RSS
A lot of equipment that people might carry in a game includes weapons and protection. The third main category is survival gear. Often considered subordinate to combat gear, it can nevertheless be of vital importance. One way to emphasise its importance is to damage or destroy it. And make sure the party is in a situation where they'll need to make use of it.
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Hah! I thought they'd end up hitting things inside as well! But no ships and only moisture vaporators? On a salt planet where water would be important? ....Yeah okay, that lines up with things so far. We can't have a fight (or a massacre going by the previous scenes of this movie) if all of the ships here get smashed outside of this battle. And I do need to remember that flavor things like that would be movie bonus extras at best or found only in other media.
I bet the GM will end up making this a complication though. Even if the movie has the battle start very soon after the landing, there's no way it'd last long enough for the loss of moisture vaporators to be meaningful. Even with an interlude for a meeting about the upcoming fight, it would be a couple hours at most. But since we've already had one instance where time was stretched out and fatigue was an issue, why not a second time? We could have days worth of a stand-off here!
Transcript
GM: The shuttle is still moving! It slides destructively through the fortress!
[SFX]: scraaape!
Finn: Is there something we can hit to slow down?
GM: Besides Resistance personnel?
Finn: What are these on the map?
[SFX]: scraaape!
GM: Moisture vaporators.
[SFX]: crash! crash! {the shuttle smashes through one, then two vaporators}
[SFX]: griiind... {the shuttle grinds to a halt}
[SFX]: pow! pow! pow! pow! {Resistance troops fire at the shuttle}
Rose: {poking head out of the cockpit} Hey! It’s us!
Poe: Hold fire!
C-3PO: Lucky I don’t need water to survive on this salt planet.
Poe: Reconsider firing!