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If you have no cover in a firefight, make your own! The landscape often provides interesting things that can be flung into the air by a well placed shot, or explosion. Or even just grabbing handfuls of flour and tossing them in the air. Create smoke, create dust, scatter piles of leaves, whatever.
And if all else fails, you can always lose yourself in the St Patrick's Day parade that always happens to be going by whenever you're trying to flee someone.
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Oh, that's a clever idea! It's difficult to turn a bad roll or situation around so quickly, so kudos to Pete for coming up with the idea. 13 hull damage from the ground and gateway collision is probably nothing compared to getting hit by PIE fighter lasers. The ship will probably need a few new layers of duct tape later though. In the movie, I wonder how many other things were destroyed or being injured while Rey was attempting to fly away from this outpost. That pillar-like thing in the first panel as well as the humanoid in front of the cloud of sand seem like they're right in the way of the Falcon.
I have to say, I'm liking the replacement comms dish the more I look at it. It's not a classic style, but it's definitely a sign the owner is considering what happened previously and using that knowledge when making repairs. Admittedly, the number of times the ship has been just barely too thick to fit through an opening where that makes a difference is exactly once so far, but still. I think that's the first technological improvement I've seen in Star Wars that looks to be an intentional improvement rather than just a cosmetic change.
0.25 portion = 1 small blue mushroomish bread. That plus some stew made for a meal, so let's say 3 bread rolls count as a full meal, so 9 bread rolls would be enough for one full day. Now, consider a trade of one mostly working space ship for 60,000.25 portions. A bit of math later shows that would end up being equivalent to just over 26,666 days of food, or about 73 Earth years worth of bread. Plutt doesn't seem to have a firm grasp that after a point, providing even more of the same food in a trade doesn't make it more likely that the trade will happen. Maybe because it'd be hard to hold onto things with fingers that small.
Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)
If you can't get off the ground, use the ground for your advantage.
So we have the rear engines pushing, but not airborne, and unable to get airborne. Ick. But at least the bottom of the ship is now off the ground, and no longer taking damage. And trying to make as much of a dust cloud as possible? Good idea. How much hull damage does the ship have? Good question. It certainly seems to have significant reinforcing compared to worries about space bats chewing through the hull.
And, Hux will not have to worry about this outpost after this. It will be destroyed, the quarter master will be... out of a job, and the few people that survive will wonder the desert looking for something... oh, right, whatever it is that Hux doesn't want found. Ouch.
The perspective of these shots makes me wonder - just how big is the Falcon? How big are those feature details, and why does there seem to be so many exhaust ports on the top of the ship? And why is there a radar dish up there anyways?
The rear engine alone, trying to provide enough thrust to move forward faster than gravity will pull you down? Well, escape velocity is escape velocity (at least as far as I understand), and the speed of Newton's around-the-world cannonball is also the speed of a rocket going straight up. So if the rear engines are powerful enough to give enough speed, you can just go in an ever increasing outward spiral to reach orbit.
Which brings up an even stranger way to take off, if you don't care about collateral damage to the city town hamlet tent village formerly known as Niima. :-) Just turn on your main engine, and push enough dust into the air to cover your acceleration along the ground.
Now, if you worry that this will have the good guys killing people, don't worry. Even if this spaceship manages to avoid running anyone over, when the place is destroyed, and there's no more functional food and water dispensary? Oh, right. None of the people are drinking water, and the rest of the stuff is probably imported in bottles. Makes as much sense as the lack of wheeled alternatives to the lack of anti-grav :-).
(Seriously; where do they get enough water to fill a trough like that in the desert? What's next, a swimming pool full of water?)
Transcript
GM: The PIEs turn for another attack.
[SFX]: Skkkkrrraaappe...!!
Finn: Get us moving! We’re vulnerable until we get up to speed!
Rey: I drag the hull along the ground and crash through the village gateway arch. 15 for Piloting.
BB-8: What are you doing?!
Rey: The dust clouds will give us cover as we accelerate.
[SFX]: Skkkkrrraaappe...!!
[SFX]: Krash!!
GM: Ooh, nice. <roll> <roll> <roll>
GM: The Falcon takes 13 hull damage from the impacts. The PIEs fire again, but miss in the confusion.
Unkar Plutt: Hey! That’s your ship?
Unkar Plutt: I’ll give you sixty thousand and one quarter portions!