From the Depths Dictionary of Useful Acronyms & Words

A From the Depths useful words, abbreviations and acronyms list to make players understand the lingo better, this dictionary is a guide to common words players use that might have a specific meaning in FtD and to all of the acronyms and abbreviations players use all the time, it can be very difficult to understanding what players talk about if you do not know this.

After reading this Dictionary Guide you will understand what a "Mass Driven APS Clip Nuke" is and if that's "cheese", if you are "Spinclipping" or not and if your "CRAMs" have enough "DAKKA" for your "HA brick" to really be a proper "BB".

Introduction

This dictionary is divided into parts, see the table of contents, each section is sorted in alphabetical order.

From the Depths Guides

TBA

Suggestions

If you feel some acronyms or words are missing, please submit them in the discussion under this guide!

Thanks to all helpful hands on Gmodist's Discord providing more words and acronyms to include, and proofreading it.
Please rate 👍 the dictionary guide if you found it useful!

- By Gmodism Imperial Public Education Board

Basic Terminology

Location on Ships

• Bow - the front of/outside the ship, offboard
  
• Fore - the front on/inside the ship, onboard
  
• Stern - the rear of/outside the ship, offboard
  
• Aft - the rear on/inside the ship, onboard (white light)
  
• Port - the left side of the ship, some ships only dock with port to harbour (red light)
  
• Starboard - the right side of the ship, on very old ships the steering ore was on this side, why the name (green light)
  
• Deck(s) - the "floor(s)" of the ship, onboard literally

Vehicle Terms

• Beam - the widest part of a vessel
  
• Bridge - the bridge is also known as a command deck, where a ship is controlled
  
• Cockpit - where one pilots aircraft from and where smaller sailboats are controlled from
  
• Chassis - the underlying framework of tanks/cars etc
  
• Hull - the main body/armour of a ship/tank
  
• Fuselage - the main body of an aircraft
  
• Waterline - how deep the ship sits in the water, under the waterline hull commonly painted red (Anti-fouling paint)

Acronyms Dictionary

Common acronyms useful for From the Depths players, sorted in alphabetical order, se also wordlist later

• 0-4Q - amount of laser Q-Switches, used as prefix describing lasers, 0Q are continuous lasers, 1Q are slow pulse to 4Q the fastest pulse laser
  
  
• AC - armour class, reduces damage that has lower AP than AC
  
• ACBs - automated control blocks, a simple input-output trigger to use for features or control (like the entry below but super simple)
  
• AI - artificial intelligence, a brain in a box known as mainframe
  
• AL - autoloader, APS part of 1m to 8m that is attached to clips and loads shells
  
• AMM - anti-missile missiles, see "Interceptors"
  
• AP - armour piercing properties of damage, cram and APS shells penetrative factor
  
• AP-chem - armour piercing APS round with "chemical" payload (AP+explosive/emp/frag/incendiary becomes APHE/APEMP/APFRAG/APINCEN/APHEAT delivers damage inside enemy crafts, sometimes also referring to CRAM Pendepth shells
  
• APS - Advanced Projectile System, also known as Advanced Cannons, very versatile
  
• AOTE - ashes of the empire, the land campaign
  
  
• BB - Breadboard, fancy way to control most things with a programmable microcomputer
  
  
• CC - custom campaign, a player made campaign with other vehicles factions and maps
  
• CJEs - custom jet engines, large thrusters also most efficient
  
• CIWS - close in weapon system, weapons that takes down incoming projectiles
  
• CRAM - big slow 1000-2000 mm custom cannon system, it crams a variety of pellets into a shell (a hollow projectile)
  
  
• DIF - direct input fed guns, intakes on firing piece bypassing the need for autoloaders (APS)
  
• DPS - damage per second, describing weapon damage output
  
  
• EED/defuse - Emergency ejection defuse, used in APS shells for guns with ejectors to not make your turret explode when damaged due to ammo racking
  
• EMP - electromagnetic pulse, a damage type that climbs through the structure and destroys electronic blocks, like AI, detection and LWCs, they can be insulated with rubber and using Surge Protectors that absorb the damage instead
  
• ERA - explosive reactive armour, stops HEAT, HESH and APchem instantly
  
  
• FLAK - Acronym for "Flugabwehrkanone" which is german for AA-gun, it was previously used for the APS Munition Defence components, MDs, and thus is still used by seasoned players
  
• FPM - Firepower Per Material, is basically efficiency of dealing damage, taken with some uncertainty though, as Firepower isn’t a reliable measure of effective damage dealing
  
• FPV - Firepower Per Volume, Like FPM but tells you the Volume Efficiency, same reliability issues
  
  
• GLAO - a smaller campaign in FtD
  
• GP/GPP/GPPP - general processing power the AI uses for Detection and Remote Missile Guidance
  
• GP/Rail/Rail-Assist - gunpowder in APS, as opposed to railgun charge shell propulsion, when they are combined it is called simply "rail-assisted"
  
  
• HA - heavy armour, the strongest armour but as heavy as lead and inefficient to cost, HA-brick is a craft that uses HA excessively
  
• HE - high explosive (munition type)
  
• HEAT - "High-explosive anti-tank" shaped charges that basically inject fragmentations inside armour in a narrow-ish angle
  
• HESH - high explosive squash head explodes on armour and thus creates spalls inside the target in a wide angle
  
• HH - heavy head, basically standard lead ball for APS ammunition
  
• HP (damage) - refers to Hollow Point tips on projectiles, making them deal thump/impact damage
  
  
• ICBM - intercontinental ballistic missile, incorrectly used by some to describe nuclear warhead cruise missiles/suicide drones
  
• IFF - identify friend or foe component for missiles to stop friendly fire with active radar seekers or infrared
  
• IR - referring to infrared cameras for detection or missiles with IR camera guidance
  
  
• LAMS - laser anti-munition system, tiny lasers that only will target incoming shells and missiles
  
• LUA - a programming language that people can program missiles with (real code)
  
• LWC - local weapon controller/all-in-one local weapon controller (does not need added failsafes and receivers and thus more popular while more expensive)
  
  
• MDBs/MDs - munition defence body(ies) in APS used for CIWS, also called FLAK or Anti Munition Explosive: AME, damages shells but provides poor damage to vehicles
  
  
• PACs - Particle Cannons, not particularly efficient but immune to active defences and versatile
  
• PID - proportional–integral–derivative controller, complex name for a math thing that makes propulsion move in smooth, controlled and stable curves
  
• PPM - Power per Material, basically efficiency: how much power your engine produces per used material
  
• PPV - Power per Volume, the power Density of your engine, thus volume efficiency
  
  
• RTG - Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator a thing that makes free electricity but is very expensive and intentionally cost ineffective
  
  
• SAP/SAP-chem - semi armour piercing shells penetrate only somewhat and can have any penetrating head, is good for delivering payloads: SAPHEAT, SAPHE, SAPFRAG etc
  
• SM/MM/LM/HM - small, medium, large and huge missiles
  
  
• VLM - vertical launch missiles

Words Dictionary

Common words and abbreviations dictionary useful for From the Depths players sorted in alphabetical order, see also the Acronyms list

• Adventure - the in-game endless combat “adventure” mode
  
• Airgap - an empty space in the armor, either by a beamslope/wedge or by a full empty gap for mitigation of damage from shaped charges, full spaces also mitigates damage from plasma and impact damage types.
  
• Azipod - a water propeller with azimuth movement ability by being placed on a spinblock
  
  
• Beamslopes - referring to the 4m beam that is slanted along the side, making right triangles at the short ends, common inside armour, while this can be described as a “wedge” it is NEVER called a wedge in FtD to avoid confusion
  
  
• Bread - short for bread board, basically a programmable microcomputer that people use to control any vehicle entirely or just cool features
  
  
• Charge laser/charge plasma - when the system has lots of damage energy stored but almost no recharge rate, thus the weapon practically becomes "single use"
  
• Chemical/Chem - Commonly used to describe APS round type. Chemical is everything explosive, incendiary, fragmental or EMP. These do the same damage regardless of speed.
  
• Cheese/cheese tactics - a set "hacks" or tactics that can be used in the game but is considered unfair and boring, definition varies depending on person but usually is about breaking the game or bypassing the built in rules that tries to make the game fair and balanced, if you have to ask yourself if this is cheese, it’s probably cheese
  
• Clip-Nuke - when a player intentionally uses APS ejectors to unload huge quantities of shells on a target
  
• Custom battle - a battle held via the games single player menu option “custom battle” that lets player set rules to make sure its fair etc.
  
  
• Dakka - firepower and weapon amount, onomatopoeic word borrowed from 40K orcs, has a wider interpretation in FTD, more dakka is always the answer for improving builds
  
• Doom CRAMs - very large cram cannons that cost 100K or more with serious battleship crit potential
  
• Drilling - damage dealt to the same spot in small increments thus creating “drilling” a hole in target
  
• Ductarmor - a 1m to 7m square solid block of armour with a grille ventilation hole that lets thrust and exhaust through, it has a lot of health and is commonly used as armor for this reason (steam-drill armor is the "same thing" but less common)
  
• Dumb - non-guided missiles or bombs, like good old times
  
  
• Fins - usually refers to stabilizer fin bodies on APS shells or fins used on missiles for steering
  
• Frag - all types of fragmentation munition and payloads for weapons
  
  
• God mode - toggle to make craft not take damage in designer
  
  
• INC/incen/Incendiary - fire damage type from flamers, crams, missiles and APS
  
• Interceptors/ints - small or medium missiles that shoot down other missiles and cram shells
  
  
• Kinetic - ranged weapons that deal kinetic damage only, that is all sorts of purely penetrating or impact damage only weapons like AP, Sabot, Piercing PACs, Thumper missiles etc. Damage directly proportional to projectile speed for APS and Missile, but not for CRAM or PACs where it is constant
  
  
• Mass Driver - aka MD, is a APS system that propels a vehicle extremely fast using an exploit, used for extreme speed boosting or as firing mechanism of nukes etc.
  
• Mats - materials/resources, the in-game currency for everything and measurement of costs and efficiency consumption rates, M/S can this mean both meters per second and materials per second
  
• Meme Mix - an APS shell with all the modules
  
• Mods - FtD has support of modifications via steam workshop, adding new blocks and functions usually not compatible with “vanilla” FtD, some players use these and thus declare what “mods” you need to use their stuff
  
  
• Neter - the main campaign in FtD
  
  
• Oxy - oxidizer for incendiary damage, makes fires burn better and also under water, some may also call the catalyst flamer ingredient for "cat"
  
  
• Party Mix - missile or APS shell with many types of damage, decent at everything best at nothing
  
• Pendepth - when a projectile (CRAM or APS) has a penetration depth fuse to explode after going through a certain thickness of material
  
• Prefab - "ctrl+p" menu where you can save and past a cluster of blocks
  
  
• Racking - aka ammo racking/"to ammo rack", when APS magazines or general ammo storage boxes get hit and chain react destroying a turret or significant part of the vehicle
  
  
• Sabot - usually refers to Sabot heads on APS shells unless otherwise specified. Otherwise refers to sabot bodies in a shell to boost AC, common in HP tip rounds
  
• Sandblaster - APS gun that fires smaller kinetic rounds, usually 18mm to 100mm, very fast to drill holes into vehicles
  
• Shields - referring to Planar Shields: a projected surface that can deflect projectiles, or Ring Shields: a sort of particle accelerator that boosts armor class along the entire X, Y or Z axis
  
• Spall - fragmentations generated from the armour when hit by a HESH shell, happens IRL with kinetic shells too but not in FTD
  
• Spinclipping - the use of spin/piston/turret-blocks to force blocks inside eachother to make it more dense, or have things where they cannot be, a "cheese tactic" and usually banned everywhere (except for decorations only in some cases)
  
• Subobject - "ctrl+o" menu where turrets, azipods, things on pistons, turret- or spinblocks can be saved and spawned on vehicles
  
  
• Tetris - refers to ways/patterns to place systems in the most material- or space-efficient way, useful for CRAM, APS, Laser, Engines etc.
  
  
• Warp drive - a teleportation system making vehicles teleport short distances
  
• Wedges - refers to armour blocks shaped like isosceles triangles making sharp points, used like Beamslopes inside armor, especially good at dealing with armour piercing shells

Factions

Many players make a faction, it usually has an acronym and that may be used as a prefix on ship names to denote affiliation, commonly 2-4 letters without numbers or symbols.

• “ABC” - Your faction?
  (???)
  
  
• AoG - Army of Gmodism
  (The combined land-, sea- and spaceforces. You are welcome to join.)
  
  
• DWG - Deepwater Guard / Dustwind Gangs
  (In-game pirate faction)
  
  
• GT - Gray Talons
  (In-game airship faction)
  
  
• LH - Lightning Hoods
  (In-game tech faction)
  
  
• OW - Onyx Watch
  (In-game castle faction)
  
  
• SD - Scarlet Dawn
  (In-game alien faction)
  
  
• SS/SE - Steel Striders
  (In-game modern faction, previously Steel Empire before Neter)
  
  
• TG - Twin Guard
  (In-game robot faction)
  
  
• WF - White Flayers
  (In-game cultist faction)

Numbers

In From the Depths we deal with large numbers, if you are used to an imperial system it’s useful to know since this game uses the metric system.

We deal a lot with large numbers so the letters denoting that are commonly used.

K = 1000, e.g: 5.7K ammo, 5700 ammo storage
M = 1 000 000, e.g: 2.2M mats, 2200000 materials
m = Meter, e.g: 150m/s, 150 meter per second velocity

Ships

Ships (and thruster-crafts!) are used to test and compare designs, usually the same ingame ones are used over and over to gauge performance. Some player ships get very popular due to winning tournaments, being in streams or videos, or just being so darn good people use it as a testing enemy to understand how their ships perform in comparison (or looking awesome), often mentioned by a part of their name everyone understands. Some of those ships have acronyms instead that everyone uses due to name complexity. Here are some commonly mentioned ship names or their acronyms that are good to know, with links.

In-Game Ships

Meg - 1.9M SS Megalodon Battleship is the Steel Striders’ strongest ship, commonly used as measuring stick for battleships performance, has scary hollowpoint APS crushing surface armour spectacularly.

Crossbones - 500K DWG Crossbones is a big CRAM battleship of wood.

Sing - Singularity, 2M SD thrustercraft, proper HA brick.

Stronghold - 1.4M OW big battleship, stationary and useful to test weapons against metal armour.

Tarp - The Tarpon, scary evasive DWG airship that is hard to hit.

Pyre - The scary Grey Talons craft, has good armour and nuclear warhead missiles

Player Built Ships

Rag - the HMS Ragnarök might be the most famous ship ever, built by Robbaz in 2016 and extremely outdated https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806362863 it has several fan rebuilds, lately “Rag” is mostly referring to 2.2M rebuild by Brenzo https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2920044841

BB5 - 1.4M BBS Fifth Season, a OW fanbuild by Bungalowbill with awesome railguns https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2799855205

Turtle - 2M CRAM frontsider, the Turtlelord is a castle on a turtle one of the best lookers on the list https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837408928

Gimle - 2.2M AoG Battleship by Eric replacing Draconia based on doom-CRAMs with Laser, originally built to defeat Brenzo’s Ragnarök fanbuild https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3000688486

Drak - 2,2M Drakenslang a Hydrofoil War Canoe by BorderWise built to defeat Gimle https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3021898635

The Ten Crammandments - CRAM + Wood minmaxed ship by shawnreed343 built to defeat Gimle https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3082078300

Drac - 1.8M AoG Draconia battleship, outdated, built to fight Titanslang https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2845041810

Titan - 1.8M Titanslang battleship by BorderWise, probably outdated https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2880091206

North - 1.4M Northedge battleship by E.Lord and Kevin based on CRAMs known for being one of the most effective to its cost https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857642460

Yamato - Japanese battleship from WW2, the largest ever built and thus many replicas are available. Lately often referring to the 9M Ultra Battleship Yamato by Martincitopants https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3387617106

WBF - 2M Water Based Frontsider by Shipmaster Kent, a APS “sandblaster” winning the entire Ragnarök tournament by Brenzo https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2932109060

Military Ranks

Ranks in the navy/military have grades and acronyms for them. There are several different systems. A basic system needs to include three parts in general:

1. Enlisted: Voluntarily enrolled soldiers or conscripted (drafted).
   
2. NCOs: Non commissioned officers, soldiers that through service have reached an officer rank.
   
3. COs: Commissioned officers, through military university they start training as cadets or similar, to eventually become a ranked commissioned officer.

Any rank if the enlisted or NCOs started as the bottom, Mt3C in our example. COs always outrank NCOs. Sometimes distinguished enlisted or NCOs are sent to military university to become COs at a later stage.

The different ranks have different work descriptions and responsibilities in their service.

Example

These are the ranks of the Army of Gmodism, all enlisted and NCOs started from Matros 3rd Class and climbed the structure. COs are in AoG’s example patreon supporters.

ENLISTED RANKS:

1. Mt3C - Matros 3rd Class
   
2. Mt2C - Matros 2nd Class
   
3. Mt1C - Matros 1st Class
   
4. MMt - Master Matros
   
5. LCpl - Lance Corporal
   
6. Cpl - Corporal
   
7. MCpl - Master Corporal

NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS:

1. Sgt - Sergeant
   
2. MSgt - Master Sergeant
   
3. SgtMaj - Sergeant Major

COMMISSIONED OFFICERS:

1. Cdt - Cadet
   
2. Lt - Lieutenant
   
3. Cdr - Commander
   
4. Cpt - Captain
   
5. Cdre - Commodore
   
6. Adm - Admiral
   
7. LHAdm - Lord High Admiral (Only used for The Ecclesiarch of Gmodism)

Hull Classification Symbols & Mission Type Symbols

Many vehicles contain a letter code denoting what the vehicle is classified as and what it is built to do. This is not a main article about the subject, see our separate guides on:

• Naming Conventions and Symbols Guide LINK
  
• Ship Classification Guide LINK
  
• Aircraft Classification Guide LINK
  
• Land Vehicle Classification Guide LINK

We will however list some common symbols to help you understand the most common ones you will meet when playing From the Depths. Most people tend to use the Hull classification symbol system, but there are others like the Pennant number system etc.
e.g. AoG DD Fylke-class Destroyer, AoG B-Mantawar Bomber

Ships

AK: Cargo Ship
AO: Fleet Oiler
AR: Repair ship
BB: Battleship
BD: Dreadnought
CC: Battlecruiser
CA: Heavy Cruiser
CL: Light Cruiser
CG: Guided Missile Cruiser
CV: Aircraft Carrier
DD: Destroyer
FF: Frigate
PB: Patrol Boat
PT: Torpedo Boat
SS: Attack Submarine
SBB/SB: Super Battleship
ZMC: Airship Metal Clad
ZR: Rigid Airship
ZN: Blimp (non-rigid airship)

Planes

A: attack
B: bomber
C: cargo
F: fighter
H: helicopter

e.g. F16, AC130, B17 are some well known aircrafts.

Using this system here below:
Source: https://youtu.be/E1-WIJy21mY

Land Craft

While not having proper classification some acronyms can be used in naming to explain their functions:
APC: Advanced Personnel Carrier
ATV: All Terrain Vehicle
BTR: Bronetransportyor, APC in russian/ukrainian
MBT: Main Battle Tank

Additional Information

Video Dictionary With Explanations

This guide was originally made in video format, more has been added since but most of the words and acronyms are explained:

Suggestions

If you feel some acronyms or words are missing, please submit them in the discussion under this guide!

Also check our other guides:

TBA

The AoG Vehicle Collection:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3362271258

✦ Gmodist's Discord[discord.gg]: Lots of good folks that share builds and help each other.
✦ On YouTube
✦ On Twitch[www.twitch.tv]
✦ Gmodism Industries Blueprint Shoppe

Happy Building!
- By Gmodism Imperial Public Education Board

[Gmodism]

Glad it's useful, I certainly would have wanted this when I started out XD
and to refresh the memory!

[Some Random Dude]

Great stuff, nice to have a guide to point people to for all the acronyms and shorthand I use.