Those are from early beta Versions, when (believe it or not) ships didn't have a component damage model - you had 3 sets of hitpoints: hull, armor, and shields. (No facings either.
) When your hull ran out you died, just like now. But instead of gaining their hull hitpoints from their components, ships got them from the entries you found, so a destroyer might have 100 hull, 100 armor, and 100 shields, with armor and shield generators adding 50 to the appropriate counter. (There were a lot fewer component slots back then, too. Thank Imperator Fyron and PvK for pushing for detail
) I'm not entirely sure why changing them would cause an invalid floating point error; my guess would be that it would either give inflated readouts for ship hitpoints or make ships invincible (they would have HP that can't be taken away no matter what)... but who knows the internal workings of this game?