Some of my ideas and questions

[Suicide Junkie]

That's a hardcode problem. You've only got Gas/Rock/Ice to work with when trying to make components or ships.

You could add a racial trait, "Vaccuum Hardened", which would relate to surviving exposure in space.
(Vaccuum breathers without this trait could be said to require something else to function effectively, such as radiation for lifesupport)

The racial trait would give ships built-in lifesupport, plus an emmissive armor ability.
That way, small arms "1000's of little holes" fire would have much less effect, while torpedoes, WMGs, and other "rip the ship apart" weapons would be only slightly diminished.
Ships larger than LC would still have to be designed with extra Lifesupport to meet the hull requirements, but losing their LS components would not harm the crew's ability to operate, and the ship would not lose movement. In effect, the lifesupport would be more luxury than nessesity.

Note that giving the hull multiple lifesupport abilities will not help: only one LS ability is effective per component (or hull embedding).

This would be a cool trait to add, the only difficulty is that it is not limited to vaccuum breathers.
Still, the value of the trait is the same for all races, despite being theoretically easier for vaccuum breathers to achieve...