Glossary of build-craft and vehicle-combat game terms

Fifty-seven terms that appear constantly in online games built around player-assembled vehicles, each defined so it can be read on its own. Where games disagree about a word, the entry says so instead of choosing a side.

How these definitions were written

Each entry describes how the term is used across the titles listed on Titles covered, drawn from vendor documentation, in-game interfaces and patch notes. Where usage is genuinely inconsistent between games, that is stated in the entry. Nothing here is a claim about a specific product's current behaviour — systems change with updates, and the vendor's own patch notes are the authority on what a game does today.

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I–L
M
N–O
P
Q–R
S
T
U–W

A

Ammo rack: A module that increases the ammunition a build carries. It is also a common weak point: many games make a struck rack detonate, which is why placement is a design decision rather than an afterthought.
Armour layering: Placing structural parts so that an outer, expendable layer absorbs damage before it reaches weapons, the cabin or movement parts. Layering costs mass, which is why it is always argued about against tonnage.

B

Battle pass: A seasonal progress track with two reward columns: one free, one unlocked by payment. Rewards are released as the track advances, and unclaimed progress usually expires when the season ends. See monetisation vocabulary.
Blueprint: A saved record of a build's parts and their positions, allowing it to be rebuilt, copied or shared. A blueprint stores the arrangement, not the parts themselves — rebuilding still requires owning or crafting each item.

C

Cabin: The core part every build is assembled around. The cabin sets the base mass limit, top speed, energy budget and often a class-specific perk. Choosing a cabin constrains everything after it, which is why vehicle-building basics starts there.
Cabin perk: A conditional bonus attached to a cabin — extra damage below a speed threshold, faster reloading after a kill, and so on. Perks are the main reason two cabins with similar statistics play differently.
Client: The program installed on your computer, as opposed to the servers it connects to. Client settings affect what you see; the server decides what happened.
Cosmetic: A part or effect that changes appearance without changing performance: paints, decals, exhaust effects. Whether a given item is purely cosmetic is worth checking rather than assuming.
Crafting recipe: The list of resources and component items required to produce a part at a workbench, usually also gated by a reputation level.

D

Degradation: Reduced effectiveness of a part as it takes damage, rather than a clean transition from working to destroyed. Weapons that lose accuracy and wheels that lose grip are the common cases.
Durability: A term used inconsistently. It can mean a part's hit points, the structural integrity of the whole vehicle, or a countdown to an item expiring. Read the surrounding text before assuming which.
DPS: Damage per second: sustained output including reload and overheating pauses, as distinct from the damage of a single shot. Published figures often ignore reloading, which inflates them.

E

Energy: A budget, set by the cabin, that limits how many weapons and modules a build can mount. Energy is the constraint that forces genuine trade-offs: a second weapon usually means giving up a module.
Engine module: A module that raises power, top speed, or carrying capacity. Engines compete with weapons for the same energy budget.

F

Faction: An in-game group with its own reputation track, recipes and parts. Progress with one faction does not usually transfer to another.
Frame: A structural part used to build the chassis a vehicle is assembled on. Frames carry mass and take damage; they rarely do anything else.
Frame pacing: How evenly rendered frames are delivered. A game averaging 60 frames per second with uneven pacing feels worse than a steady 45, which is why average frame rate alone is a poor measure. See desktop requirements.
Free-to-play: A distribution model in which the client costs nothing and revenue comes from in-game purchases. It describes the price of entry only, and says nothing about whether progression is paced to encourage spending.

G

Generator: A module supplying additional energy, letting a build exceed its cabin's base budget. Generators are usually fragile and detonate when destroyed, so placement matters.
Grind: Repetitive play undertaken for resources rather than for the match itself. Used descriptively: some players prefer a long grind to a purchase.

H

Hard currency: See premium currency. The two terms are used interchangeably, with “hard” more common in industry writing and “premium” more common in game interfaces.
Hardpoint: A mounting position where a weapon or module can be attached. Some games allow free placement on any surface; others restrict mounting to designated points.
Hitbox: The volume the game uses to decide whether a projectile connected. On player-built vehicles the hitbox is assembled from the parts, so an unusual silhouette genuinely changes how often you are hit.

I – L

Latency: Round-trip time between your client and the game server, measured in milliseconds. Australian players connecting to servers in another region will see higher latency regardless of their connection speed.
Launcher: A separate application that installs, patches and starts a game, and sometimes holds the account credentials. A game can be available through several launchers with a single underlying account.
Loadout: The complete set of weapons, modules and consumables a build takes into a match.
Loot box: See randomised item pack. Both terms describe the same mechanism; the second is the one used in most regulatory and classification discussion.

M

Mass limit: The maximum weight a cabin permits before a build cannot be deployed. Distinct from tonnage, which is what the movement parts can carry well.
Market (player market): An in-game exchange where players list parts for sale at their own prices, with the game taking a fee. Prices move with supply, patch changes and seasonal events rather than being set by the developer.
Matchmaking: The system that assembles two teams from the queue. Vehicle games commonly match on power score rather than on account level or win rate.
Meta: The set of builds and tactics that are currently effective, as determined by the community rather than the developer. The meta shifts with each balance patch.
Module: A non-weapon item that changes how a build performs: radiators, generators, ammunition packs, boosters. Modules consume energy.
Movement part: Wheels, tracks, hovers or legs. Movement parts determine speed, steering behaviour and how much mass can be carried, and are often the most exposed parts on a build.

N – O

Nerf: A balance change that reduces something's effectiveness. The opposite is a buff. Both are announced in patch notes, which are the only reliable record.
Open beta: A publicly playable pre-release stage. Progress made during an open beta may or may not be retained at launch; the vendor's announcement is the only place that answers this.
Overheat: A weapon state that forces a cooling pause after sustained fire. Heat management is why sustained DPS is usually well below the figure implied by fire rate.

P

Patch notes: The developer's published list of changes in an update. For any question about what a game currently does, patch notes outrank community wikis and this glossary alike.
Power score: A single number summarising a build's parts, used to place it in a matchmaking bracket. Adding any part usually raises it, which creates the central tension of these games: more capability means harder opponents.
Premium currency: Currency bought with real money. It is normally sold in bundles that do not divide evenly into item prices, leaving a residue that encourages a further purchase. See monetisation vocabulary.
Progression track: Any structured sequence of unlocks — a reputation ladder, a battle pass, a research tree. Several usually run at once.

Q – R

Queue time: How long matchmaking takes to find a match. It rises at unusual power scores, in less-populated regions and outside peak hours, all of which matter more in Australia than in Europe.
Randomised item pack: A purchasable container whose contents are decided by chance. The Australian Classification Board addresses in-game purchases including those with randomised elements in its classification criteria, published at classification.gov.au.
Rarity tier: A colour-coded grade attached to a part — common, rare, epic, legendary and similar ladders. Tier governs which workbench can craft the part and how many lower-tier items it consumes.
Region server: The physical cluster your matches run on. Australian players are often placed on an Asian or Oceanic cluster; which one is used affects latency and queue times.
Reputation: A per-faction progress measure earned by playing. Reputation gates recipes, parts and workbenches, and is the main reason crafting is unavailable to a new account.

S

Season: A fixed period, usually a few weeks to a few months, with its own rewards and often its own battle pass. Season length is set by the developer and announced in advance.
Server tick rate: How many times per second the server updates the authoritative game state. A low tick rate makes fast movement and rapid fire feel imprecise even at good latency.
Soft currency: Currency earned by playing. Usually spendable on ordinary parts and market purchases, and usually not on the items reserved for premium currency.
Structure points: The hit points of an individual part. A vehicle has no single health bar in most construction games — it stops working when enough specific parts are gone.

T

Tiered crafting: A crafting system where higher-rarity parts require lower-rarity parts as ingredients, so a single high-tier item consumes a chain of cheaper ones. See progression and crafting.
Tonnage: The mass a build's movement parts can carry before handling degrades — acceleration drops, steering slows, climbing fails. Distinct from mass limit, which is a hard cap on deployment.
Trade lock: A period during which a newly acquired item cannot be sold or transferred. Introduced mainly to slow account theft and resale.
Two-factor authentication (2FA): A second sign-in step beyond the password, usually a code from an app. The Australian Signals Directorate's Australian Cyber Security Centre recommends multi-factor authentication for online accounts; its guidance is at cyber.gov.au. See accounts and sign-up.

U – W

Verification email: The message sent after registration containing a confirmation link. Accounts often cannot craft, trade or use the market until the address is confirmed.
Weight distribution: How mass is spread across a build. Poor distribution causes a vehicle to tip or to steer unpredictably even when it is comfortably under its mass limit.
Workbench: The crafting station where a recipe is executed. Workbenches are usually faction-specific and unlocked by reputation, and the same recipe is not necessarily available at every bench.
Wipe: Deliberate deletion of progress, normally limited to test servers or the end of a pre-release stage. Live-server wipes are rare and always announced beforehand.

Using this glossary alongside the topic pages

An entry here is deliberately short: enough to read a sentence someone else wrote, not enough to design a build. The topic pages take the same terms and show how they interact, which is where the useful part lives. A player who knows what energy, tonnage and power score each mean separately can still build something unusable.

Terms are added when they turn up repeatedly in vendor documentation or in-game text for the titles this reference draws on. Words specific to a single game's lore are left out, because a definition that applies to one product and nothing else belongs in that product's own wiki.