legit suicide?

Score-wise, is it a good strategy to blow myself up (rocket blow) when my opponent kicks me off a space platform? That way, my opponent doesn't get a point, but there's a penalty for me. The difference in points is still the same, right?

Well in duel it's irrelevant. In dm, you'll end up reducing your score in relation to everyone else as opposed to giving only one player an extra point, so doing that seems only "useful" in case the other player is one frag before fraglimit and you have reasonable expectations to still frag a couple of people before the opponent does his final frag.

But all in all I think that's a pretty far-fetched scenario.

I've ended up winning several close dm games because I denied a void frag from a 29 pointer, respawned and made a quick 2 frag comeback from 28 points - or from some relatively similar situation. It's totally legit, but also extremely situational. Sometimes you need to decide between being defensive or being suicidal, because your goal is to not let that opponent have a point from you - there are various ways you can deny them getting it. If they're heavily armed and stacked then there's no guarantee that they don't just continue their spree even if you go ahead and kill yourself in front of them, so sometimes +backing and spamming shit behind your trail works better.

I guess only in a game where there is a frag limit would this matter. Like Smiley said, pretty situational. In duel it makes no difference. If anything, if my death was certain I'd be looking to do as much damage as possible.

Thanks all for making it clear.