Seriously. There's an entire section for it in the GM chapter, and yet any armor whatsoever gives you full environmental protection against all environmental hazards at all times apart from highly corrosive atmospheres (it says that acid resistance upgrade will fix that, but no such upgrade appears to exist). This functionality even applies if the item is broken.
Well if you don't know how dangerous the various environments are then you won't be as thankful for the protection your suits give you.
Plus how are you supposed to know how to die when the bad guys throw you out an airlock into the void of space/an airless asteroid with minimal gravity/a toxic planet with super heavy gravity/get an imagination?
Pick up one of our many Life Preservation Armored Suits today! They're guaranteed to outlive you!
And armor are not clothes. Clothes are listed in a separate section of the book. Unless you're a VIP of some kind who is expecting to be kidnapped, you probably aren't wearing your armor in most public, safe places. If you did, with few exceptions, you'd probably stand out in much the same way that a fully geared swat team member would stand out in the middle of a kindergarten school.
While for a large part you are right, armor is not clothes and clothing is not armor... there are a few lines that specifically blur the line, namely the AbadarCorp Travel Suits, Echelon Fashion, and Stationwear lines. All of which are explicitly both clothing and light armor (Business Suits, Fashionable Clothing, and Any Clothing respectively.)
Back to the OP. There may come a time your armor is damaged, not on you or out of oxygen/food/water.
If I recall, recharging has to be done on a space station or a ship. If your ship is a smoking crater on Planet O-SH%^!! then environmental effects may come into play.
On a recent adventure we had to cover about a week of travel in Tier 2-5 suits. We had to make checks to know when closing up the suit was necessary to conserve resources.
And armor are not clothes. Clothes are listed in a separate section of the book. Unless you're a VIP of some kind who is expecting to be kidnapped, you probably aren't wearing your armor in most public, safe places. If you did, with few exceptions, you'd probably stand out in much the same way that a fully geared swat team member would stand out in the middle of a kindergarten school.While for a large part you are right, armor is not clothes and clothing is not armor... there are a few lines that specifically blur the line, namely the AbadarCorp Travel Suits, Echelon Fashion, and Stationwear lines. All of which are explicitly both clothing and light armor (Business Suits, Fashionable Clothing, and Any Clothing respectively.)
Those would be the exceptions I was referring to. :)
Shockingly enough, your GM is *not* the enemy, whom you must bind in chains made out of rules citations. And Starfinder, shockingly enough, is not a game where everything not rigorously defined in the rules is impossible.
Nuh uh! :P
Huh so no one has read the technomancer spell list...discharge your armor has no charges left or greater discharge targets one item on each party member gm chooses armor, none of you have environmental protection
I'm not sure this would work very well. Armor environmental protections don't appear to use charges like weapons do and as such could only be shut down for 1d4 rounds--hardly enough time for most environments to do any real harm.
Huh so no one has read the technomancer spell list...discharge your armor has no charges left or greater discharge targets one item on each party member gm chooses armor, none of you have environmental protection
Discharge was mentioned and discussed on the first page.
I kind of side with OP here. Especially for this first book, very simple environmental rules could have sufficed since they would rarely come up, with the intention of circling back around in a later supplement ("Survival in the Pact Worlds" or something). Too late now though.
I'm okay with them. The stationwear is intended for space stations where there is a chance that the area you are in will suddenly decompress. The more advanced stationwear is simply better protection for more important people or for adventurers who want weird clothing.
Normal people have normal clothing. Have a gas attack in planetside and the civilians will be harmed. Have a pleasure cruise crash on an asteroid and the PCs can last for three weeks, but most of the civilians and probably the crew have a couple of days.
There are ways to make the environment an obstacle, you just have to work at it, like in Pathfinder.