Kirjava wrote:Actually now I think about it, these ships are Naval designed hulls, and I would assume that with the possible exception of the Minmatar slaves on Ammarian vessels, that strict health and safety standards would be enforced. This forces forwards development of new systems. The chair of a fighter pilot is about 2-3% of the value of the entire craft, and this is cheaper than the investment of millions to train a pilot to calibre in the first place. I would wager that the economically conservative position would be to integrate escape pod systems like what capsuleers have, with the same escape pattern (ejected through a pre existing pipe as I understand it) before the hull fails.
Saves lives, saves on retraining costs for new Naval personnel, keeps morale higher as you aren't in a tincan going to your death.
One or two exection seats,
maybe as many as four, yeah. But on crewed aircraft with more personnel, well, no. No ejection seats at all on, say, a P-3c Orion. Expensive crew, sure - But the costs (and engineering compromises) that many multiple seats cost becomes too much. Everyone gets plain old parachutes.
Likewise, with EVE; The Capsuleer is the capital cost investment. The rest of the crew is mostly makee-learnee, and thus relatively inexpensive and thus expendable.
Truthfully, you'd do better to take a look at submarines again. Some have escape pods, but most don't - the majority have fairly rudimentary self-rescue equipment, and connections for - mostly wishful - external rescue. With EVE, some escape capacity - updated equivalents of parachutes and Steinke Hoods -would be economical. Beyond that, it quickly gets very expensive and presents serious engineering challenges to provide more.
The possibility exists of shuttle-sized escape craft would exist on capital ships, and those would be more efficient, but would also require that crew move from their duty stations to the escape shuttle on 'abandon ship' orders, making the loss of life probably greater.
Edit:
T2 frigates, interceptors, and interdictors could probably best afford full escape pod capacity, and would most need that capacity - T2 crews are likely to be very valuable assets, IMO.