Escape shuttle is weird. So what makes a good round end?

[Eagletanker]

Now, let's look at this lore-wise. What does The Company - Centcomm - do during all this?

• Centcomm is completely okay with sending and re-sending the shuttle as many times as necessary, no charge, no complaint! Fuel costs be damned!
  
• Centcomm is completely okay with their extremely expensive station going derelict over any reason, or none provided! They have no thresholds in place to determine what is a "shuttle-callable" situation, structural integrity or crew shortage does not matter! This crew just feels like leaving, I guess!
  
• The shuttle is called *every round*! That's each round of a derelict space station, if we consider each round doesn't exist in its own self-contained universe.
  
• Make money and research to lose it all! The station is no-doubt expensive, but it does not seem to matter to the company, despite there being mechanics in place for station budget and selling research.
  

Okay, so the shift we play is the last shift on SS13. We all get fired when we reach centcom.

Which, expanding on that. I don't think the shuttle actually goes to centcom. In game, we head there after a brief 2 minute transit through the channel, but in canon we know the journey would be a lot longer due to SS10 serving as a port for ships going in and out of the frontier.

Assuming you start at a SS13 floating around near the debris, you would head to SS10 on the first leg, from there, depending on if you live in the frontier or not, you would then board a ship heading into the sol system, or would then get off and have to make your way to where ever it is you live. As you pass through the channel, you then reach earth. From there, those who live on earth would disembark and leave, while a second ship drops people off at mars and the Belt, likely around Ceres or somewhere.

And now
Light lag

So, Communication isn't instant in the distance we are dealing with, and as we can tell from several emails, NT stations are under attack at the moment across known space. This rather that point in time everything in the frontier boils over and goes to shit. NT probably can afford the cost to do the repairs needed, assuming the crew doesn't do them already, though with a downturn in short term profit. It's likely NT doesn't even know the extent of the damages, with communication assumedly taking a good amount of time to travel from SS13 to SS10 to Centcom, probably somewhere around 20 minutes would be a reasonable choice. Which leaves us with the last one.

What we are dealing with on station is company script called credits, which seeing from what we earn in game means that the places we are buying and selling from is company stores. NT hasnt been turning much of a profit from SS13 prior to this shift, and when the shuttle comes, it's us being all fired as stated before for a new crew draft to be filled out and sent to SS13. Even if the station makes a obscene profit, it's likely that this has been planned in beforehand and all our paperwork has been filed to fire us. And if the crew asks to go home early, who cares if it's a few minutes before they all get officially fired.

Like emily has stated, centcom is the end cap of a round. It's all the simpsons couch gag and a cool place to run around and murder each other with your goodies that you couldnt/didnt get to use that round. I think as the shuttle exists right now it's fine. Cramped yes, but bearable and a fun last chance sorta thing.