Traveller has a patron-based system. I played T20, and in that you roled a few dice to determine how many terms of your service you completed, how many experience points your earned and to what level you advanced, and you go on until you decide to stop or your character fails his survival role, and you started actual game play at whatever level and age your character ended up at. the most valuable treasure anyone could have in Traveller was one's ship! of course combat was deadly, as there was no fast healing in that game, so one engaged in it reluctantly. Whenever one engaged in combat in space, one risked his very valuable ship, the possible outcomes were
A) you destroyed your opponent's ship,
B) you captured your opponent's ship and gained its cargo,
C) your opponent loses the engagement, decides discretion is the better part of valor and escapes,
D) You lose the engagement, and you decide discretion is the better part of valor and you escape
E) Your Opponent captures your ship and takes your stuff and your characters are captured
F) As E, except you escape from captivity, but you lose your ship and cargo
G) As E but your character(s) are either killed or executed.
H) Your ship is destroyed in combat, but you managed to escape before its final destruction.
I) Your ship is destroyed and you are killed.
That pretty much covers it. So how do you as a GM handle each possible outcome from a ship to ship engagement as I described?
