A fairly simple suggestion that I think makes a lot of sense. It could be a hull-mod, or maybe a basic characteristic that can be improved with a hull-mod. Basically, before your ship goes, you can save a percentage of your crew by having them get to the escape pods. Escape pods can be objects on the battlefields that can be bumped into and destroyed, shot and destroyed, whatever, or they can be just little graphics that float around above the ships, like fighters.
As a side note, I've noticed that marines aren't actually crewed in ships, which seems a little silly. Marines should die in fleet action too.
