Imagine this situation...

[CCC]

Player and Lancemates (two of), all in reasonably good mecha, attack Encounter (four enemies). Player and Lancemates take superficial damage while destroying three enemy mechs and severely crippling the fourth.

Last enemy mech fires at Player, gets what must be a lucky hit and causes non-superficial damage to the head, forcing Player to eject.

So far, all well and good. These things happen. Player's mech is not irretrievable, as it turns out.

However, two lancemates in barely scratched mecha find themselves unable to take down severely damaged single mech without Player. What?

I have a suggestion. Lancemates should be able to continue fighting in some manner after the player is knocked out of the battle (albeit with a far greater chance of surrender), without it being displayed (for speed), with the player getting a summary. The player's renown drops whether the lancemates who or lose, but if they win the surviving lancemates' renown goes up; the player still gets the reward for the mission and perhaps a snide comment for the death.

Is this at all practical?

[macksting]

I wonder if the Renown damage should still be there, even if they report a success.
I've always thought the game X-Wing needed this option.

[CCC]

Well, Player did get shot down and forced to eject; this should be reflected in some manner. Perhaps Player should take less renown damage than if Lancemates lose, but I do think that some renown damage is in order. (Of course, this will mean that your lancemate's renown can outstrip yours. Perhaps one day the NPC's will be able to ask "Do you work with the famous Lancemate? Really? You are so lucky - what was your name again?" or "I have a mission for Lancemate. Do you think you could ask him to do it for me? I'm sure it'll present no problem for a pilot of his skill, provided you don't get too much in his way." - if this happens too often.)

[Crucifix]

I always thought it strange that ejecting for any reason caused insta-fail. What if your character happens to be geared up with a hand-held "nova-beam 9001", a full set of Thracian Power Armour, and 20 points in Vitality? To all intents and purposes, a miniature, slightly reduced mecha with attitude, and probably geared up with some pretty nifty hover/flight jets to boot. You could probably finish the job yourself if you'd caused enough damage to start with, or wait for your lancemates to do so whilst staying out of harm's way.

Heck, what about the alternative, where you're a 5 Body librarian with a flight suit? Why should you get an easy out? Escape the map or die foo'!

In general, I'd sooner have a "surrender" option in addition to an "eject" one. If you surrender (and have there a possible morale based surrender just like , the enemy then chooses whether to let you get bounced to world map, capture you (new pseudo-missions: Escape from being imprisoned by your enemies and maybe recover any lost rep, or wait for your faction to pay the ransom and suffer even more reputation loss).

In fact, I'd prefer ejected pilots to stick around in general, and have Mecha hijacking as a viable combat maneuver (busted mech? Forcibly enter an enemy mecha and attack the pilot directly to knock them out of the mecha -and damage them directly of course- and then have a means of entering and piloting the mecha), but these are matters for game mechanics I believe.