In SWG, there are customization kits for your landspeeders so you can recustomize them instantly.

I think one much more interesting point is the one about being stranded forever on a distant planet deep in enemy or unknown territory during a mission or just flying around. What about your team leaving you on a planet (okay, as you being the captain, that won't happen that much, but remember, the responsibility of the 1st officer onboard the ship is foremost his ship and his crew, not the captain's safety alone; I think that's why being a redshirt was excluded from gameplay by Cryptic). I mean there you definitely get into a situation where you just "want to die" cause nobody is helping you.

Death can also occur on ground missions btw.. I suggest a technology of "transporter storage" where you can leave your biometrical data in such a transporter for a given period of time (much like cloning in SWG) and be respawned when the subspace signal of your death coming from transmitters located all over your body measuring your life signs arrives.

What are replicators good for?  :)

Just get all your interior stuff registered at a fed station or planetary base and get your ship interiors back with some sort of "re-customization kit".

we are playing in the future right? Well then I think of large (and I mean large) replicator array that can replicate a whole ship, but at way more costs than building a standard one of the same class in a conventional shipyard. So you have to pay for it when loosing your ship. Loosing a ship shouldn't occur that often anyone since we trekkies all know that loosing the Enterprise only occurs in the movies and there's much fuzz about it when it happens just once... ;)

I'd like that maroon thing too, but I would rather have a "suicide button", just in case I never get away from that planet ever ;).

I say, go the innovative route and minimize the amount of death or chances of death.  When player characters (not NPC's or MOB's) are defeated, they are knocked out or incapacitated, not killed.  Yes there are Phases and Disruptors set to Kill or Disintegrate; but how often were the main characters (which are player characters) killed?  They somehow got through it, mostly with hits to the shoulders or having that doctor nearby or in time.  And if there was death, there was always a way to cheat it.

So a death of a player character could become a mini-game in which the player must figure out the way to cheat it.  Remember that episode of Piccard being killed and chatting with Q in the afterlife? 


As for ship battles...
Ships have many systems and do not have general hit or body points.  But no one knows how that will work...  Ships I would say are not the same as characters.  Ships can be destroyed and lost.  Thus players should be careful with their ships and retreat from battle if the odds are not good.  But what happens when the ship is lost?
The player character and some of the crew manage to get to the life-pods and get rescued or captured (another mini-game to try to escape) and once again avoid death.  When the character returns to duty, another ship is provided (we won't worry about the realism of captains who loose ships get a desk job), though more of the standard stock.

That's my take. 
Be different, be more like the shows and movies and make death of characters a rarity.  Why do computer games have to have so much death and senseless killings eh?  (Oh to make Ensign or to raise my Phaser skill I need to kill 100 wombats).

I am not good with certain things.

Ships - I'm a casual player, and the Gods help me if I loose my ship how long will it take to get another one?  (Maybe that is why Cryptic wants to do the "more than one ship in dock" thing for those who suck as ship combat like me)

Player - I see nothing wrong with being TPd back to sickbay if you are taken out on a planetary mission.  Who knows, technology could have advanced so far as to monitor biosigns, and at the first sign of distress beam your butt to safety.

Now in PvP, the rules might be different (but I do hate how some PvP tweaks will affect PvE)