Constructs have immunity to non-lethal damage, but many constructs also have a weakness to electricity. I think it would be fun if the weakness overruled the immunity, and also on a crit turned the non-lethal into normal damage.
I kind of like this. It is a little goofy that an enemy weak to electricity is arbitrarily immune to certain electrical weapons. There's no real verismilitude to it, an electric shock designed to incapacitate rather than kill a person is still going to not be great for electronic machinery.
Though more broadly I think immunity to nonlethal doesn't make a lot of sense in general, as Dubious Scholar says.
In Starfinder especially the trait becomes really problematic, insofar as that it almost doesn't do anything at all or imposes a semi-permanent -2 to attacks in construct/undead/whatever heavy campaigns... which sort of makes the trait impossible to budget.
Like the Pulsecaster is essentially identical to the laser pistol except it has a shorter range and the nonlethal trait, so it's not even like the weapon is getting some meaningful advantage for its penalty.
Like, I'm punching a skeleton for 1d4+4 B, but it doesn't matter that I have +4 strength if my fist is technically nonlethal? It won't break the bones? That doesn't make any sense at all.
Side note: Undead aren't blanket immune to Nonlethal damage. Not even Incorporeal creatures. So you can punch a Skeleton Guard or even a Muse Phantom and deal damage with the Nonlethal attack.
Generally speaking, there should probably be a rule somewhere that says creatures immune to nonlethal damage treat it as lethal damage instead unless stated otherwise.
So... what exactly would immunity to nonlethal damage do?
I'm confused. The creature is immune to nonlethal damage, which means it ignores and removes the Nonlethal trait entirely and just takes damage as though the attack was not Nonlethal...?
Still, it's always felt odd as a whole, because taking the -2 to hit to... what? You're already swinging the weapon as hard as you can, but suddenly it'll dent something it couldn't before?
That is a narrative mismatch. You can fix that with not describing a standard Strike as 'swinging the weapon as hard as you can' in the first place. Describing it that way has problems with other things anyway such as Shattering Impact or Hero's Edge.
I will say that it is harder to justify for ranged weapons like the Pulsecaster pistol. But I would still rather have the mechanical ability to take the penalty and remove the Nonlethal from the attack, than not be able to do that because of narrative reasons.
SF1 undead having mind affecting immunity is a much worse problem. Not only did it make sense (mind-affecting SHOULD affect sentient undead because they have, well, minds), but it cripples mystic damage output via mind thrust and removes the potential to trick undead with magic...making them boring "roll for initiative" enemies, only.
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So maybe an item called an "Overcharger" which counter acts internal limiters that allow the item to be non-lethal. it can be activated with a free action, but after each hit you must pass a DC 5 flat check. on a failure the equipment gains the glitching 1 status (Glitching 2 on a crit fail) until you use an action to turn off the Overcharger.
Why a flat check?
For historical context, in the system PF2/SF2 is based off of (D&D 3.0), Lethal damage and nonlethal damage used to come off of 'different ends' of HP: nonlethal created a threshold = to max HP -nonlethal damage. If lethal damage met that threshold they would pass out. You could continue to do normal damage (or even nonlethal damage) and kill them. You could even do enough non lethal damage that it effectively became lethal.
Now, back to today's game. That entire subsystem of how nonlethal damage worked is gone now, and all it means now is that the final blow doesn't kill an enemy. So, honestly, we could just fully remove 'Nonlethal damage' from the game. It serves no purpose that would wouldn't be able to get from something easier and more consistently applied.
According to the rules, a fist is nonlethal, but I absolutely could kill someone with my bare hands, or destroy a robot with them, anyone could, and certainly someone that's fighting eldritch horrors and demons on a regular basis could as well. Taking a -2 to make the attacks lethal just breaks my suspension of disbelief. If hitting someone with a fist is nonlethal, why do people die in accidents in fist fights and stuff all the time?
Lastly, why would a robot be immune to nonlethal anyway? You can shake up a machine and jostle it's parts loose without doing any actual damage to the individual components.
For all those reasons, and more, we don't lose anything by getting rid of "nonlethal damage" We've already gotten rid of all the subsystems around it so lets take the band aid off and move on.
How it could work: The non lethal trait could simply indicate that the attacker can choose not to kill an enemy with the final blow, or that the trait grants a free action called something like "Show Mercy" with the trigger of "your last hit reduced the enemy to 0 hit points" and the effect "you decide to show them mercy and knock them out instead of killing them". Or a player using a weapon without the nonlethal trait can knock enemies out on the final blow with a successful dc11 flat check, while weapons with the nonlethal trait can kill an enemy instead of knowing them out on the final blow with a DC 11 flat check. Either of these or something else as elegant would do.
One interesting thing is one of the main non lethal weapons is also electricity based. I am curious how that immunity interacts when they are weak to the damage type being done.