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If an attack benefiting from Target System inflicts critical damage not from a critical hit but through some other method (e.g. exceeding a ship's Critical Threshold) does that critical damage affect the targeted system or a random system?

I read it as affecting the targeted system, but that seems counter-intuitive to me.

I think you're reading it correctly, and that's what's nice about the Target System option. Even if you don't crit on the keen attack, if you do enough damage, you STILL can glitch out one specific system.

I read it like: "The next attack is keen. Also, if *that next attack* deals critical damage..."

So, it specifically keens the next attack, and refers to that attack doing damage to a specific system, if you do enough damage to pass a critical threshold. Even if you don't hit a 19 or 20.

The other way would mean you have to pass a high skill check to get a 10% chance of anything important happening, which would make it worthless, just about.

Is it obvious that an item is a maze-core? If it's not, it could be really handy to have, say, a small computer (L bulk) M-C'd with a disintegrator pistol (L bulk). If we accept that a maze-core of two L bulk items just turns into a bulk-1 item.

Handy to sneak in with your operative. Oh this? It's just my space stenographer's notebook.

EDIT: Oh right. I guess I mean, if a Glamered fusion isn't enough for you, I suppose.

Personally, I'm fond of the idea of a numbing taclash + a yellow star plasma cannon.

Just think! At range, explosions. And in melee, a whip with bulk 3, somehow!

I've played SFS twice as melee, and a melee build in a private AP game. Granted, all of that's been at max level 4 with a pregen. In my private game, I'm only level 3 so adaptive fighting hasn't been a possibility yet.

Quick draw: Yep, you're right. But for certain conditions, you can get around it. I'm perfectly willing to accept that it's got a big benefit for two-handers, but if you're more of a wild west high noon quickdraw mcgraw kinda feller, you might get more mileage out of cybernetics and a different feat.
Long story short, if I spent a feat on quickdraw as an Operative, I'd be upset that I wasted a feat.

Amplified glitch: The targets have to be within sight or hearing of a technological device, so if you've got one, you can pull this off. For the investment of an L-bulk tier 1 computer for 55 credits, it can work within 30' of you.
Long story short, if I took Antagonize at level 5 and saw someone with a palm pilot and Amplified Glitch getting more out of their debuff (shaken vs off-target) two levels earlier, I'd be upset that I wasted a feat.

Kip up: You know, jump jets activate "as part of a move action in order to fly during your movement..." Maybe you can just use jump jets to boomp yourself up off the floor. If that's the case, then ditch kip up, I'd say.
Long story short, yeah probably not worth it, but I think you could make it work for you.

Toughness: I've always had a mystic around in the games I've played, and they've never had much to do with their HP healing. I'm more looking at this in terms of in-combat killability.
At first level, a vesk soldier will have at least 13 HP and 8 SP (12 con). A dwarf fighter would have 11 HP (12 con). Adding 1 HP to that dwarf fighter is +9% of their HP total. Adding 1 HP to the vesk is less than 5% more killability units.
Going up to level 10, with game-specific con boosts, the vesk (con 16) would have 76HP/100SP baseline (6 + (7*10)) ((7*10) + (3*10)), and the dwarf (con 14) would have 84HP (10 + (6*9) + (10*2)). Adding toughness adds about 5.7% killability units to the vesk, but 11.9% killability units to the dwarf.
Long story short, it depends on whether you look at single-combat killability units (SP+HP) or avoiding ever taking HP damage. If I had a fifteen minute adventuring day, I don't think it'd be too helpful.

So yeah, not like, universally trap options, but given some tech options and other stuff, I don't think they're as handy as they SOUND like they should be.

Topic change:

I can dig why you'd like adaptive fighting. But, from what I've seen in the AP, you'll often get a few waves of enemies, broken up by looting the room or what have you. So you'd be using your one/day feat on a single group of two or three dudes, out of three or four groups. That might have been my gamemaster, but I don't know. Seems familiar, in terms of how other APs I've run have gone.

You'd probably get more mileage out of it in society play, because the combats are less crawly, but that hasn't been an option for me yet. Only three total SFS sessions and all.

The situational bonuses seem like they'd be pretty helpful, but I'm not impressed with the action economy. I might change my tune once I hit level 5 blitz and can charge on a standard action, but the way combats have been going I haven't seen an opportunity when it would really have tilted the balance.

Actually, you know... this whole perspective might be specific to me playing a soldier rather than a solarian.

I've pondered a few starfinder feats and it looks like there are some unexpected traps, particularly when you consider technology. Other folks have mentioned other stuff on my list, so I'm not including, say Deadly Aim or Stand Still here.

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Potential traps
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Adaptive Fighting: Once a day, as a move action, with high prerequisites. I'm not impressed; there's just not really enough in the combat feats to justify this.

Antagonize: I don't know why you would ever take this instead of Amplified Glitch, for that type of action.

Climbing Master: Now that it's pretty easy to get jetpacks, I feel like this is less valuable. But if you've got extra arms, it probably is.

Fast Talk: While cool and thematic for a lot of builds, you really have to trust your party to make this worthwhile. If you're not doing a bunch of super surprise assassinations, I think you won't get much mileage.

Fleet: Now that you can replace your legs with better, faster legs, I think it's less useful.

Master Crafter: Crafting takes you max 4 hours. I don't see a lot of situations where saving 2 hours would ever really matter.

Nimble Moves: Again, jetpacks and jump jets. If you can fly, you don't need to worry about difficult terrain as much.

Opening Volley: I want this to be cool, but it's just so situational I can't trust that it's going to be.

Quick Draw: For a lot of items, you can quick draw out of your cyberarm. It doesn't work for everything, but in a tight spot, it'd be an affordable way to turn ~3000 credits into a feat's bonus. (Or be a Ysoki and kinda get Quick Draw and Kip Up for free)

Spry Cover: You'd have to have a really specialized synergy with your party to make this work.

Toughness: Given how Stamina works, I'm not sure this is as good an investment as it used to be.

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That being said, I did have a few feats I really liked in Starfinder:

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Surprisingly good?
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Veiled Threat: This pretty much lets you turn Intimidate into Diplomacy. If you don't have a lot of skill points, that can be pretty handy. But, pretty hefty requirement.

Suppressive Fire: I like how there's an option for automatic weapons that isn't "use up all of your ammo at once." I think you could get a lot out of this one, if your party is in on you using it. That being said: not for envoys. They have better use for their Move actions, to say the least.

Skill Synergy: I am all about this skill. First, it reduces clutter by taking out all of the +2/+2 skills left over from D&D 3.5, and second, it adds class skills. If you're a Soldier, especially, this is super handy at odd levels. I've taken it twice in my Dead Suns game.

Kip Up: There's no real good technological replacement for this (well, or you could be a Ysoki), and you can do a lot with proneness as a defense against ranged.

Jet Dash: I love the idea of going a billion miles per hour and jumping fifteen feet in the air, so sue me.

Cleave: I think this might be really worth it, since it's one of the few ways to get multiple attacks on a Standard action.

Yeah I accept that this is all an abstraction, and I was hoping to illustrate it for some folks who didn't seem to be following the OP's point. I'm thinking that's just about a losing proposition at this point.

I don't think anyone's disputing that, Micheal. We all agree that you target the ship.

What affects whether you hit is the piloting ranks and armor of the ship. Not the shields. We all agree on that. Ship AC = 10 + (size mod) + (piloting ranks) + (armor bonus). We all agree that the shields don't have any bearing, in the combat system, on whether you hit.

What we're confused about is how the armor plating on a ship makes an attack miss.

Shields are described like this: "Projectors mounted around the ship create a barrier that absorbs damage from attacks." (p. 302).

Armor is described like this: "Armor protects a ship from direct-fire weapons ..., deflecting their energy and preventing damage to critical ship systems. It grants an armor bonus to a ship’s AC... Armor is a passive system and does not require any PCU to remain functional. It provides protection primarily through mass..." (p. 297).

So armor is a passive system of mass added to the ship to deflect attacks. Shields are projected around the ship.

So why does the armor make it harder for an attack to do any damage to the shields? The armor works by deflecting attacks. That means that an attack has to touch the armor, and be bounced off. That's how AC works. But how can that be the case if the attack would have to go through the shields to touch the armor?

It's an artifact of the system treating dodging the same as weapons bouncing off, I figure.

Maybe I'll start to think of shields as the space-fiberglass insulation between an external wall and internal sheetrock.

So I dig that this is all an abstraction, but it is a little wonky. Your physical armor prevents attacks from landing. Presumably, that's because it deflects off of the armor. Which would require touching it.

So, if we assume the armor is part of the hull, and that the shields are outside the hull, how can an attack pierce the shields, bounce off the armored hull, and do no damage to the ship or shields?

That's the core conceptual issue I'm getting from Tectorman. Why does armor (which is inside the shields) affect how hard it is for an attack to land on the shields?

It's also a little wonky how the feat, as written, can't really be taken by a single-classed character who exactly meets the requirements.

It requires BAB +4, and it's not a combat feat. That means Soldiers and Solarians can get it at level 5, and all other classes have to wait until level 7. In both cases, their BABs will be +5.

To qualify with BAB +4, you'd need to go 3 levels of Solarian or Soldier, and 2 of a 3/4 BAB class to get +4 BAB by level 5.

Maybe it was intended to be a Combat feat? It's pretty clearly about avoiding damage in combat.