So all armor protects from vacuum, but no protection from attacks that bestow some kind of poison, disease, or stat draining effect. I would assume that in order to be poisoned the poison needs to make bodily contact, which would mean piercing the armor or spacesuit. Does this ruin the vacuum protection? What if you are already in vacuum when the attack occurs?
I believe this is an instance of hand waving for the sake of simplicity. You could head canon it as the armor is able to self repair after being pierced (or uses micro-force fields to do so) and is then repaired by systems on a ship or in town.
Managing it any other way would be far too complex to manage and take away from the game without much benefit.
e.g. Anyone with natural attacks immediately becomes much less effective in a vacuum. Don't even try to understand how a goblin can bite through a bubble helmet....
The assumption appears to be that damage to/through a space suit activates some sort of repair or force field effect that reseals it before the wearer suffers any ill effects from exposure to the outside environment.
e.g. Anyone with natural attacks immediately becomes much less effective in a vacuum. Don't even try to understand how a goblin can bite through a bubble helmet....
So you're saying a dragon in a space suit couldn't use it's breathe weapon?
What people are saying is that there is no rule saying that if you take damage then your suit is breached. It is far from clear that taking damage particularly stamina damage actually reflects a real bullet hole in you.
It is a good assumption that armour is self sealing as if it is not then it would not be of much use in vacuum. It is a matter for the GM's judgement of what is fun, it would make combat in vacuum suicidal if a single bullet hit breached your suit and characters in Starfinder are intended to take multiple hits so common sense says that a single hit should not breach a suit.
I would assume that Bite attacks, Breath Weapons etc cannot be used by a creature in vacuum which is wearing a protective suit and needs protection against vacuum, although for things like dragons their skin is so tough that is probably needs no protection against vacuum , so all it needs is a breather and that could be designed to allow it's breath weapon and bite to work. On the same basis although there is no specific rule I remember Sonic weapons would not work in Vacuum.
There are also armors that basically use forcefields for the helmet so if you were not in vacuum possible you could set it up so it blips off for a split second as you breath fire and then activates again immediately after.
The hand wave appears to be kind of like a lot of the other ones. Things work the way you want them to. (Drone flight is an example. It just kind of works through whatever method. Firing certain weapons in unusual environments as well...they just work.)
I personally explain it as the suits having basic repair tech which deals with suit integrity.