Beam Weapon Power : Rates the strength of the phaser, disruptor, or other beam weapons carried. The figures for phaser power output are calculated with respect to the Galaxy class so as to make them internally consistent with the strength indexes. The Galaxy class numbers in turn are loosely based on (but are a little more conservative than) the numbers generated from the "Power" section (accessed via the blue button below). A ship gets one point for every 50 TeraWatts of beam power.

Torpedo Power : Rates the strength of the torpedo armament. For Federation ships I have come up with eleven different torpedo systems, based slightly on canon but mostly on speculation - for details see the relevant entries under the "Weaponry" section. The tubes are rated against each other according to how many torps they can fire per second, while the torpedoes themselves fall into one of four categories : micro-photon, mini-photon, photon, or quantum. The first two are used on shuttles only, the last on larger ships - a key assumption being that all photon torpedoes carried by all classes are identical.

Firing one full sized photon per second gives 250 points. A standard tube is assumed to fire 0.5 torpedoes per second, giving it 125. For burst fire systems, the points are based on the average rate - so a Type 3 burst fire can fire 10 rounds simultaneously every 5 seconds, giving it am average rate of 2 per second for 500 points.

Quantum torps are rated as being 2.7 times as powerful as photons - this is in line with the DS9 TM's suggestion that Quantums are rated at 50 isotons compared to the photons 18.5 isotons. However, note that the 50 isoton quantum explosion is generated by a 21.8 isoton matter-antimatter "trigger", and depending on the percentage of this energy which is used up in starting the quantum reaction, the Q-torp could have a yield up to about 70 isotons.  Also note that these figures are directly contradicted (as I once predicted that the DS9 TM quickly would be) by at least one episode of Voyager which indicates that the photons carried by that ship have a 200 isoton yield. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the actual number, a 2.7 ratio between photons and quantums seems about right to me.

Mini photons are assumed to be 1/25th the power of a full sized weapon, micro photons 1/50th.

Weapon Range / Accuracy : Attempts to rank the ships according to how well they can use the weapons they have. Basically, the rule I followed was bigger and newer ships have the room for better fire control systems than older or smaller ships.

Shield Strength : Is one of those that is ranked just according to how ships seem to fare on screen. Each 2,700 TeraJoules of shield capacity gets one point.

Hull Armour : One of the most complicated sections! The hull figures are now composed of several different elements - hulls can be different thickness' - light, standard or heavy. They made of Monotanium, Duranium, Duranium/Tritanium alloy, Kelindide, or Variethiel, and can be single or double layered. And the effectiveness of the structural integrity field is also taken into account.

Monotanium was mentioned in a Voyager episode and is presumably an earlier variation on what I call the "Numberanium" type metals. I have used it for the TOS-era ships, and it counts for 0.625 points. Duranium is used for the TOS-movie era ships and counts for 1.25 points, while the Duranium/Tritanium alloy is mentioned in the TNG TM for modern ships and gets 6.25 points.

Kelindide is mentioned in the DS9 TM as being one of the major materials in the hull of DS9, and I have used it on all the Cardassian ships. It gets 3.75 points. Variethiel is an invention of my own and is the material the Dominion uses in its ships (hey, I had to call it something!); it gets 6.875 points. Outer and inner hull layers have been mentioned several times in TNG, justifying their inclusion. Basically, double hulls double the strength.

Hull thickness is another multiplier - light hulls divide the strength by 4, standard leave it alone, heavy double it.

Then, there is the level of Structural Integrity Field - low, standard or high. Low SIF multiplies the strength by 2, standard by 8, high by 16.

Extra strength can then be added for either high density or ablative armour. High density armour is another invention of mine, and basically covers any armour that isn't ablative. Ablative armour is, as we all know, used on the Defiant and other modern Fed ships. Points are added per cm of armour - 100 points per cm of HD, or 150 per cm of ablative.

All this sounds very complex, but it's essential if you're not going to have modern shuttles with ten times the hull strength of old battleships just because they're newer. I think the system works well, and I'm very proud of it!

Warp Speed : Is based on a direct comparison of the top speed of the class, in multiples of lightpseed. For warp factors up to 9 the formula Speed = Warp factor ^ (10/3) is used; for speeds above 9 the formula detailed on the "Warp Scales" sci-tech entry is used.

Combat Agility : This is another area that has been fairly heavily modified. You would not believe the stuff I've gone through to come up with a system that can allow shuttles very high agility without giving them absurdly high strength - it's something I've been working on for literally a year or more now! In the end, after playing with logs and god knows what else I settled on just taking the cube root of the agility number. This still makes the shuttles more powerful than I would like - instead of a good shuttle weighing in at around 50, I'd prefer it to be 5 or 10.

All of these factors are scaled so that the Galaxy class starship comes out at 1,000 in each category. This makes it easy to compare one class with another in any category - you can tell at a glance that an Akira has about one third of the shield strength but five times the agility of a Galaxy. Note that the categories do NOT relate to each other - if a ship has 1,000 in phasers and 1,000 in torpedoes it does not mean that these two weapons are of equal strength to each other, just that they are both equal to their Galaxy class equivalents.