Mostly when i encounter this sort of bug a simple relog helps for some weird reason.
I´m no expert thoug but i have the feeling that if the game not loads properly when you start it that your account and the server are not "really in sync" so that it happens to eat your items when they are rdy but not start at all and so rather skip a round what can be a bad thing in some situations like when you just want to use your RD and in this moment it happens so that you end in the pod.
i think sometimes it needs to replace the game datas to work without any "issues" as
@Suman mentioned. in my experience relog didnt help, i rather deleted the temp datas or restarted the client and i saw some performance improvements too and solved some strange problems e.g my ships with sniperblasters didnt have their sniperblasters anymore visible installed. relog didnt help. sometimes i didnt saw my squad members ship on the planets. stuck blaster shoots in the sky on planets. what about the invisible blaster shoots? we saw the mostly on sirius blasters, it do happened on tau ceti blasters too. and the most strange thing was, i had a bright blue alloy instead of the red one for all my ships even after client restart. solved these mysteriouse things while deleting the temp files.
@Suman did u try out what i've told you about the temp datas? I'm curious how much it effect your gaming.