The RTSC Guide to Dawn of War
Part 7: Morale

DoW
Basics

Individuals within a squad have their own health points, but but a squad has a collective health bar that tracks its morale. Morale is a critical component in Dawn of War. Its like health, in that different types of squads can have more or less morale than others, but the fighting efficiency of a squad - if not its very survival - depends on whether or not it panics in the middle of a fight. Morale is lost, like normal health, during battle. Some weapons inflict substantial morale "damage" (like Sniper Rifles, flamers or artillery). Some weapons, like the Eldar's Ranger's Long Rifle, actually do very little physical harm but quickly drain morale.

A squad also takes a big morale hit when one of its members dies. You'll often see a squad under heavy fire invariably breaking at the bitter end. Roughly speaking, the death hit is about 10% of the squad's full morale - except for Imperial Guardsmen, who seem to break the moment they see action or a couple of their members die.

When morale hits zero, a squad "breaks". Losing morale is bad. You'll know when a squad has broken when you see pulsating red rings appear around all of its members. What happens is that all the members are so freaked out, that weapon accuracy - both ranged and close combat - drops down to 10%. In other words, a broken squad is rendered impotent on the field, although not necessarily useless. Any fresh reinforcements to that squad will arrive broken as well. Broken squads can still disrupt via hand to hand though, so all is not necessarily lost, but they certainly won't inflict much damage on the enemy.

All squads recover their morale at a set rate, and there's a point (usually 50% of their morale) where they recover their wits and become fully functional again. As a rough rule of thumb, it usually takes about 10-12 seconds to recover once they're in the clear. Space Marines recover their morale far faster than other forces (being heroic as well as homicidal) since they only need to recover 20-25% of their morale. Squads with high levels of morale are generally better performers on the field. Squads with low morale can be broken easily and rendered harmless quicker.

Some units, like Chaos Bezerkers or Grey Knights are morale immune - this means that they simply don't lose morale at all. Ever. They can't be broken.

About the only perk you get with broken units its that they move marginally faster than normal, so you can at least run them away from trouble.