Common TradeWars Terms:

Alignment: This is the measure of how good or evil you are.
Negative numbers means you are evil; a Red, and positive 
numbers indicate you are good; a Blue. Having an alignment 
of 0 means you are neutral.

Backdoor: A backdoor is any sector that has a one-way that
connects to another sector.

Black Hole: Black Holes in TW are sectors that have one or 
more ways in, but no ways out. Usually created by the sysop,
since a normal bang won't allow them to happen. Once you enter
one, you can't get your ship out. If you warp a planet into a
black hole, it can't get out either. You can however x-port
out of your ship. All of your ships will be at range 0.
This can make for some interesting situations.

Blind Warp: Blind Warping is where you attempt to Transwarp or
Bwarp to a sector without one of your figs. You risk fusing.

Blue: A player with 1 or more alignment.  A good player.

Bubble: A group of two or more sectors that can only be accessed
through a single sector, called a gateway sector. Most players
setup their planets in bubbles so that they only need to defend
the gateway sector, and the sectors behind the gateway sector
are inaccessible without going through the gateway sector.
See Tunnel, and Bubble, Gold.

Bubble, Gold: A gold bubble is created by the SysOp/GameOp using
Gold extensions. Bubbles are a minimum of 100 sectors in size,
but the maximum depends on the number of bubbles the SysOp/GameOp
wants to make. The larger a universe size, the larger bubbles can
be. Gold Bubbles often have 2+ ways in or out.

Bust Clearing: Ports in TW only keep track of the last person 
who busted there. Clearing busts takes two reds.

Bust Cloak, Cloak Busting: The art of finding someone who is 
cloaked, and using a photon to de-cloak them.

Busts, Busting: Assuming you aren't exceeding your experience 
limit while robbing or stealing, your odds of busting are about 
1 in 50. When you get busted stealing, you loose 10% of your 
experience, and a portion of your holds equal 9% of the number 
of holds of equipment you tried to steal.

Bwarp: Using the planet based transport pad to beam to another 
sector, similar to transwarping there.

CFS: Short for Corporate Flag Ship.

CIM: Computer Interrogation Mode. Can be accessed by pressing 
Shift+6 at any prompt. Used to acquire information about things 
youve already explored, such as sectors and ports. Also used 
to build a map with ZTM.

Class 0 Ports: Ports where you can buy figs, shields and holds.
Terra has one, and there are two others, Rylos and Alpha Centauri.
Alpha Centauri and Rylos are cleaned at extern just like normal 
Fedspace, but you CAN place figs, mines and planets in there.
Just be sure to move them out before extern, or loose them.

Classic: This refers to any game that is banged totally stock, 
with NO sysop changes. 1000 sectors, 250 tuns per day, etc...  
Also refers to any game that has GOLD Mode disabled.

CN9: The command for setting your abort display. Shorthand for 
Computer, persoNal Settings, Abort Display on Keys.

COLT:  Short for Colonial Transport ship

Commission, Commish: When a player wants to become blue 
(usually so they can use an ISS, or be fedsafe), they have 
to apply for a Commission. Any player with 1000+ alignment 
is considered to have a Commission.

Corbo: Short for Corbomite

Dead-end, Deds: A sector with only one way in, and one way out.

Evil Pair: A pair of ports that are within one hop of each 
other that both buy Equipment. (I.e. A SBB and a SSB that are 
next to each other) Used by Reds to run SSM or other money 
making tactics.

Extern: the maintenance cycle of the game. You can view the
options listed in Extern on our TradeWars site.

Farming, Planet Farming: This is slang for planet creation 
and maintenance. Usually done by blues.

Fed: Short for Fed Space. The sector with the Stardock, and 
sectors 1-10 are considered Fedspace.

Fedsafe: Any condition where a player has zero or more 
alignment (i.e. a blue), and whose experience is 999 or less. 
When a player is in Fed Space that meets those requirements, 
then they may not be attacked by other players. Reds are 
NEVER fedsafe!

Furb: A Merf with full holds used to refill a COLT to full holds.

Furbing: When a red takes a bust in a COLT, the COLT looses 
holds. Furbing is when a fellow corpie (usually a blue) buys
a merf (or Furb), makes it personal, fills it with full holds
and tows it to the red. The red then attacks the furb with about
10 or so figs to destroy it. That in turn replenishes his 
COLT's holds.

Fusing: When you attempt to transwarp you ship someplace that 
doesnt have one of your figs, or blind-warp to a non-empty 
sector, and you end up in a pod.

Grid, Gridding: This is short for your deployed fig grid. 
The more deployed figs you have out there, the harder it is 
for your enemies to find your bases. A good grid will stop 
enemy probes, and make it so that your enemy has to manually 
explore to find your bases.

GOLD Mode: Enables the Trade Wars Gold Edition features that 
allow the sysop to make changes to ships, planets, aliens, 
make big 20k sector universes, and modify existing settings. 
Almost all games are banged in Gold Mode. Can be used in 
conjunction with MBBS mode.

Helper, Helpers: Helpers are utility programs that players 
use to enhance their TW play. They often include scripts 
that automate common tasks, ZTM and data management 
utilities, and other bells and whistles. See site for more info.

IG: Interdictor generator found on level 6 planets.
Sometimes called PIG.

ISS: Short for Imperial Starship

Macro: Macros are a (usually) short grouping of commands that 
are entered all at once as one packet that gets sent to the 
TWGS server. Most helpers support macros, although cut and 
paste works too. The advantage of Macros is that all the 
commands arrive at the same time at the server, so they are 
processed very quickly, often before your opponents can react
to them.

Major Space Lanes, MSLs: The MSLs are all of the sectors 
that are directly between Sector 1, and the Stardock, and 
the triangle between Stardock, Alpha Centauri, and Rylos.
They get cleared every extern.

MBBS Mode: This mode emulates the HVS release of TW for the 
Worldgroup/MBBS systems.

Megga-corp or Multi-corp: Two or more corps that are working 
together. Usually they will have blues on one corp, and reds 
on the other (often the red corp will have a single blue 
furber in it.)

Megga-Rob: In MBBS Mode ONLY, if a port has 3.3 million 
credits to a maximum of 6.6 million, you can rob it all 
at once, with the same odds as a normal rob.  No matter what 
your experience is!

Merf: Short for Merchant Freighter ship

Midnight: events that happen on the SYSTEM time Midnight.
See http://www.outpost-4.com/tradewars for info on 
Extern & Midnight

Moth, Mothing: This tactic is used to drain enemy Q-cannons.