Glossary / Commonly used terms

This page lists commonly used terms and abbreviations used in the ES source-code and ES developer community.

Term	In-game meaning
Carried Ship	Ship typically of a small class like Fighter or Drone that can be carried by another (larger) ship.
Carrier	Ship typically of a larger class that can carry one or more (smaller) ships.
Depreciation	The loss of value (in selling costs) over time of outfits and ships.
Deploy	Activity where a carried ship leaves its carrier to fly independently.
Depart	Start of an activity for leaving a planet by ship. Can be interrupted if there are reasons not to leave yet.
Launch	Activity where a ship leaves a planet.
Recall	Order from a flagship to carried ships in its fleet to return to their carriers.
Return	Activity where a carried ship returns to its carrier.

Abbreviations

Abbreviation	Non-abbreviated
Cap	Short for capturing.
Combat Rating	A sort of reputation that measures your combat experience. Influences missions offered and which planets you can demand tribute from.
DPS	Damage per Second.
Escort	Can refer to either ships that are part of the player's fleet, or ships that are a part of a mission and follow the player.
Farming	Taking some repeated action over a length of time in order to achieve a goal (e.g. obtaining a large number of some outfit, credits, or reputation).
<first> <last>	The player character. (See text replacements)
FW	Free Worlds.
Kiting	Maneuvering such that you can attack your enemy while they cannot attack you.
Minmax	Minimizing undesired stats or attributes while maximizing desired stats or attributes.
Piracy Threat	How attractive your fleet is to raids by pirates, increased by how much cargo space you have and decreased by the total DPS of your fleet.
Plugin	A collection of text files and possibly images and sounds used for expanding or modifying the base game. (See the creating plugins page)
RNG	Random Number Generator. Abbreviation usually used in contexts where luck is needed to accomplish something (like capturing a ship with low odds.)
Save scumming	Repeatedly reloading a save file until achieving the desired results.
Tiers	A non-linear measure of strength used to compare factions. (See the story ideas page.)
Tribute	Dominating a world to receive a daily amount of credits from them.
WS	World-Ship.