battlefield-3
I've been wondering if I can choose to suicide from the game menu without hurting my team, but too nervous to try it.
Occasionally I'll find myself super far from the action, or regret that I picked the wrong class, and I want to suicide to fix the issue quickly. Am I right to avoid that and play out the life?
You have to own more than half the points for bleeding to occur. There are usually (always?) an odd number of points, so 2/3 or 3/5 is required for bleeding of tickets.
At max "bleed" -- when the enemy owns all capture points -- based on my testing, you lose about 1 ticket every 3 or 4 seconds. It definitely hurts and frequently causes us to lose matches where the ticket count is close. It's also why I get frustrated with teams where they're more interested in fighting than making sure we don't lose all the damn capture points, but I digress..
I can't say exactly how many tickets you bleed when the enemy owns more than half but not quite all the capture points. It's less rapid, but I'll have to do a bit more testing.
If it is a star, then it means that they are the squad leader. If it is an ammo clip or something like that, then that means that this person has a squad perk equipped. 
So, in order on the above picture, we have:
Best Answer
Suiciding in-game equals dying by getting shot or blown up, so, yes, your team will lose a ticket every time you do that.
My advice: Play along defensively, and switch to another class by picking up a team mate's equipment.