At the risk of violating the adage, "Never interrupt your enemy in the process of making a mistake..."
I was perusing many of the ship designs so far submitted and noticed a distinct lacking of escape pods and boats on a number of designs across a number of fleets. Including one design that appears to have zero. And a number of those designs are carrying marines.
I know its a small amount of weight (except for troop haulers, but still not much), but I can't help but think that in-universe people would question that? And I don't see how that's not going to bite someone in the tail at some point, either morale issues, "Sir, um... the marines somehow learned to count with their shoes on, and they've concluded there's 30 lifeboats on the vessel... and 2000 of them. Um... they're asking questions now and I don't know how to answer them. And giving them the blue desert crayons isn't calming them down this time." or a PR nightmare as troops describe attempts to abandon ship... "Star News Network here, bringing you word from the survivors of the recent battle... Ship's mate Johnson, I understand you were on the oddly named SS GonnaGoBoom when she suffered a catastrophic warp core breach?" Johnson: "Warp cores are from holovision! It was worse, the fusion plant had a cracked bottle and the scuttle charge didn't work. Captain ordered abandon ship, and we all start running to the pods, but... There weren't enough! I saw two officers knife fight over the last slot in a boat. Sadly for them, I was able to slip in and hit the launch button."
I know 'small craft' sounds like an answer, but if you can't dump all your small craft and fighters in one turn/flush, that doesn't sound like a viable alternative to not enough pods and boats. Not to mention things like being fueled, ready to launch at a moments notice, having enough bay doors, flight control, etc.
And I'm not sure "casualties mean we don't have to supply for everyone" just doesn't seem like a good comment to make after a disaster without initial casualties... Like a patrol boat that decided to ram an ice-breaker cruise ship's hull, and sunk itself... (Seriously, wtf Venezuela... wtf.)