Oh, is this thread being resurrected?
I'd say, you should leave the pods in, as they are an essential part of Allegiance, and should transfer over to "Allegiance on land" too if it is to be at all similar to this game in spirit. Having people re-spawn after a brief delay is... exactly like every other first-person shooter out there, ever. It's in no way unique or innovative; it's just boring. Having something like a pod adds an extra element to the gameplay: a good team will work together to pick up pods quickly, and thus will "re-spawn" quickly, while a bad team will not do so, and so will weaken themselves. Plus, even if wandering around in a pod is boring, at least you're doing *something*, instead of sitting there looking at a count-down on your computer screen.
I'd say, have a type of infantry that acts as a pod, and is not armed. That is, when a pilot is ejected from a wrecked vehicle, they do not have a weapon, while if someone chooses to be the infantry from the start, and deploys as such, they get to deploy with weapons and other equipment, because they've prepared to actually wage warfare on foot, while the pilot would have been relying on their vehicle, and would not be prepared to fight independently of it. This might not be entirely realistic, but I think it's one of those excusable moments of un-realism that are needed to keep the game working, and at least there's some logic behind it. If you're going to be piloting a vehicle, you probably wouldn't be keeping a huge, bulky anti-armour rocket launcher with you in the cockpit, and the heavily armoured units in the world of Quantus probably wouldn't take much damage from the kind of tiny side-arm that a pilot would be likely to carry with them at all times. If you must, include some sort of weak hand-gun that does next to no damage.
No matter how unrealistic an unarmed pilot might be, it's still much more realistic than magic instant re-spawning back at base.
Un-armed ejected pilots can run back to base, or something like "rescue probes," or be picked up by other vehicles, as in Allegiance, at which point maybe they'll re-spawn instantly, or maybe the vehicle will have to actually carry them back while giving them something to do in the meantime (like supplying them with actual weapons).