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Glossary

The words this site, and the editor, use without stopping to explain them. Each term links to its reference page where one exists.

Term	Means
Annex	One of the 16 record types that make up the platform database: ships, subs, aircraft, guns, missiles, torpedoes, sensors, mounts and the rest, each with its own on-disk record layout and RES id. Every annex owns a fixed 4096-wide slice of the 16-bit id space, so the top four bits of an id say which annex it belongs to. See the field reference for the full list, record sizes and id windows.
Battleset	A Harpoon Classic package built around its own theater and scenario content, a pair of `.RES`/`.RSR` files sharing a base name. Modern battlesets read their platforms from the shared `commondb.res`; older ones carried the whole platform database inside their own files, which the editor can read and write back (see Database versions and battlesets). The editor ships no game content of its own, so whichever battleset or mod you maintain, you bring its database yourself.
Check	The broader, opinionated report you can run on the whole database at any time, separate from the export gate. It groups findings into families, a bad reference, a colliding id, magazine records out of order, missing platform description, and says for each one whether it blocks export or is only advisory.
Closure	One record's downward closure: the record itself plus everything it reaches, mounts, multi-mounts, the weapons and sensors on them, loadouts, magazines, platform description, hull names. Building a record package walks this closure so the package carries everything it needs to make sense on its own.
Era	Whether a database’s battleset is numbered below 22 or from 22 up. Below 22 a battleset carries its own database, reload times are in seconds and the game assigns RCS and source level itself; from 22 up reload times are in minutes and the game reads the ratings. See Database versions and battlesets.
Flavor	The database's own name for itself, stored in the `DATABASE_VERSION` resource and shown on the overview screen.
Helo pad	A mount on a ship whose weapon is a helicopter. The original battlesets (1 to 4) carry helicopters this way, and only there is a helicopter accepted as a mount’s weapon. See Database versions and battlesets.
Id	The 16-bit number that names one record and is unique across the whole database. Its top four bits select the owning annex, and 65535 (0xFFFF) is reserved to mean "none" rather than pointing at a real record. See the field reference's id scheme for the exact windows. The game's own error messages and the format documents call it the disk id.
Loadout	A Y1 annex record: a named set of weapons a plane can carry. A plane's own `LoadId` field is an array of Loadout ids, naming every weapon set the plane can select rather than listing weapons directly on the plane.
Magazine	A record holding reload or reserve ammunition for a weapon. A ship or base's own MagStart/MagCount fields point at a run of these, and that run must stay contiguous and ascending, the game depends on it. Several ships or bases may point at the same run, and each then carries the whole stock.
Mount	A Z1 annex record: one weapon-carrying position on a platform. Its `WepId` field names the single weapon it carries directly, or, for a mixed load, names a multi-mount instead.
Multi-mount	A Z2 annex record, synthesized on export whenever a mount carries a mixed load of up to eight weapons: the mount's own weapon field points at the multi-mount instead of a single weapon.
Preflight	The checks Export .res… runs before any file is written — the same ones the game itself would fail on. Nothing wrong, and a native Save dialog opens; something wrong, and it stops there instead, listing what needs fixing in an Export blocked dialog. See getting started for the whole export step.
Project file	The editor's own `.hcpe.json` working format: the same records the `.res` carries, plus the record ids the editor uses to track them across edits, the full change history, and the database's flavor name. It is the lossless half of the pair; export a fresh `.res` from it whenever the game, or someone else, needs what changed.
Record package	A downward closure of one or more records, exported as a standalone `.hcpe-pkg.json` file so another database author can import just that slice of work rather than a whole database. Release notes offer one for the range of records a release actually touched.
Release	Every change that shipped in one export; exporting the `.res` is what makes it real. See the releases guide.
`.res`	`commondb.res`: the compact, byte-packed container the game itself reads, holding all 16 annexes plus supporting resources such as platform description and the database version. It is the lossy half of the pair: no change history, no authorship, no record ids. Exporting one writes where you point the Save dialog, which asks before replacing a file.
`.rsr`	`commondb.rsr`: the container paired with `commondb.res`, holding ship-point art and unit pictures as raw, uncompressed BMP files. A record's PictureIndex field points into it, which is why a record screen can only show its picture once the `.rsr` is loaded: the editor picks up one beside the `.res` you opened (the same name, or `commondb.rsr`), and Load pictures… on a record's toolbar chooses another by hand.
Structure version	Which generation of the database file format a database is in, 1 to 6. The editor reads all six and writes version 6 (or 5, from Settings). See Database versions and battlesets.
Target	Which battleset a database is for, and whether it lives inside that battleset's own file or in `commondb.res`. It decides whether a magazine's reload time is in seconds or minutes and whether the game assigns RCS and source level itself. Shown on the Overview, changed with Change target…. See Database versions and battlesets.