but why would you want to suicide a perfectly good ship by self destructing it lol. once they add the death penalty you might as well take self destruct off your bar

Well, the idea is that you use it when you don't have a perfectly good ship and are in danger of blowing up anyway. If they do something similar to City of Heroes the Death Penalty can be reduced or waved entirely in some cases, so perhaps by using Abandon Ship when you are about to blow up you get a reduced penalty since you presumably saved some crew.

I do believe that is the entire point of the higher level abilities all captains get. Ramming speed is a very viable tactic, whether as an offensive tool in larger ships (nevermind just using it for a speed boost sometimes) or as a last ditch effort to take out your opponent when you're about to die any way. Self destruct seems to be even better at affecting multiple targets by increasing the damage output of the warp core breach. Meanwhile, Abandon Ship is supposed to save crew - if I remember correctly for a while in OB when you PVP'd and were about to die, if you got an Abandon Ship off in time you didn't suffer the crew penalties upon respawn. Depending on the severity of the upcoming DP, I am sure Abandon Ship will be beneficial - it will all come down to the Captain's preferred style. Go down fighting? Or save the crew?