Sun. Mar 17th, 2024

Eve Online Terminology

Last Updated on 2023-11-26 by Kshal Aideron

The following is a list of Eve Online Terminology as well as more generic MMO and/or game terms. If I forgot something, add a comment and someone will edit the page!

NOTE: this is a work in progress!

Generic Game Terms

  • AFK: typed in chat (or said in voice chat) when a player goes “away from keyboard”.
  • Alt: characters other than your main. They can be on the same account as your main or separate accounts.
  • Aggro: when a player or NPC takes hostile action against another player or NPC.
  • Authenticator: 2-step verification where you get a code to apps like Google Authenticator or texted to your phone. This keeps your account safe.
  • Character name: the name of the character(s) you’re playing.
  • DPS: damage per second that a damage source does.
  • GTFO: get the fuck out.. i.e. RUN AWAY.
  • Hamburger menu: Eve Online makes a lot of use of what’s known as “hamburger menu’s”.
  • HP: hit points.
  • Kebab menu: These are menu’s that can be brought up by clicking 3 dots stacked up on each other.
  • Keyboard shortcuts: using your keyboard to control your ship vs. clicking your mouse on icons, etc.
  • Main: the character that you play the most and who’s name you’re known by.
  • Multiboxing: playing more than 1 account at the same time. This is an Omega account only privilege.
  • NPC: non-player characters such as mission agents, diamond miners and pirates.
  • PvE: player vs. environment.
  • PvP: player vs. player.
  • Radial button: selection dots that allow you to only choose 1 thing out of several options.
  • Spam: pressing buttons or clicking your mass rapidly and repeatedly.
  • Username: the name you use to log in to your account. If you submit a support ticket, this is often asked for.

Eve Online Account Terminology

  • Alpha: this refers to the free Eve Online account. Alpha’s are limited to 5 million skill points and are locked from certain skills and ships.
  • Alpha injector: refers to a 1x a day skill point injector that Alpha’s can use to get more skill points after reaching the 5 million max.
  • NES: this stands for the New Eden Store, which you access in game and buy skins, game time and other things with PLEX
  • Omega: the paid “premium” account of Eve Online. There are things that are only available to Omega accounts.
  • Plex: plexing an account is when one buys PLEX on the in game market with ISK to purchase Omega time in the NEX.

Eve Online Terminology

  • 1v1: 1 versus 1 pvp fight.
  • ABC: always be cloaked, in reference to flying covert ops ships.
  • Alpha damage: initial damage that overwhelms another ship’s resistances.
  • Bait: a ship or situation that isn’t what it seems. For example, an industrial ship flying around low sec could have a cyno on it instead of actually being a hauler. Or a player with a red kill board may be set up to look “helpless”.
  • Bees: generally referencing the alliance Goonswarm Federation who’s logo is a bee.
  • Blob: when a ship (or fleet) gets dropped on by a fleet double or triple in size.
  • Blues: a blue is someone who’s friendly with you, your corporation or alliance. Don’t shoot blues.
  • Blueprints: used to create items such as ships. There’s limited run blueprints and unlimited blueprints.
  • Carebear: term given to players who rarely or never engage in pvp activity.
  • Control space: if you hear someone say, control space they mean to hit the ctrl + space keys to stop your ship.
  • CSM: the CSM (Council of Stellar Management) is a group of 10 players elected by their peers to represent their peers to CCP. The elections are typically held in Q2 of the year.
  • Doctrine: combination of ships with very specific fits to work together in fleets. It’s considered rude or bad manners to stray from doctrine unless the FC gives the green light.
  • ISK: the in game currency of Eve Online.
  • EHP: effective hit points. This is when resistances are taken into the ship’s tank.
  • Explo: exploration.
  • Faction: the main 4 player factions are Gallente, Caldari, Minmatar and Amarr. There are many NPC factions as well.
  • Fleet: the in game grouping mechanism of Eve Online.
  • Friend link: a link another player can give you so that when you click on it and sign up for a new account, you will receive 1 million skill points.
  • Ganker: player(s) who like to jump an unsuspecting player who’s doing PVE activities. Highsec gankers are known as “suicide gankers” due to getting concorded after a gank.
  • GF: “usually” means good fight. However, in some cases players use it as “get fucked”.
  • GPS: when someone asks for GPS, they want to know what system the fleet is in.
  • Goon: a character that’s part of the Goonswarm Alliance.
  • HTFU: harden the fuck up. Stop whining about getting blown up. Also a song by Permaband.
  • Incursion: generally refers to the Sansha Incursions, which are a upper end style of game play.
  • Killboard: reference to the 3rd party website Zkillboard.
  • Kill right: when a player commits a Concordable offense against another player kill rights come into play. When activated, the player who earned the kill right becomes criminal for 15 minutes.
  • Jita 4-4: or just 4-4 refers to the biggest and busiest player trade hub in new Eden.
  • Jump gate: this is a gate that you need to jump through to get to the next system.
  • LP: Loyalty Points – earned from doing missions and incursions and can be used to buy ammo, blueprints, plugins and other things.
  • Market: the system which allows players to buy and sell items to other players or NPCs.
  • Neut: someone who isn’t red or blue to you, your corp or alliance.
  • Newbro: a player that’s new to Eve Online or new to a certain activity.
  • NPE: new player experience.
  • NPSI: not purple shoot it. NPSI refers to a playstyle where players in a fleet are allies and everyone else is a target.
  • Overview: a very important window that has different tabs with different views. You see other player ships, planets, star bases, player structures, wrecks, etc in the overview.
  • Ping: has 2 meanings.
    • bookmarking a location 150k or more away which allows you to fly to it then down to a gate or structure. In null this allows you to avoid bubbles.
    • a “notification” in Discord servers of an upcoming fleet or event.
  • PLEX: a type of currency that can be purchased for real life money and can be sold for isk in game. It can also be used to buy things like ship skins or a month of Omega.
  • Poitot: the only named system in Syndicate. Popular Eve trivia question.
  • Purple: players who are in the same fleet as you.
  • Rats: short for “pirates” a type of NPC in the game.
  • Reds: a red is someone who’s not friendly with you, your corp or alliance.
  • Region: regions are a group of systems in Eve Online.
  • Safety: this refers to the little green/yellow/red dot above the circle that shows your shield/armor/hull status. Green means no suspect or criminal actions can be taken in High or Low sec. Yellow means there can be suspect actions in High or Low. Red means criminal actions can take place in high or low.
  • Safe spot: a location in space, away from any celestials, structures or otherwise that
  • Sec Status: your security status. When it gets too low, it will become a big problem in high sec.
  • SISI: the Eve Online test server.
  • Skill queue: the skill queue is where you will add skills to train. Skills train constantly, even when logged out of the game.
  • System: a system is like a “zone” in other MMO’s.
  • Trade hub: trade hubs are where players bring their items to sell on the market. Jita 4.4 is the biggest trade hub in the game.
  • Tranquility: the live server we all play on.

Eve Online Ship Terminology

This section details Eve Online ship and module terminology. It is split into several different sections to make finding the correct terminology easier.

Eve Module Terminology

Modules: (or mods) things that can be fit (attached) to ship in the high, middle and low slots.

  • High slot: the high slots generally have the ship weapons (or lasers for mining), probe launcher, cloak, and more.
  • Low slot: generally contains passive mods like damage control, warp core stabilizers, or things to help with CPU/power grid. But you can also fit armor/hull repair modules and assault damage controls.
  • Mid slot: the mid slot is where you put your micro warp drive/afterburner, shield boosters or hardners, and EWAR (electronic warfare mods i.e. tackle mods).
  • Rig slots: permanent modules that will be destroyed if removed from most ships (exception are T3C cruisers). Rigs have drawbacks associated with them that can be reduced by training associated rigging skills.

Covert Ops Modules

  • Cloak: there’s 3 types of cloak in the game.
    • Cloak from a cloaking device: omega only, works on any ship but you can’t warp with it.
    • Covert ops cloak: only can be fit on certain ships and you can warp while cloaked.
    • Jump cloak: 60 seconds of invulnerability after jumping through a gate, as long as you don’t move.

Propulsion Modules

  • AfterBurner: or AB is a propulsion module that increases the ship speed from 130-200%. An AB does not increase sig radius.
  • Microwarpdrive: MWDs are faster than Afterburners, in the 500-700% range. However, the trade off for speed is an increased signature radius.

Weapon Modules

  • Autocannon:

Eve Ship Terminology

  • AF: short for Assault Frigate.
  • Battlecruiser: bigger and slower than cruisers but still smaller than battleships. They’re great in PVP and are standard in level 3 security missions (PVE).
  • Cepter: short for Interceptor.
  • Cruiser: a “medium” sized ship. They’re slower than frigates and cruisers but faster than battleships.
  • Destroyer: a bit larger than frigates and can pack quite a punch. There’s a reason gankers like using them since they’re often cheap and powerful. A favorite of Kshal’s for rookie fleets.
  • Frigate: the smallest and fastest ships in Eve. Small doesn’t mean weak, in a fleet, they can eat battleships for lunch.
  • HIC: heavy interdiction cruiser is a T2 cruiser that can create a bubble around itself that’s bigger than a light interdictor (i.e. dictor). HICs are also often used to help roll wormholes.
  • Subcap: ship that’s sub-capital size.

Eve Online PVE Terminology

  • Assault incursion sites: are incursion sites that can run with 20-21 pilots in high sec.
  • DDD: term that incursion groups have given to the “drone bunny”.
  • Exploration: an activity where pilots probe down cosmic anomalies looking for Relic or Data sites to hack. These appear in all space except Pochven.
  • Incursion: high end PVE fleet content that can involve 13 to 40 pilots depending on the type of incursion site. Incursions appear in high sec, low sec and null sec.
    • Headquarter incursion sites: incursion sites that take up to 40 pilots in high sec.
    • Vanguard incursion sites: incursion sites that run with 10-13 pilots in high sec. These are the incursion site(s) that Eve Rookies run regularly.
  • Krabbing: pve activities (usually ratting) to make isk.
  • Ratting: hunting NPCs, generally in mining belts or anomalies.

Eve Online Fleet Terminology

There’s certain terminology that you’ll hear on fleets.

  • -1: when a player posts -1 in fleet chat (usually with a ship name, like -1 Falcon) this means the player with that ship is dropping fleet.
  • AAR: after action report, typically written after a fleet and posted somewhere (for Eve Rookies, we have an AAR for pvp fleets and Fleet Logs for PVE).
  • Align: you can double click on a jump gate, station, celestial, etc in your overview and your ship will start aligning to it. Learn more about aligning here.
  • Backseat: the backseat is the FC who can take over the fleet to save it or restore order if the JFC makes a mistake or becomes overwhelmed. In short, the backseat is the person responsible for the safety of the fleet.
  • Blap: to destroy something. The FC will often give the command to “blap it” meaning the fleet can put damage on the called target.
  • Blops: black ops battleship “get on the blops”.
  • Bounce: warp away from the fleet to a celestial.
  • Bubble: a bubble is a warp disrupt bubble that can be found in NullSec or wormhole space.
    • Mobile warp disruptors: these are bubbles pilots can carry in ship cargo holds and put up.
    • Interdictor bubbles: bubbles blown by a ship called an Interdictors or HICS (heavy interdiction cruisers).
  • Burn: 2 meanings…
    • BURN back to gate: after you’ve just jumped through a gate, the FC wants you to decloak and burn back to the gate you just came through.
    • BURN to X system: when a FC says burn to (system), then they want you to get yourself there as fast as you can. A lot of times this will be from staging to a lowsec system or a Thera wormhole.
  • Check check: polite way for the FC or scout to tell people talking on comms to “stop talking.”
  • Cold warp: when the FC warps the fleet without first aligning to a gate, celestial, etc.
  • Comms: refers to voice chat.
  • Drone bunny: the pilot everyone in fleet assigns their drones to. Drone bunny then sends them after the correct targets.
  • EWAR only: lock up and only put ewar on the target. This is scram, point (warp disrupt), jams, damps, etc. NO DAMAGE!
  • JFC: junior FC. This player is training and has to have a backseat FC in order to run the fleet.
  • FC: the poor player who takes the responsibility to put a fleet of players together to do something. They have the power to fleet warp and move people into squads among other things. See the stuff a FC says.
  • Fleet warp: your FC has the ability to warp the entire fleet to a location in the system.
  • Hold: stay where you are, don’t touch your keyboard.
  • Jump: jump through the gate… a few words first…
    • only the FC should be saying the word jump
    • FC will usually say jump, jump, jump rapidly a few times so everyone hears
    • when the FC says jump, just do it… if you lag behind, you might be a catch for a neut
  • Jump and hold cloak: jump through the gate and don’t touch your keyboard or mouse until the FC says so.
  • Open comms: this can mean one of two things.
    • 1.) you do not need to use push to talk to speak, you can have voice activated comms
    • 2.) the comms are open for general chit chat
  • Push to Talk: push to talk refers to having to set a key on your keyboard or button on your mouse that you need to press in order to speak in voice chat.
  • Reps: when someone locks up another ship and activates their repair module. Usually logi ships buyt
  • Rookie player speech: or newbro speech is the speech the FC gives before the fleet gets started. It’s not just for players that are new to the game, but it’s also for more experienced players who are doing an activity for the first time.
  • Scatter: same as bounce… warp to a celestial away from the fleet.
  • Slide: used to tell the fleet to take the jump gate. Can be used in both PVE fleets and PVP fleets that are entering gated sites.
  • Staging: the system and/or station that everyone gathers to fleet up.
  • Tackle: to tackle is to hold down an opponent so that they can’t get away. Tackle is important in both solo and fleet PVP. In general, the “holy grail” of tackle is webs, scrams, and points (warp disrupt). There IS reason you would use webs in PVE, especially incursions.
  • XUP: put an X in the designated channel so the FC knows you want to join the fleet.

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