Entry · Reference

Glossary of naval game terms

The vocabulary of this genre is dense and is rarely explained inside the games themselves. These definitions are general to online naval combat games; individual titles use their own names for several of them, and a few of these systems exist in some games and not others.

In battle

Angling: Turning a ship so incoming shells strike its armour at a sharp angle rather than square on, increasing the chance they bounce. The core defensive skill for heavily armoured ships.
Armour-piercing (AP): A shell designed to penetrate armour before detonating inside a ship. Effective against large armoured targets and wasteful against light ones, where shells pass straight through.
High-explosive (HE): A shell that detonates on impact, causing surface damage and often fires. Reliable against lightly armoured ships and against parts of a ship that AP cannot usefully reach.
Bow-on: Facing an opponent directly with the front of the ship, presenting the narrowest and best-armoured profile. Safe, and it also limits how many of your own guns can fire.
Citadel: The heavily armoured central section protecting a ship’s vital machinery. A penetrating hit here does severe damage, which is why exposing the broadside of a ship is costly.
Concealment: The distance at which a ship becomes visible to the opposing team. Lower is better; it is affected by ship size, fittings, and whether guns have recently been fired.
Spotting: Making an enemy ship visible to your team, whether by proximity, aircraft or radar. Spotting is often worth more to a team than damage, and is frequently undervalued by new players.
Consumable: A limited-use ability on a timer — repair, smoke, radar, engine boost. Consumables have charges and cooldowns, and knowing an opponent’s cooldown is a tactical advantage.
Dispersion: The natural spread of shells within a salvo. Two identical shots will not land identically, which is why volume of fire and range both matter.
Lead: Aiming ahead of a moving target so shells and the target arrive at the same point. The fundamental aiming skill in the genre, learned by repetition.
Salvo: A single firing of a ship’s main guns. Battleship salvos are infrequent and heavy; cruiser salvos are frequent and lighter.
Kiting: Withdrawing while still firing, keeping range and a favourable angle. A standard technique for ships that are faster than the opponents pursuing them.
Overmatch: The situation where a shell is large enough relative to a plate of armour that angle stops protecting it. This is why angling defeats some opponents and not others.
Detonation: An immediate loss caused by a hit to a magazine. Rare, and usually able to be prevented by an equipped flag or fitting in games that include the mechanic.
Island cover: Using terrain to block line of sight and incoming fire. Maps in this genre are designed around islands, and reading them is most of map awareness.
Torpedo spread: A group of torpedoes launched in a fan. They travel slowly and are usually invisible until close, which makes predicting where an opponent will be more important than aiming at where they are.

Ships and fittings

Class: The role a ship plays: destroyer, cruiser, battleship, aircraft carrier or, in some titles, submarine. The category entry describes each.
Hull: An upgrade step that changes a ship’s structure, health and sometimes its armament. Later hulls generally improve anti-aircraft strength and survivability.
Module: A researchable component — guns, fire control, engine, hull. Modules are unlocked with experience and bought with earned currency.
Upgrade: A slotted item that adjusts a ship’s characteristics, such as reload speed or rudder response. Slots open as tier rises, and choices are usually reversible at a cost.
Commander: A captain assigned to a ship who accumulates their own experience and unlocks skills. Commanders are frequently moved between ships, and retraining may carry a cost.
Commander skill: A selectable improvement bought with commander experience points, such as better concealment or faster repair. Skill choices matter more than most equipment decisions.
Camouflage: A visual pattern applied to a ship. In several titles camouflage also carries statistical bonuses, which makes it part of the economy rather than decoration.
Signal flag: A consumable modifier attached before a battle, adding a small bonus to earnings or performance. Flags are typically earned through achievements or containers.
Premium ship: A vessel bought with purchased currency rather than researched. These usually earn more per battle and do not require their own module research.

Progression

Tech tree: The branching diagram of ships by nation and class, showing what must be played before what unlocks. The spine of the entire progression system.
Tier: A ship’s rung on the ladder, from small early vessels to large modern ones. Tier governs matchmaking, costs and how punishing mistakes become.
Experience (XP): Earned per battle and spent researching the next ship or module. Rates are affected by premium time, flags and camouflage.
Free experience: A convertible form of experience usable anywhere in the tree rather than on one ship. Its accumulation is slow, and purchased currency usually accelerates conversion.
Grind: The repeated play needed to progress a ship or complete an event. Whether a grind feels like a game or a task is the most useful personal test of a free-to-play title.
Matchmaking: The system that assembles two teams from the current queue, usually balancing by tier and class. It explains why a ship sometimes meets opponents a tier or two above it.
Meta: The prevailing set of effective ships and tactics at a point in time. It shifts with patches, and community advice more than a few months old may describe a different game.
Event or campaign: A time-limited set of tasks with rewards. Events drive the rhythm of these games and are also the main source of pressure to play on someone else’s schedule.

Economy

Soft currency: Earned by playing; pays for ships, modules, consumables and repairs. Usually called credits or silver.
Hard currency: Bought with real money; buys premium time, shop items and conversions. Doubloons and gold are common names. See free-to-play economies.
Premium account: A paid period during which battle earnings are multiplied. Time runs from activation whether or not you play, so buying a long period before a busy month is a common mistake.
Bundle: A packaged offer combining a ship, currency, flags and cosmetics for one price. Unpacking the contents and pricing them individually is the only way to judge one.
Container: A randomised reward package. Some are earned in play, some are bought, and contents are determined on opening rather than before.
Drop rate: The published probability of a given item appearing in a container. Where rates are published, read them as the expected cost of many attempts, not one.
Service cost: The automatic charge deducted after a battle for repairs and restocking. At high tiers it can exceed a poor battle’s earnings, which is the economy tightening deliberately.
Conversion rate: The ratio at which purchased currency becomes earned currency or free experience. This ratio is the clearest single measure of how much a shortcut costs.

Technical

Client: The program installed on your computer. Clients in this genre are large and patch frequently — see desktop platforms and requirements.
Patch: An update that changes content or balance. Patches can alter the effectiveness of a ship you have just spent weeks unlocking; that is normal for a live service.
Latency (ping): The round-trip time between your computer and the server, in milliseconds. Governed by distance and routing rather than by connection speed.
Packet loss: Data that fails to arrive, producing stutter and rubber-banding. Usually more disruptive to play than a moderately high but stable latency.
Frame rate: How many images per second your computer draws. Consistency matters more than a high peak figure.
Anti-cheat: Software that inspects the running environment for prohibited tools. It is the main reason unsupported operating systems and virtual machines cause problems.
Server region: The cluster your account belongs to. Choosing the region closest to you affects both latency and which players you meet; it is generally set at account creation.

Where to read next

Terms in this list are used throughout the library. The concepts behind them are explained in naval combat games explained and free-to-play economies.