Just an idea

[Menschenfresser]

Thinking about this a little further, and it might clear up the discussion between having it as part of the exp or separate.

I think it is impossible to have a ship by ship morale rating unless as I read in another thread, a retreat option is added to the tactical battle. The reason being is that if you lose, the ship is destroyed. Very few ships would actually suffer from bad morale. You are either alive or dead. It is probably impossible to even have a fleet morale rating. Well, I mean you can have one, but it would be worthless...never being negative.

Maybe "morale" isn't the right word...in that it implies the actual attitude of a given soldier, ship, unit, etc. It would have to function on a larger level, and be called something like "status of the armed forces," or even "mutiny rate." Something that is directly effected by an empire's win/loss ratio. As I said before, it could very well be segmented, in that any given empire has a separate rating when facing each different opponent.

A neat feature of this could be a "heroic acts" ability. I don't know how hard it would be to make the engine recognize battles won that should have been lost, etc. I don't know. Still running with the idea, even if I have no idea if it is possible to implement. I don't see much of a way to do it without, like some have suggested, an expansion pack or massive change in future patches.