Glossary

Voidcrew adds a vocabulary that /tg/station does not have, and most of it turns up on the radio before anyone explains it. This page is the lookup table. Anything not listed here almost certainly means the same thing it means on /tg/station.

The map

Term	Meaning
Overmap	The galaxy map, a 51-by-51 grid of tiles with a star at the centre, on which your whole ship is one icon. See The Overmap.
Zone	One of three static concentric rings on the overmap that decide what crews may do to each other. Named on the helm readout and colour-tinted on the map.
Neutral Zone (green)	The outer ring. Ship weapons are disabled and nobody can interdict you. Every ship starts here. Traders call it the neutral ring.
Contested Zone (yellow)	The middle ring. Ship weapons are still disabled, but you can be interdicted and boarded. Traders call it the contested lanes.
Lawless Zone (red)	The inner ring, nearest the star. Everything is permitted, and the ore and loot are the best in the galaxy. Traders call it the lawless deep.
Contact	Anything drawn on the helm's navigation chart: a planet, ruin, storm, outpost or vessel.
Active scan	A one-minute-cooldown sensor sweep that charts contacts beyond visual range onto your navigation list. Range grows with radar research.
Star chart	A one-use slate bought from traders that charts every contact in one whole zone at once, including storms your own sensors cannot detect.
Rumor chart	Bought intel naming one rare ruin. Decrypting it at the helm spawns that ruin and marks it gold on the map.
Dread signal	A vestige ruin's overmap contact, marked in red and named for the patron inside (e.g. "Sister Havel", "the Weaver"). They surface one at a time as the round ages.
Nebula	A harmless overmap cloud of one specific gas. A ram scoop harvests it, and it is the only place a ship can hide. See Gas Economy.
Asteroid storm	A landable rock field. Flying through one damages your hull; docking with it lets you mine it. See Mining.
Encounter	Any interior the game builds on demand when you dock: a planet surface, a ruin, an asteroid field, or a patch of empty space.

Your ship

Term	Meaning
Hull	A ship class: the base map, its rooms and its docking port. See Ship Catalog.
Theme	A whole-ship variant of a hull: a different look, layout and crew roster on the same frame. One Goon-class can launch as NT Standard or as a Syndicate Cutter.
Module	A room that drops into one of a hull's upgrade slots, adding equipment and sometimes an extra job. See Ship Upgrades.
Upgrade slot	A marked pocket in a hull that exactly one module loads into. Every slot always gets something.
Helm	The console that flies the ship, draws the navigation chart, runs scans and docks. See Piloting.
Integrity	Your ship's health, which is literally how much of it is still standing. Every floor counts one, walls two, reinforced walls three. Rebuilding repairs it.
Ship channel	Your crew's radio. Every frequency except a few is scoped to one ship, and your headset stays bound to it even off the ship. See Comms.
Wideband	The galaxy-wide hailing channel, prefix `:w`, carried by every headset. Traders, pirates and events all announce on it.
Cryogenic oversight console	Manages job slots (up to six per job, two-minute cooldown) and whether latejoiners may wake up aboard.
Bank machine	Holds the ship's shared account. Cargo and traders draw on it. See Money and Trade.
Mission board	The console that offers and tracks contracts. See Missions.
Mission pad	The pad that sits beside the board. Put mission items on it to hand them in, and rewards appear on it.
Techweb	Your ship's research tree. It lives on the source code disk inside your own R&D server, starts empty, and is not shared with any other crew. See Research.
Research points	The currency of the techweb, earned by experiments, surveys and salvaged documents rather than handed out over time. See Research.
Research notes	A physical document with a point value printed on it. Press it against an R&D console to bank the points, or sell it to cargo for half a credit per point.
Survey scanner	A machine that turns power into research points while parked somewhere new. See Research.
Orbital survey console	The console that surveys whatever your ship is orbiting, paying points and credits and recording the object against research that requires it.
Transporter	A pad-and-console pair that beams people and cargo between the ship and a surface. See Transporters.
Transponder	The palm-sized beacon you carry that pairs to one transporter pad, letting the ship see you and pull you home.
Drop pod	A one-shot pod that drops you onto whatever the ship is parked over, or gets fired through an enemy hull out of an assault pod tube. See Drop Pods.
Abandoned ship	A ship whose crew has all died or left. It stops accepting joiners until somebody claims it at its helm.

Money and progression

Term	Meaning
Ship parts	Physical items in four classes (combat, science, trade and misc) that persist between rounds and unlock hulls, themes and modules.
Extraction case	The secure case parts must be sitting in, on your person, for them to survive the round. Request one with the Request Extraction Case verb. Only the first standard case counts.
Voucher	A trade voucher: a physical chit earned from dangerous work, never bought with credits, and spent at any trader for restricted goods. Being an item, it can be stolen off you.
Chrome	Cyberware, implantable robotic organs sold at the Chop Shop on the Undertow Exchange. See Cyberware.
Neural load	What each piece of chrome costs against your 20-point capacity. Going over capacity browns every piece out at once.
Trader outpost	One of three permanent markets, one per zone: general store in green, outfitter in yellow, black market in red. Turrets shoot people who keep starting fights. See Trader Outposts.
Player outpost	A base a crew plants for itself using an outpost deed. See Player Outposts.
Siege	Missile fire against a raidable player outpost. The one case where ship weapons work outside the red ring. The yellow ring allows it, green still does not.
Custom slot	A saved spawn loadout tied to your account, swapped onto a ship's job at the cryogenic oversight console. The first is free; the second and third are bought with your persistent account credits.

Danger

Term	Meaning
Interdiction	A gravitic field that slows a target ship, blocks it from docking away or hiding, and lets the interdicting crew force a dock and board. Illegal in green space. See Ship Combat.
Boarding	Docking onto another ship and walking in. The usual way a fight between crews actually gets settled.
Electronic warfare (EW)	Hacking a weapons-locked ship's onboard systems (lights, doors, air, engines) from an EW suite instead of firing on it. See Ship Hacking.
Exploit cartridge	The software an EW suite runs, one hack per charge. Tier 1 is printable; everything stronger is black-market only.
Trace	What happens when an EW suite's signature maxes out: locked out for three minutes, and your ship is named to the target.
Elite	A boss-grade creature one tier below megafauna. Hard, multi-phase, and meant to be fought by a prepared crew rather than a lone miner. See Threats and Elites.
Ruin	A prebuilt derelict, station or wreck with loot and guards, either floating in space or sitting on a planet. See Ruins.
Vestige	An antagonist-themed ruin that surfaces mid-round, holding one patron. See Vestige Ruins.
Patron	The unkillable figure standing in a vestige ruin. It assigns you one trial and pays a boon when you finish it.
Trial	The task a patron sets. One per person at a time, and it sticks until you finish or renounce it.
Boon	The payment, a real antagonist ability granted to an ordinary crewmember. Boons chain into upgrades.
Ascension	The endgame capstone tier reached through a patron: a one-way solo arena you may not come back from.
Contested cache	A loot vault that surfaces mid-round and announces itself galaxy-wide, then unseals on a timer. Everyone hears it at the same time, which is the point.
Colosseum	A PvP arena venue that surfaces later in the round and runs organised matches for prizes. See The Colosseum.
Bitrunning	Virtual dungeon-running from netpods wired to a quantum server: dive into a domain, survive it, and a byteforge prints the loot in the real world. See Bitrunning.