All ships have a rating for each of five components:
 

• Guns are the number of shots a ship can fire in combat. Guns always hit their target when fired. All ships (except devices) have at least one gun.
• Damage Points (DP) are the total amount of damage (usually from enemy guns) that a ship can sustain it is destroyed. Every ship has at least one DP.
• Engines represents the number of sectors a ship can move in one turn. Some ships may have an engine rating of zero and are thus immobile.
• Scan is the number of sectors away the ship's long-range scanners can see. A ship with a scan rating of zero can see only the sector it occupies on short-range scan.
• Racks represents the total tonnage of cargo (missiles, other ships, or devices) that the ship can carry aboard it.

 
These five components taken together define a ship class. For example, you might design a "frigate" class that has 20 guns, 15 DP, 4 engines, 1 scan, and 0 racks. The following additional ship stats are computed automatically for each ship based on its components:
 

• Cost is the number of RUs required to build one ship of a given class. In order to design a new ship you must pay a one-time design fee that is double this cost. See the Research section.
• Tonnage is the mass of the ship. For all ships except missiles, tonnage is computed based on the class' components. For missiles, the tonnage is part of the ship's design, since the tonnage directly affects the cost.
• Auto-repair (AR) is the number of DP that will be repaired automatically during the Auto-Repair phases. In most cases this is one-tenth of the ship's DP, rounded down, but always at least one.
• The Operation Rating (OR) of a ship is a measure of how functional its systems are and is defined by how much damage a ship has taken. A ship's OR is computed with this formula: 
  OR = √(current DP/original DP)

 
As a ship incurs damage, its guns, engines, and scan ratings are multiplied by its OR and rounded to the nearest integer (possibly zero). Until a ship is repaired, it operates at this reduced efficiency.