Yes to killmail. No to loot. Scuttling your ship has a long Naval history in RL. For example the famous
Admiral Graf Spee

Well at this point if you can't make the tactical decision to deny loot, why don't they just remove self destruct completely from ships? I am all about there being kill mails and such, but with a properly balanced self destruct timer based on ship class/size blowing up everything including loot should remain an option.

you just failed physics tyrrax. badly.

Every single ship, no. Every ship designed for combat, yes. We already see that today with SD mechanism in most of the high-tech junk being launched against the various cave dwelling (relatively) nations as the wars for control of resources escalates.
Besides, we are talking spaceship with what is presumably fusion or anti-matter reactors .. read up on the damage done by our comparatively primitive fission reactors when they fizzle unintentionally and consider that a deliberate meltdown/destruction will probably be magnitudes worse (cruisers in Eve have approximately the same (slightly lower) output as a modern day nuke plant by the way).

Perhaps I should "contribute" with ad hominem attacks and retarded ~real life~ logic about rigging ships with charges to be able to self-destruct in a spaceship game with lasers and treacle-physics?

I haven't personally self-destructed a ship in combat once so v0v - good job on the psychoanalysis sport.

ps. Posting a contrary point of view =/= ignorance

lol whining about the profanity filter when every post you've made in this thread has included an ad hominem attack.

Really don't understand why you can't simply debate stuff like this like an adult. Have I called you any names? I'm not claiming to be an expert on everything, never have, nor have I said I know everything there is to know about everything. Quite why you feel the need to be so unconstructive is beyond me. If there are a multitude of reasons why someone might self-destruct, outside of escaping WH space, why don't you educate us "ignorant" folk as to what they are?

As for the "10 seconds" thing, that's just getting bogged down in semantics. If it can't be 10 seconds for technical reasons, then maybe it could be 30, or a minute.. the point wasn't that it must be 10 seconds moreover that if the outcome of clicking SD is the same regardless - loot and a killmail for your aggressors - then as far as I can make out, and I'm quite willing to be told I'm wrong in a rational manner, having it take 2 minutes to complete is irrelevant.

Now if it did an AoE blast, or didn't drop loot, the delay would make sense - since that timer would then, as it is now, be a countdown that your enemies have to beat to get the extra reward (or avoid the AoE blast)... for example.

Hey Frodo,

Pinky's right. The SD mechanism isn't haphazard or cobbled together quickly it is also a built-in system that's part of the hull when you purchase it. And with a capsuleer's nerve endings hooked into every system of the ship, self-destructing should indeed be more complete than death by shots from any external source. Blowing something up from the inside out is always preferable for assured complete destruction.