Glossary

PerpeNaval borrows its language from real seafaring and adds a few words of its own. This glossary explains every term you will meet in the game, from tariffs, canal tolls and refuel calls to Elo, infamy, heat, tenders, seizures and the rookie shield. It also covers the economy (the Exchange, warehouses, port development and shipyards), the shared events that shape the sea, and the costs a ship carries, such as wear, maintenance and insurance. Each entry describes how the rule works in the live game. If a word on a card or a receipt is new to you, it is here.

Achievement: A thing done, counted by the Admiralty: landings, distance, each calling's own work, the fleet, the company. Most pay a little cash; a few give a berth (one more fleet slot) or a free tree node.
Berth: A fleet slot. You start with one; tree levels 8, 17 and 25 open the next three, two achievements add one each, and every ship whose tree is complete adds one more, with no cap. The slot a completed tree opens takes any class, and the class you buy there is yours for good.
Community goal: One shared goal at a time, three to seven real days: deliver so many tons to a port, land so much fish, cool a zone with patrol shifts, or bring fuel. Every landing that fits counts. When it ends, contributors are paid by rank: top 10% $20,000, top 25% $10,000, top 50% $5,000, everyone else $2,000 (half if the goal was missed). Under Sea news & events.
Company · Brethren · Watch: A flag captains sail under together, any calling mixed: a wire, a tag before every name, a home port, and missions the head picks each week that fill the company treasury. Founding costs $25,000 and gives room for 10 captains; the treasury buys room for 20, then 50 (at tier 3). Nothing in it moves a ship faster.
Company missions: Every Monday twelve are offered to every company, two per calling, each with a small-hull lane (T1–T2) and a big-hull lane (T3–T5). The head picks 3, 4 or 6 of them (by the company's size). A member takes one from the company panel with a ship in port; when she lands, the company keeps 80% of that voyage's net and she keeps 20%. Charter jobs are always her own. Each lane is worth 100 company Elo and 25 more when it is full; Elo sets the company tier, 1 to 5.
Condition: Every landed voyage wears a hull: by distance, load and waters (the high seas ×1.3, a storm's gale ring ×2, a Cat 3+ core ×4). Below 70% she is 5% slower and thirstier; below 40% she takes no ocean legs. Drydock her in any port: a fixed price per point by tier ($90, $150, $250, $400, $600 for T1 to T5), 30% cheaper at your home port.
Contested water: Where two or more nations claim the same sea. Either claimant’s coast guard may stop you, and pirates like the confusion.
CR (Combat Rating): How well a hull fights, built from Defense, tree and modules. Both sides can see it, because nothing in the game is hidden.
Daily and weekly orders: The Office (every class) holds three small orders a real day and three bigger ones a real week, drawn from your calling and the date: land voyages, sail kilometres, buy a node, sell goods, and one of your class's own (charters, fuel deliveries, catches, cruises, patrols, boardings). Progress is what you do anyway; claim the pay when it is done. The pay comes from the harbour fund and scales with your best hull (about a quarter of a run's net for a day's order, a run and a half for a week's), plus a little Elo. Nothing here can be bought, and nothing is lost by skipping a day.
Elo · Infamy: Your reputation for each class. Pirates read it upside down: Infamy is negative Elo. Win above your level and it climbs fast. Elo opens the premium cards at 200, 400, 800 and 1200; it gates nothing else.
Events calendar: Two world events a real week, announced a day ahead under Sea news & events: Bluefin week, Hurricane relief, Fuel crunch, Pirate surge, Cruise season. Each one raises the pay of the cards it names for two days. Everyone sees the same calendar.
Fishing grounds: Real grounds with real seasons, shared by every fisher. Each trip takes a real bite (12% at T1, 40% at T5); a ground grows back in about a real day and a half. Below 10% it collapses: closed for three real days, then slow regrowth, unless a captain with Restock reopens it. Pay and tons follow density: an empty ground pays nothing.
Fishing shift: Your choice on every trip card: short (1 real hour, a light catch), day (3 hours) or long (6 hours, the most fish, but freshness suffers unless the holds are cold).
Flare-up: Every few days one contested zone flares for about two days: both coast guards out, blockades, convoy calls; patrols and tolls there pay +50% and the water is hotter. Neutral: no side wins, no flags change.
Flash job: About every 90 minutes one port posts its best job at +50–100% for 30 minutes; the first captain to take it gets it. Marked FLASH on the board; an optional alert in Settings → Alerts.
Fuel stock: Every port has a stock (0–100). Every departure and refuel call buys fuel there and lowers it; tankers raise it; prices follow it. A port below 15% gets a trickle of relief until captains bring more.
Harbour registration: A weekly charge of 0.05% of your fleet's value above $1,000,000. The first 30 days are free. Small and middling fleets pay nothing.
Heat: How dangerous a zone is. It is lower inside territorial seas, higher on the high seas, and highest in contested water.
Incidents and insurance: Any landed voyage can end in an incident (an engine-room fire, a grounding, a collision): about 1 in 20, twice that in a gale, four times in a Cat 3+ storm core, twice again on a hull below 70%. It costs 35% of the run's pay and 15 condition points. Insurance is a switch on the ship card: 2% of every voyage's pay while it is on; it pays incidents and storm damage in full and half of what a boarding takes. The lost condition is yours either way.
Job queue: Up to two jobs per ship (more with Queue Slot nodes), picked from the board of the port she is bound for while she is still at sea. The moment she lands, the first one still on the board sails at full pay; a job that is gone is skipped with a line in the log.
Keep working: From tree tier 5: she takes the best job on the board herself at 90% pay, as long as each one makes a profit, until you switch it off. Pirates and shepherds have patrols instead.
Keyboard shortcuts: Esc closes the last panel or menu · 1–9 open a ship card · J jobs for the selected ship · F fleet manager · L leaderboards · N sea news · C company · A achievements · S settings · M captain menu · [ ] \ fold the panels · ? this codex · K a drawn keyboard with all of them · V the deck view of the selected ship (or double-click a ship on the chart). Nothing fires while you type in a box.
Live calls: Twice a voyage, at about a third and two thirds of the way, a moment opens for one minute while you are online: Storm ahead, Tribute demand, Mayday nearby, or a Weather window. Make the call and she lands with +5% (+10% for a mayday). Away from the tab, your standing orders decide and nothing is lost.
Looks (cosmetics): Looks for real money, never an edge: a livery colours her hull on the chart and in the deck view, a wake trails behind her at sea, a flag flies beside her name and at her stern, a name plate styles her label. Settings → Looks has the catalogue: liveries, wakes, flags, plates and three bundles (every livery; every flag and wake; the Admiral's chest with everything, now and later). Bought once through the shop, owned for good on the account, put on any ship of yours from her card (Looks), and shown to everyone. Nothing here changes speed, cash, cargo, odds or rank. An item marked "not in the shop yet" is waiting for its listing.
Maintenance: A voyage over 5,000 km adds a bill on landing: 4% of the run's own pay per 5,000 km, capped at 8% of the pay. Crew and upkeep are charged per day at sea.
Mayday: A distress beacon. The nearest Tankers and Shepherds can answer it for money and Elo.
Modules: What a ship wears, swappable in port: install for a 5% fee, resell at 70%. The tree is who she is, and it’s permanent.
Patrols: A pirate's toll shift or a shepherd's patrol renews by itself as long as the last shift paid (same zone, the hottest zone, or home — your standing order). A shift that would lose money ends the chain and she waits in port.
Port development: Any captain may invest in any port, from anywhere, from $10,000 (Development tab). The port's level rises with what everyone has put in (level 1 at $250k, $500k or $1M by the port's size, up to level 3), and a higher level serves every ship that calls: faster cranes (dock time −10% a level), deeper berths (the port's fee share of a voyage −1 point a level, 5% down to 2%) and a bigger contract board (+2 charters a level). Investors take a fifth of every fee the port collects, split by share, until each has had back twice the stake, and the harbour carries a plaque with the biggest names. The stake leaves the game for good: it is the late-game money sink, and the map remembers you.
Port states: A few ports at a time are in a state for a few real days: Boom (cargo in +25%), Bust (cargo −20%), Famine (food cargo in +50%; ten food landings end it), Unrest (escorts and smuggling in +30%, ordinary cargo −15%; six escorts calm it), Expansion (building materials and machinery +35%, fuel +20%). The state shows on the port card and as a tag on the cards.
Premium cards: Your Elo in a class opens better contracts on its board: at 200, 400, 800 and 1200 a premium version of the best card appears (+25% to +100% pay, a bigger Elo swing). The next locked one is shown too, so you can see what you are sailing for. Pirates read their infamy the same way.
Range by tier: T1 hulls hop along coasts and T2 can cross oceans. The planner never sells you a voyage she can’t make.
Ransom: Paid to release a seized ship. It’s capped at half the voyage’s gross. Never the ship, never the whole hold.
Rare goods: Six ports a day sell a rare good — saffron, caviar, silk, amber, truffles — in three small lots, bound far away at two to three times the freight. First come, first served; a taken lot is gone for everyone. Drawn from the day, so the same lots for all.
Refuel call: A fuel stop planned automatically when a leg is longer than her tank. Scarce ports charge more, and empty ones can’t fill you.
Rookie shield: Your first 10 landed voyages: tribute-exempt, seizure-proof, invisible to pirates, and a Charter board of your own that nobody else can empty. The server counts the voyages; time away does not count against you.
Sea news: One feed for the whole sea: flash jobs, events starting, grounds collapsing, goals won, records and company deeds. Under the captain menu.
Sea zone: One of 85 named waters, from the Aegean to the Sargasso. Zones carry heat, patrols and events.
Seizure: Click any ship at sea, NPC or another captain's, and board her (Pirate only). Tick what you take: tribute (10% of her cargo value), ransom (12%, capped by what her owner has), her cargo (into your hold, up to your capacity; sell it at any port at its bid, or at a haven with the fence bonus and no duty; undercutting is allowed and the market impact does the damage), her fuel (your way home is free; she drifts twelve hours with an SOS call that tankers answer for pay, and pays the relief bill). One boarding, one roll: every extra take lowers the odds and adds infamy and heat, a refusal that holds costs you a forfeit, and her insurance pays her half back. The trip is out to her and back to a berth, so the range counts both legs. Rookies, relief cargo and policed waters are off limits. A pirate is not welcome everywhere: the sixteen havens always take her; below 300 infamy every port does; above it small and medium ports take her for a blind-eye fee and the big ports turn her away.
Shipyard: Twenty-five yards worldwide, at the big ports; every port card shows the nearest. Every yard builds T1 and T2, the bigger ones up to T5. A hull is delivered at the yard to a docked ship of yours. T1 is afloat at once; T2 takes about an hour, T3 four, T4 twelve, T5 a day, and she holds a slot while she is built. A docked ship sells back for 55% of her hull price at any port; her tree and modules go with her. Yard shares: any captain can invest in a yard from anywhere (from $10,000); the yard's level rises with what everyone has put in ($500k, $2.5M, $10M), each level makes hulls 3% cheaper and builds 20% faster for all, level 2 adds a hull tier, and investors get their names on the yard and 5% of every hull sold there, by share, until they have twice their stake back.
Shore leave: Come back after an hour or more away and the crew is rested: +2% per real hour away, up to +25%, paid on your next three landings.
Signals at sea: A drifting yacht, a wreck, lost containers: a spot on the water for a few real hours, worth a fixed salvage and some Elo to the first ship that reaches it. Any class can go; the card appears on every board within 2,500 km.
Standing orders: What a ship does while you’re away. The rules get richer with hull tier, from three presets at T1 to a chain of rules at T5.
Storm bill: Sail through a Cat 3+ core and the repair costs 4% of the run's pay per category, capped at 30% of the pay. Ships with the weather forecast route around or hold; ships without it take the risk.
Storms: Real tracks from 45 years of records, replayed on the game clock: hurricanes in the Atlantic and East Pacific, typhoons in the West Pacific, cyclones in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, medicanes in the Mediterranean. A storm hold costs time; a Cat 3+ core costs money. Never a ship.
Tariff: A customs duty paid at the port where the cargo is landed, by that port’s tier. Passing through a nation’s waters is free (innocent passage).
Tender: An escort job you post, offering a share of gross to any Shepherd who accepts it, even mid-voyage.
Territorial sea · EEZ · High seas: 12 nm of a coast, 200 nm of a coast, and nobody’s. Pirates can’t hold station inside a territorial sea.
The Exchange: There are fourteen goods (grain, olive oil, machinery, textiles, consumer goods, steel, fresh produce, wine, building materials, coffee, cocoa, medicine, fish, and fuel for tankers). A port lists only some of them: fuel, fish and grain everywhere, then what its region makes, what it lacks, and a few more by its size (about five at a small port, nine at a big one), each inside the band 0.6–1.8 × its world price. A port has a character: a coffee coast sells coffee cheap and buys machinery dear. Every ton sold to a port pushes its price down, every ton bought pushes it up, and the push fades over the days. The port buys at 5% under its quote and sells at 5% over. With a ship docked at a port you buy from it and sell to it (Market tab); what you buy waits in your warehouse there. Load a ship from the warehouse and sail her on your own account to a port that pays more (ship card → Sail with cargo). The Exchange (X) is captain to captain: list goods for sale at a port at your price, or post a wanted order (goods delivered to a port at your price, the cash held until it is filled), filled in part or in full, from anywhere, with a 3% fee. Fishers' catches sell here as whole lots too. The merchant houses (NPC traders) keep the board alive: a house lists what its region makes a little under the port, and wants what its region lacks a little over it. Every trade is priced along its own push: a big lot moves the market against you as it goes, so size your lots. Ports sell no fish: fish comes from fishers.
Toll: A fixed fee to use a canal: Suez, Panama, Kiel or Corinth. It scales with hull size.
Tribute: A cut a pirate demands on a hot route. You can pay it, refuse it through your standing orders, or hire a Shepherd. It is not a tax.
Warehouses: A warehouse is where goods wait between ships: what you buy from the Exchange, what a ship unloads, what a wanted order delivers. About one port in three is a warehouse port (Felixstowe, Odesa and the five big yards always); any number of captains may keep one at the same port. Lease: 2,000 t for a weekly fee by the port's size, taken from your balance by itself; when you cannot pay, the lease lapses and the port takes what is inside at 80% of its price. Buy: needs a completed tree (the same gate as a new calling); 5,000 t at level 1, doubling per level up to 80,000 t; sold back at half of everything paid. Without a warehouse you still trade: a docked ship buys straight into her hold and sells straight from it, anywhere, and fills a wanted order from her hold.

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