Space Station 13

Is it me, or is the escape shuttle called too readily in most rounds?

I've often found that the escape shuttle is called even if my character isn't aware of any issues with the station. There's no catastrophic failure, there's no massive loss of life, there's no imminent danger to the station or inhabitants. The shuttle is simply called because people didn't want to deal with the minor issues they were facing (or meta-gamed by knowing that the minor issues could turn into major catastrophic issues and called the shuttle before it got to that point).

The shuttle should be the last ditch effort to survive. If there's no other way to live, that's when the shuttle is meant to be called.

If the singularity has escaped and is eating half of the station, you call the shuttle. If there is an alien infestation that's killed most of the security force and is steadily advancing and killing/infecting the civilian crew, you call the shuttle...

If there's a hull breach in engineering, but the containment field is still active and power is still flowing, that's not a reason to call the shuttle. Fix the damned breach and re-pressurize.

If a small part of the station has been destroyed in a blast. Maybe a few crew died, but there's an active engineering team in place. If after the initial blast there's no immediate risk to the crew and rebuilding isn't a 4 hour job, then don't abandon the station, start rebuilding. (If rebuilding isn't an option, but the loss of that portion of the ship isn't a major hindrance, then seal it up and keep going. It adds depth to that round).

And back to the Alien threat: If you have seen xenos on the ship, you first try to fight them off... Captain stays on the bridge with an armed sec officer in case the shuttle needs to be called... But the rest of security, and any other combat trained crew should arm themselves from the armory (or R&D if weapons have been developed) and go fight the threat. Don't call the shuttle until it's hopeless... I don't know how many games I've played where we hear over the comms: 'Xenos! I saw a Xeno!' And then 30 seconds later 'The Emergency shuttle has been called.' Despite the fact that Robotics is capable of building combat mechs, the armoury is fully stocked, there's active security staff on board, etc.

I played a round once where we actually won against the xenos... They didn't have much opportunity to infest the crew before the 3 Durands I constructed made short work of them and their nest. Xenos are not invincible, and having them on the station by no means indicates that the station is lost... (Unless the admins have determined in advance that the round is over and the method is a xeno infestation. At that point they will just continue spawning more in different location until you can't fight back anymore. However then it's more fun to fight until you know all hope is lost than to give up before the fight has even begun.) Think of how boring it is for the xeno players if as soon as they are seen the shuttle is called. It would be much more fun for them to try to sneak around, breaking into area lightly guarded, but loaded with civilians for them to infect.

tl;dr: Don't abandon the station so quickly. Only a credible imminent threat of total loss of life should initiate an emergency shuttle.