I had some thoughts about this last night, and came to a radical conclusion:
What if ships were immortal, like fighters? I.E., they could die in the battle but not be perma-dead?
What if they were treated like jRPG characters- you don't have a Paragon, you have a White Wizard off your port bow?
Then the question wouldn't be avoiding losses, but what they cost, in time and supplies, to repair, and feed in between battles. It'd be a very different game.
Then the choices would be about what size of battle you thought you could handle, and the strategic consequences of losing, rather than the hours down the drain of losing a Paragon kitted out with rare gear. It'd take the sting out of losing weak ships and encourage more big-fleet play rather than avoid-all-expenses play, especially if the costs were balanced well.
Or, for another way to look at it, what if ships were treated like the Companions of Mount and Blade, rather than the (not-actually) expendable troops; what if the time investment in them wasn't going to get lost, period, and the question was mainly about whether you could do a mission with them, not whether you might lose one of them on said mission and have all the satisfaction of success soured by the loss of the next hour and a half of your life?
For newbies, especially newbies who haven't figured out the Storage Facility (i.e., the vast majority of people trying the game for the first time)... that might matter quite a lot, in terms of retention rates.
Anyhow, sorry for the heresy, but the more I explored that one, the more appealing it sounded, frankly. The time-loss is probably the single biggest "ick" moment, especially for the newbies just trying to figure stuff out. Heck, just making Frigates and Destroyers as immortal as Fighters would probably be enough to radically change how people play.