Quitting DOES result in a loss of your stats, more so than just surrendering. If you have less than 50% completed games you will get pigeonholed to the "quitters, players to avoid" category... possibly rightfully.

Well, maybe.  Surrendering is "honorable", (as P5yy says), but it DOES cripple your team, (if you surrender when/while you have considerable resources, or planets left).  And to be clearer, Surrendering adds a "loss" to you stats, and one more game completed.  Whereas just quitting, only just adds one more game completed (no win or loss is recorded).  That is: 
A new player that 'Surrenders' = 1 Games, 0 Wins, 1 Losses.
A new player that 'Quits' only = 1 Games, 0 Wins, 0 Losses. 
BTW, It is very, very rare to find someone whose stats add up (Games=Wins+Losses). 

P5yy didn't say so specifically, but when someone quits (rather than surrendering), a HARD AI replaces them.  This AI is often better than the player that just quit!  That new Hard AI instantly starts getting 1.5 times more income & resources than the player did!  And a Hard AI isn't completely stupid.  It will employ new strategies, including annoying seige runs.

As P5yy said, when someone 'surrenders', that new 'AI' (that takes over), will just sits there. Or does nothing!

Once I learned this, and realized that recorded "losses" are strictly voluntary, I ALWAYS quit (rather than surrender), at the appropriate time. And I am proud that my stats show 0/Zero losses!

(PS.  A greater than 50% win ratio, is actually a pretty good record!  Due to various disconnects, restarts, and only 1 winner in FFA's, etc. etc.)

I totally agree with these posts. I personally have around 50% games completed, if that. It has nothing to do with not wanting losses, its just the fact that for every game I end up completing, there are 3 other games that got lagged out, too many ppl quit, or ended in a minidump. Not to mention the games where i got rushed, yet didn't want to surrender due to not wanting to screw my teamates with dead AI.

I really hope a solution can be found to this. I think probably the best way is to just keep track of games played. That is really all that anybody looks at, simply because the numbers can be so skewed due to the above reasons.

There was another post about this, where somebody mentioned tracking number of hours played, and designating rank (ei. private, sergeant, captain, admiral, etc.) Even though I don't agree with the 'hours played' aspect of it (ppl may drag decided games out just to increase play time), I do like the idea of the rankings. Perhaps it can be applied to number of games played?

(Sorry to whoever it was who posted that ranking idea, I just can't remember who it was right now)

Once you have been wiped out you have the option of sitting there feeding your team until it ends. Or doing what little you can.

Then the whole team can surrender at the same time when it's clear it's gg. Why would you even quit or surrender before the winner has been decided? If your team wins it's still a win for all team members.