Critical Damage (page 321) says to roll randomly to determine which system is hit (life, sensors, weapons, engines, power core). But what happens if your target simply does not HAVE the system you roll (say Life support on an Eoxian or weapons on something unarmed)? In that case, is the critical hit just 'lost' or do you reroll until you get something that exists?
Similarly, if you hit weapons, you roll randomly to determine which arc is affected. But, what happens if you roll, say, aft arc and they have no weapons that can shoot in the aft arc? Is your critical hit then, essentially, lost to no effect or would you roll another arc?
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I do not believe there is a clear and explicit answer to the first question in the rules as such, though there are examples. The Novaspawn in Alien Archive has a completely different set of systems than normal ships, reflecting its nature as a gigantic spaceborne creature rather than a vehicle. It accordingly has a different table for when it suffers critical damage.
I believe the implicit answer is thus to roll on the special table provided for the special ship. In instances where that has not been prepared in advance, I would either reroll or follow the rule for critical effects on wrecked systems; apply it to the next system on the table instead.
As for the second question...
Randomly determine one arc containing weapons...
If an arc does not contain weapons, it cannot be randomly selected to suffer the effects of critical damage on the weapons array. Reroll until you get a valid result.
That certainly sounds reasonable.