38 replies to this topic

[Sandpit]

I've noticed these kinds of questions popping up more and more in the GD section from new(er) players and players that don't have a background in Battletech, so I thought it would be nice to have a "dictionary" of some of the more common acronyms, abbreviations, etc. used here. I won't be going into details about how stuff works, this is more for an easy reference guide for players reading through posts and getting a headache trying to decipher things like:
"Ghost heat impacts IS builds using ACs less than LLs and even more so than LRMs quiaff?"

Again, this is just a reference for players to better understand the lingo so they don't feel quite as lost.

Ghost Heat: Mechanic designed to artificially inflate heat output from a weapon if another of the same weapon is fired before the cooldown period is up. Each weapon has its own number allowed before the ghost heat penalty kicks in
Example:
2Large Lasers fired at the same time will not trigger ghost heat. Firing 3 will though.

Chain Fire: Firing weapons in succession as opposed to firing all at once

Grouping: Mapping weapons to the same weapons group.
IE all weapons grouped in group 2 will fire when you hit the group 2 button (Mine is the RMB)

Metagame: This is used to discuss the popular mechs, loadouts, and tactics used by the majority of competitive players. It is also used to refer to Community Warfare

CW: Community Warfare

LoS: Line of Sight

PPD: Pinpoint Damage (direct fire weapons that do all of their damage to one hit location)

Convergence: how fast weapons converge to aim and hit the same location

LRMs: Long Range Missiles

SRMS: Short Range Missiles

SSRMS: Streak Short Range Missiles

Premade: Commonly used to refer to players who form a group and drop together as opposed to dropping into a game as a solo player

PUG: Pick Up Group. This one has dual meaning as well. PUG is often referred to as solo players but also refers to premades on a public TS server who aren't apart of any official unit

TS: Teamspeak Servers

NGNG: No Guts No Galaxy, often contributes contests and podcasts about the game

Clans: Not the typical clan you find in online games, this refers to clan mechs and units. (Clan Wolg, Ghost Bear, etc.)

IS: Inner Sphere

Smurfy: A mechlab available for free to players who like to tinker with building mechs even if you don't own them in your hangar.

QFT: Commonly used as "quoted For Truth"

FTFY: Commonly used as "Fixed That For You"

Goons: Commonly refers to a group of players who take advantage of exploits to grief players

12man: Refers to a complete 12 man premade team. Often also referred to as the "competitive" section of the player base

LL: Large Laser
ML: Medium Laser
SL: Small Laser
LPL: Large Pulse Laser
MPL: Medium Pulse Laser
SPL: Small Pulse Laser

DPS: Damage Per Second

Burn Time: Refers to the beam duration of laser weapons

I think I covered the most common ones that you'll run into. Hopefully this will help new players understand posts akin to:
"The DPS of the LPL is hampered by the need of LoS that LRMs don't suffer from. How will this impact CW?"

If anyone can think of others that should be added please feel free to add them in or if you have one that you don't understand post it here and we can get you the definition!
GL&GH

P.S.
GL&GH = Good Luck and Good Hunting (a common statement and greeting made to other warriors)

[TLBFestus]

Here's a link to a post I started a long time ago,

http://mwomercs.com/...-abbreviations/

Feel free to copy and paste from it.

[Atlai]

GG - Good Game, used to congratulate people on a well played game at the end of the round. Can also be used sarcastically when your team starts to lose. Example when you are down 8 and the other team still has 12 someone might put in all chat "GG close" when it is far from it.

GL HF - Good luck and have fun, a friendly little chat thing people use to show sportsmanship or something.

HH - Happy Hunting, almost exactly the same as GL HF.

O7 - A salute, where O is your head and 7 is your arm saluting.

GL HF EB - The most importent one, Good Luck Have Fun Eat Bacon, should not be used if you are a vegetarian.

Atlai - The plural of atlas

[Tim East]

FLD - front loaded damage. Damage which is applied immediately upon firing a weapon, assuming you don't miss. Examples include short range missiles, projected particle cannons, and inner sphere autocannons.

Naturally, this leads one to PPFLD, pinpoint front loaded damage. Basically, these are as above, but not weapons that spread damage like short range missiles or LB (shotgun) autocannons.

[Void Angel]

An excellent idea, though you should really...

Bold Your Topics and expand their font size to organize it a bit better, and link to references for things like Heat Scale Penalties and Smurfy's Mechlab.

I'd also advise expanding your explanations on Convergence, The Inner Sphere, and the Clans to better explain what they are and, in the case of Convergence, how it applies to gameplay. Don't forget to mention the "Clan" abbreviation for weapons, e.g. "CERLL."

And finally:
"Atlai: A misspelling of "Atlas," the name of a 100-ton BattleMech, based on a failed attempt to apply Latin plural rules (i.e. even if we used Latin plurals, it's still wrong.) Those using this term are either uninformed, or semi-literate barbarians out to damage the English language. The proper plural of "Atlas" is "Atlases," as with all regular proper nouns in English which end in "s," and any attempt to convince one otherwise should be met with the proper disdain.

Edited by Void Angel, 17 July 2014 - 05:15 PM.

[Void Angel]

PS: "Atlantes" is a specialized archaic plural referring to a set of 5 bound collections of maps - not BattleMechs.

[Atlai]

BTB - Back To Base, it means someone has spotted enemy movement heading towards your base. Normally a light or fast medium should respond to this first, because most of the time its one mech base tapping, but sometimes its an entire lance or more. In these cases the scout should say something like "Need backup at base" or something similar.

Void Angel, on 17 July 2014 - 05:02 PM, said:

And finally:
"Atlai: A misspelling of "Atlas," the name of a 100-ton BattleMech, based on a failed attempt to apply Latin plural rules (i.e. even if we used Latin plurals, it's still wrong.) Those using this term are either uninformed, or semi-literate barbarians out to damage the English language. The proper plural of "Atlas" is "Atlases," as with all proper nouns in English which end in "s," and any attempt to convince one otherwise should be met with the proper disdain.

Dude i love that sig, i full on laughed for a minute.

Not to be off topic, but in all honesty Atlai is just for fun. If it damages the English language who cares? its a pretty messed up language anyway

And the way i see it a mister Shakespeare invented over 1000 new words, i think i can get away with one

Please don't think im at all taking offense to what you said, people arguing about Atlai is partly what makes it fun

Edited by Mason West, 17 July 2014 - 05:15 PM.

[Void Angel]

Well, of course it's fun! Mostly because I'm right. =)

Seriously, though, correctness in language does matter, because languages are systems of thought. The human brain (like the computers built to imitate it) thinks in symbols. Language is a system of symbols we use to communicate, and also internally in thought. So being imprecise in language tends to lead to bad thought, something to be avoided whenever possible.

PS, how did you break the quotation frame, but still include the linkback arrow? (which is still broken, by the way.)

Edited by Void Angel, 17 July 2014 - 05:19 PM.

[Atlai]

I have honestly no clue, i was going to say the power of Atlai... but i really don't know.

And i do agree with you, correctness in thought and speech is very importent.

For example if i was learning a language i would not want to learn to speak it incorrectly, because i would be unable to communicate effectively.

Although with Atlai im still going with the Shakespeare thing

[Redshift2k5]

Mason West, on 17 July 2014 - 05:14 PM, said:

BTB - Back To Base, it means someone has spotted enemy movement heading towards your base. Normally a light or fast medium should respond to this first, because most of the time its one mech base tapping, but sometimes its an entire lance or more. In these cases the scout should say something like "Need backup at base" or something similar.

you probably mean RTB. Return to base. Proper communication is required to alert your team if a large sortie is attempting to take your base.

[Void Angel]

Then I shall have to invoke a reference to Michaelangelo's painting master: "But Mason, you are not Shakespeare."

Actually, "BTB" is an often used term, but not in MWO.

[Sandpit]

Void Angel, on 17 July 2014 - 05:02 PM, said:

An excellent idea, though you should really...

Bold Your Topics and expand their font size to organize it a bit better, and link to references for things like Heat Scale Penalties and Smurfy's Mechlab.

I'd also advise expanding your explanations on Convergence, The Inner Sphere, and the Clans to better explain what they are and, in the case of Convergence, how it applies to gameplay. Don't forget to mention the "Clan" abbreviation for weapons, e.g. "CERLL."

And finally:
"Atlai: A misspelling of "Atlas," the name of a 100-ton BattleMech, based on a failed attempt to apply Latin plural rules (i.e. even if we used Latin plurals, it's still wrong.) Those using this term are either uninformed, or semi-literate barbarians out to damage the English language. The proper plural of "Atlas" is "Atlases," as with all regular proper nouns in English which end in "s," and any attempt to convince one otherwise should be met with the proper disdain.

I didn't want this to be anything more than a definition list so I intentionally kept the commentary regarding stuff minimal. I'm toying with the idea of doing a string of guides that would delve deeper into the meanings and strategies to counter, etc.
I always forget to bold my stuff! lol
For some reason any time I adjust the font, size, bold, etc. it always screws up with cursor placement and I wind up typing through another previously written sentence. I don't know if it's Windows 7 or the forums or chrome.

[Atlai]

Redshift2k5, on 17 July 2014 - 05:33 PM, said:

you probably mean RTB. Return to base. Proper communication is required to alert your team if a large sortie is attempting to take your base.

Is it RTB? Whoops, ive been using BTB for quite some time... Ill leave my post just in case other people are idiots and use BTB too lol.

Void Angel, on 17 July 2014 - 05:34 PM, said:

Then I shall have to invoke a reference to Michaelangelo's painting master: "But Mason, you are not Shakespeare."

I know that! i said he did over 1000, im only doing one... i can probably get away with being 1/1000+ Shakespeare

[Void Angel]

Oh, don't say that within eraser-throwing distance of any English Lit majors.

Sandpit, on 17 July 2014 - 05:37 PM, said:

I didn't want this to be anything more than a definition list so I intentionally kept the commentary regarding stuff minimal. I'm toying with the idea of doing a string of guides that would delve deeper into the meanings and strategies to counter, etc.
I always forget to bold my stuff! lol
For some reason any time I adjust the font, size, bold, etc. it always screws up with cursor placement and I wind up typing through another previously written sentence. I don't know if it's Windows 7 or the forums or chrome.

Shouldn't be windows; probably Chrome. I use Firefox, and it's fine - then again, I generally go back over what I've written and change the font size then.

[Atlai]

Void Angel, on 17 July 2014 - 05:44 PM, said:

Oh, don't say that within eraser-throwing distance of any English Lit majors.

About that...

(May have trolled my college English prof. with the Shakespeare thing, she was actually kinda amused... I ended up getting a 95 on the essay even with a made up word )

[1453 R]

Ya forgot one in your original post, Sandpit!

Quiaff & Quineg: BattleTech Geek terms originating from Clan pseudoculture and the Clan tendency to incorporate military language into everyday use. Each is a portmanteau short-form question; Quiaff is ahort for "Query: Affirmative?", while Quineg is short for "Query: Negative?" Each is generally equivalent to adding "yeah?" or "no?" to the end of a question. Each is also a great way to sound like a pompous idiot on the forums, quiaff Sandpit?

[Void Angel]

Also "Aff, and Neg." But don't teach them that - it's like teaching Ebonics.

[Darth Futuza]

Void Angel, on 17 July 2014 - 07:01 PM, said:

Also "Aff, and Neg." But don't teach them that - it's like teaching Ebonics.

I prefer bit communication, cuts down on the HPG bandwidth.
1 = Yes
0 = No

[Cryptic Gamer]

Only one I haven't seen mentioned in this or TLB's Abbreviation thread

TTK - Time to Kill

You see this one a lot in the Nerf this/that and this/that is OP threads

[Darth Futuza]

Rgr - Roger (Got it, thanks, will do.)
KK - Okay, cool.
JH5 - Jenner Hi-Five, a secret handshake Jenner players give each other when they see each other on the same team.