This makes a vehicle with damaged "shields" susceptible to damage from ground troops and larger vehicles more susceptible to smaller vehicles. Makes shields a much more important factor into combat as well.

I think this makes sense. There is a lot of assumed background autonomic technology in the ships and stations n this setting, and it is assumed to be pretty hearty and probably energy hyper-efficient. Small ships function almost like cars or private aircraft but have better safety features and reliability.

Plus, in order to bully their way through the atmosphere stuff like TIE fighters, x-wings, and big bulk cruisers would need to have an artificial aerodynamic streamlining effect. Micrometeorites and radiation would also be a problem without some sort of shielding in lieu of super thick and hardened hulls. I would say that given newer depictions of the Falcon being skipped like a rock across hard ground and remaining flight-worthy it should have both extremely hardened airframe and structural integrity fields like Iron Man's suit from the old comics.

The defense dice just assumes higher strength shield that can help with weapons-grade damage in my opinion.

You know I was considering TFA when thinking about how important shields seem to be to ships, because that entire chase scene on Jakku they didn't have shields up (also they didn't get hit once) but boy did Rey crash the Falcon into things quite a bit and I didn't even consider that.

I'm reminded of WEG, and how a craft with "shields" lost 2D off it's hull code when the shields were totally knocked out for whatever reason.

My concern with dropping armor to 0 is that it also allows anything to Crit the vehicle.

I see the issue, in TFA a light repeating blaster KOs Poe's engines, and in Rebels some sand people essplode an a-wing with slugthrowers.

Perhaps if you reduce the armor by X to a minimum of Y? Armor 1 or 2 would still brush off most small arms fire but allow crits, which seems to reflect the film/tv narrative effect better than hull trauma...

53 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

I see the issue, in TFA a light repeating blaster KOs Poe's engines, and in Rebels some sand people essplode an a-wing with slugthrowers.

The light repeating blaster actually goes on to make his X-Wing explode.

TIE Fighters get their wings cut off with lightsabers in Rebels.

Rey is concerned about a lack of shields against TIE Fighters in TFA despite the Falcon being a very durable ship.

AT-ST's get squished by trees.

AT-AT's have absolutely no armor in certain spots (the neck)

The list probably goes on (tho I have a lack of recollection on other examples of no shields = extreme damage)

4 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

The light repeating blaster actually goes on to make his X-Wing explode.

TIE Fighters get their wings cut off with lightsabers in Rebels.

Rey is concerned about a lack of shields against TIE Fighters in TFA despite the Falcon being a very durable ship.

AT-ST's get squished by trees.

AT-AT's have absolutely no armor in certain spots (the neck)

The list probably goes on (tho I have a lack of recollection on other examples of no shields = extreme damage)

I think his concern is over a player being able to potentially crit a tank and heavily damage/destroy it in one shot depending on the build with a blaster rifle or something else that would be over the top for a simple handheld weapon (besides the super explosive items players can get.)

39 minutes ago, TheJokerOfSocal said:

I think his concern is over a player being able to potentially crit a tank and heavily damage/destroy it in one shot depending on the build with a blaster rifle or something else that would be over the top for a simple handheld weapon (besides the super explosive items players can get.)

Yeah I'm trying to find a balance to making vehicles less of an unstoppable force vs ground troops without making them paper mache.

In some cases I wouldn't dig too deeply.

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

The  light  repeating blaster actually goes on to make his X-Wing explode.  

The X-wing was disabled in a structured encounter, but destroyed after the encounter was 100% over to just get rid of it so BB-8 can't just wait, circle back repair the fighter and fly away.

Over read that and It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Have the Storm troopers toss a proton grenade in the x-wing, and suddenly "every stormtrooper carries one" do it with repeaters and you end up here.

Other things you can make work:

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

TIE   Fighters get   their wings   cut off with  lightsabers in  Rebels.

At 10 damage, Breach 1 vs. Armor 2, critting a TIE with a saber is pretty simple, it's just a matter of the results that would be a removed wing. If you're using "crits kill minions" and the pilots a minion, that's pretty much done... If not, it would take a bit more, but still not be impossible.

Some things are just unknowns.

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

AT-ST's    get squished by  trees.

What's the damage of a pair of logs?

Ultimately though...

41 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

Yeah    I'  m trying to find a balance to making vehicles less of an unstoppable force vs ground troops  without making them paper   mache.   

That's the real trick isn't it?

This is why I think you may want to play with an affect that reduces, but doesn't eliminate armor. But then how you interpret hull trauma vs crits will also be a factor...

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

Yeah the more I think about this the more I like the idea of Structural Integrity Fields. There is tech here that is so far beyond what we know and have that I could see this as one of the fundamental technological requirements of going into deep space and hyperspace safely. It could even be an inherent property of some metallurgical compounds and construction methods of arranging atomic and molecular structure so as to make the vehicle easily conductive of the field, and to be able to shunt even small amounts of ambient energies into the array to keep the fields intact. This also makes junk more interesting because it may have old capacitors and wiring on even structural members as part of the field technology.

I was trying to think of what level of G-rated airframe you would need to be able to have the Falcon or other ships doing dune buggy-type stunts, and I think it's likely that to survive the rigors of the forces that act upon these hulls they would need to be super hard and capable of taking much more energy directed against them than we would find maybe even in surface warships. The weight difference would need to be very significance for the structural strength vs. heavy steel warships even with Repulsorlift technology. The Falcon seems capable of landing on even unimproved soft surfaces, which seems to mean it's not overly dense for it's size.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

At 10 damage, Breach 1 vs. Armor 2, critting a TIE with a saber is pretty simple, it's just a matter of the results that would be a removed wing. If you're using "crits kill minions" and the pilots a minion, that's pretty much done... If not, it would take a bit more, but still not be impossible.

A weird technicality of the rules is that while crits automatically defeat minions, they do not automatically defeat vehicles piloted by minions. So unless that lightsaber impales the TIE Pilot, by RAW, the TIE is still operational after taking a crit.

In my case, I don't stick with the RAW on that among other things because by RAW certain things don't make sense.

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

A weird technicality of the rules is that while crits automatically defeat minions, they do not automatically defeat vehicles piloted by minions. So unless that lightsaber impales the TIE Pilot, by RAW, the TIE is still operational after taking a crit.

In my case, I don't stick with the RAW on that among other things because by RAW certain things don't make sense.

Technically it doesn't say either.

It says vehicles operated by multiple minion characters operating as a group (like say a weapons battery on a capital ship) don't take damage, the vehicle does.

So if a single pilot TIE operated by a minion can be one-crit killed is technically left up to the GM.

But nothing says they are or are not. Unless you have a group that argues since the rules don't say all Jedi can't shoot damage 40 crit 2 lasers out if their eyes, then clearly they can, it shouldn't be a problem...