Has anyone ever run, or been in a campaign where ship morale was an issue, that wasn't something cooked up by the GM, probably as a Misfortune?
When I come up with broken ship components: sunsears, macrobatteries in general, miloslav drives, etc. the single most broken one is luxury passenger components. It's disadvantage is the -3 crew morale, yet a dozen of the things rarely affects a single battle.
I was thinking of running my next campaign with ship morale based on troop morale given in BFK, where incompetent, competent, crack, veteran, and elite crew have base morales of 50, 60, 70, 85, and 100.
Pros: 1) Morale would become important. Mutinies might even occur during battle. Certainly, penalties to Command and BS would come into play. 2) There would be a reason to spend initial PF on better crews. I mean, who ever spends those PF/SP on crew rating? 3) Ships wouldn't all fight until they explode/implode. Anybody ever seen a ship surrender? 4) Quality components could all permanently affect morale without ships having 150 morale. It would make morale easier to calculate.
Cons: I'm worried that it takes morale from unimportant to all-consuming.