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In the rules, it says that the morale loss for conquering a planet can be high. However, it never says what that morale loss is.

If you conquer a HW, which usually has a morale of 9, how far will that drop? Surely down to 0 or close to there, right? It would be somewhat weird for an empire to take over another empire's homeworld and suddenly double its economy.

The rules as written in 1E have you rolling a D6 morale check for the planet after conquest. On a 3 or less, the planet loses 3 Morale. If a homeworld is attacked or conquered, each of that empire's colonies must roll a morale check and lose 1 Morale if they roll a 1.

Morale losses in 1E are pretty minor, and there are a few optional rules that help that, namely one where each colony rolls for morale shifts at the end of the year to see if Morale has gone up or down. This induces a bit more variability.

2E goes one step further and has morale checks performed every turn, with a number of modifiers applied to a roll to see if a colony's Morale increases or decreases. The 2E Morale check is done on a 2D6 roll, and many of the modifiers that can be applied to the roll are pretty severe.