mo·rale (m-rl)
n.
The state of the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks.
With this in mind there is no reason not to label what is going as morale as opposed to some other label.
Experience should play a roll in morale. I liked the idea of comparisons for fleet sizes especially. Perhaps the more "elite" a force is in experience the lower a morale penalty they would get and the slower morale in general would go down, and the faster it might go up.
Also morale should be empire wide and perhaps divided up by empires. Example being for the Star Trek Universe there would normally be pretty darn low moral when facing the Borg but when facing more common enemies and threats, especially ones that have been beaten in the past morale would be higher.
With this I would say there should be both an individual ship morale and an empire wide morale that is used more as a modifier when dealing with or battling with another empire. For the ship by ship it should work something similiar to planet happiness which is already a modifier of morale on a planet level.
For the system wide it should have one for each foreign empire which would act to reduce or increase morale for individual ships when they engage in battle with that specific empire.
Example:
You have 2 BC's and the enemy has 2 DN's.
Your BC's are well trained and have had several recent victories so their individual morale is high.
The DN's are much larger than your own BC's so your individual morale is abit lower, though not as low as it would be for a green crew.
However, your empire has had a long line of recent crushing defeats against this empire and so this reduces all morale by x amount for this battle.
Or, your empire has had a long line of recent crushing victories against this empire so this increases all morale by x amount for this battle.
The results of the battle come in and you compare it and determine how the individual ships involved where affected morale wise, and then how this affects your empire level morale against that empire.
Seems this would be a fun and varied system to implement as it could also lead to new technologies that could be used. Morale increasing for fanatacism with religious (especially if some holy symbol was built into the ship) no morale for emotionless, perhaps morale affecting weapons for psychic races and even a propaganda intel op which seeks to lower an empires general morale against your own or raise it against an enemies etc...
Morale could be used to help the AI come to decisions as well. Low morale = more likely to agree to peace etc and high morale less likely.
And as for ship by ship not being possible without a retreat option... I disagree. I have had many battles where one side was not totally wiped out, but one side clearly came out ahead. All that is needed is to base it on damage recieved. Even if you win but are badly damaged your morale is affected not as good as it happens. Perhaps make it so that based on simply surviving combat you get a morale bonus and then have it be modified with bonuses for kills made and negatives for allies killed and more negatives for damage done to you with some positives for damage dealt to enemy (Actual damage not shields damage). Store that for a single battle then analyze it at the end or even during combat (take damage moral goes down, deal damage moral goes up, enemy destroyed by my guys goes up, mine destroyed goes down).
[This message has been edited by Cyrien (edited 03 October 2001).]