I used to play a real-time version of Batteltech on a text-based mux back in the day. Very accurate to the board game, except real time instead of turn based. When your mech was destroyed, you had the option to eject. When you ejected, you were on foot, running for your life towards friendly lines, praying an enemy mechwarrior didn't decide it was time for a field execution. Now, those you didn't execute, and didn't make it back to friendly lines, you could capture. It immediately sent them to your base's brig. Once you returned from the field, unless somebody let them go, you could go BS with them a bit (everybody was pretty cool for the most part, like here), ask them about their equipment levels, etc, and then usually after an hour you'd release them, or they'd be auto-free'd by a timer in the cases where they logged off. I think the longest I ever spent in a brig was 20 minutes.
It was a pretty good system, and something similar may work with TOD. It gives incentive to flee on foot, gives something else from GV's to do, and would create interesting rescue situations if dying had stiff penalties.
