NovaProtocol

Wiki / Glossary

Glossary

Short definitions for the terms and units that recur across the wiki.

Units

  • m / km - the distance units. Ranges and radii read in metres below a kilometre (e.g. a standoff of about 500 m) and in kilometres above it (e.g. 1.24 km). Every distance readout on the HUD and in the NOVA OS map uses them.
  • m/s - the speed unit, metres per second. The speed chip beside the velocity sphere reads in m/s, and a target's closing speed reads as a signed m/s.

Terms

  • Prograde / retrograde - prograde is the direction you are moving; retrograde is the opposite. STOP flips you to retrograde and burns to kill your speed.
  • Standoff - the resting distance GOTO stops at, just off a target (about 500 m plus the target's radius, measured from the surface) rather than ramming it.
  • RCS - reaction-control fine translation for docking: hold Shift and steer with the mouse and scroll wheel to nudge the hull straight along its own axes, no rotation, capped at a gentle per-axis speed. A trim a scenario grants rather than standard flight - see RCS.
  • Sphere of influence - the reach of a gravity well, set by the body's authored mass alone: the distance where the pull decays to a fixed cutoff. Outside it the well does not pull on you; only the dominant well inside it matters.
  • Hysteresis - a bit of stickiness that stops a state from flickering at its edge. A lock, a fine-lock section, and the dominant well all hold a little past their switch point so they do not chatter.
  • Fine-lock - drilling a combat lock into one specific section of an enemy hull, so turrets and the viewfinder focus that part.
  • "Hot" weapons - your weapons are hot while you hold a raised (red) combat stance or while a combat lock exists. Hot means turret lead pips and the viewfinder frame go red and you can fire.
  • Neutralized - out of the fight for good. A ship that loses its last working gun, or the flight computer it had, stops fighting even though its hull survives: the viewfinder tags the wreck NEUTRALIZED and it keeps drifting rather than despawning.
  • Point defense - your turrets' automatic close-in fire against torpedoes committed to you. It opens up only once an inbound torpedo is close, and every intercept costs real ammunition - see point defense.
  • Kinetic / Pierce - the two bullet behaviors, told apart by tracer colour. A Kinetic round punches: it stops at the first section it fails to destroy. A Pierce round rakes: it crosses several sections and damages every one on the way through. See damage types.
  • Lance / Serpent / Breaker - the torpedo types, each named and tinted on the viewfinder when you lock one. The Lance runs straight and fast, so point defense can answer it; the Serpent corkscrews on approach and costs far more rounds to stop; the Breaker is the huge crimson siege warhead scripted batteries fire.
  • Carve - what a hit does to a rock: it takes real material out of the asteroid's shape, so the silhouette and the thing you can fly into both change. Only rocks carve - a ship's parts keep the shape they were built in until they die. See Shooting rock.
  • Crater - the hole a carve leaves. It stays, and fire landing near it deepens the same hole instead of opening a new one.
  • Diegetic - part of the world rather than an overlay bolted on top. The HUD instruments read the ship's real state and the autopilot flies the same real thrusters you do, so what you see is what the ship is actually doing.