The problem with TIE-fighters

[Bobmalooga]

So, last night I am running my weekly game and one of the players points out that flying in a TIE fighter must be really dangerous in space because of space junk floating around and that they had to have some sort of minimal shielding to keep whatever from punching through the outer hull of the ship.

Of course I pointed out that TIE-Fighters don't have shields, which a small discussion about whether or not ship shields even have particle shielding to begin with and I pointed out that it was a silent factor in the shield generator of a ship and that while generators primarily factor into combat, it also provides protection versus space particles.

Someone then asked if it was a necessary component to have shielding and I replied that without the shielding ships immediately lose 2D of hull and that was when it was decided that TIE-Fighters would explode when exposed to the vacuum of space due to their immediately losing 2d of hull from having no shields.
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[CRMcNeill]

This has come up before. My solution was to say that such a small, light craft doesn't need a full-size particle screen, so it only has 1D, instead of 2D.

On a related note, the RAW is vague about when a ship actually loses its particle shields. The only possibilities I can see are Shield Damaged results from the damage table, or Shields Blown results from ion attacks.

Which lends interesting additional possibilities to ion cannon attacks; not only can they disable ships, they can also reduce the target's Hull by 2D by disabling the particle shield projector...
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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