Minmatar Tanking 101
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Class Information
This chapter contains the standard information of this class pertaining to scheduling and class contents. The General Information should be sufficient to create a proper class topic for scheduling on the Eve University forum. Additional information relevant to the teacher is listed under Notes for the Teacher.
General Information
Illustration link for class description on the Eve University forum: http://i757.photobucket.com/albums/xx216/ScoopIrish/Minmatartank.jpg
Describe the general purpose and objectives of the class, and the intended audience.
- Duration: 60 minutes
- Location: Docked up safely in a station
Class contents:
- Passive Shield Tanks
- Active Shield Tanks
- Armor Tanks
- Speed Tanks
- Q&A
Student requirements:
- Mumble registration and access - make sure you have Mumble sorted out and operational well before the class begins. Use this guide for set-up: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Mumble
- Access to the Class.E-UNI in-game chat channel
Additional information: This class is primarily lecture delivered in the Class.E-UNI channel in Mumble, followed by Q&A. If you have any questions, post them in this thread.
Notes for the Teacher
Required materials:
- Class.E-UNI chat channel, to receive questions and post relevant links
- Examples of referenced modules is also helpful to link in chat
- Examples of fittings also very useful
Class Contents
Introduction
Welcome to this class on tanking Minmatar ships for player versus player combat!
This course is designed primarily for Minmatar pilots who want to know how to maintain good defenses on their ships.
Over the hour or so, we shall cover all you need to know to put an effective defensive tank on your Minnie ships, and how to manage them.
(Instructor should then introduce himself or herself - covering relevant experience level and background.)
We have a few ground rules for this class:
- Please put your Mumble settings on "Push to Talk" if you have not already done so.
- Feel free to type any questions in the Class.E-UNI chat channel as we proceed - I will try to answer your questions as they come during the class. At the end of my lecture, we'll open Mumble for any further questions or general discussion.
- You should be docked up safely in a station.
Everyone ready? OK, then - let's begin....
Passive Shield Tanks
- Passive shield tanking is using a ship's natural shield regeneration abilities to avoid destruction from hostile entities.
- Regenerative shield tanking is most commonly applied in player vs environment scenarios.
- The three aspects of passive shield tanking are hitpoint regeneration rate, hitpoint pool size, and resistances. Different ship loadouts often place focus on a particular aspect. Finding the right balance is the key to successful passive shield tanking.
- Disadvantages of passive shield tanks
- Passive resistance modules are less effective than the armor equivalents.
- There is no single passive resistance module that boosts all shield resistances at once.
- Shield boosters and hardener modules generally require more capacitor than the armor equivalents.
- Shield tanking modules are almost exclusively fit in mid slots, competing with tackling, ewar, and propulsion modules.
- Advantages of passive shield tanks
- Shields heal themselves over time at a natural recharge rate. Armor and Hull damage taken is going to sit there until it is repaired.
- After shields are exhausted there is still some armor and hull remaining, leaving a little more room for error.
- There is an active resistance module that boosts all shield resistances at once.
- Low slots are left free for damage modules, etc.
- Shield tank modules
- Shield Extenders Large Shield Extenders are the most efficient boost to hit points available to you. These modules take a considerable amount of power grid and CPU to equip, but provide a solid buffer of hit points without decreasing the charge rate on the equipped ship. However, they also increase your signature radius, reducing your ability to use speed to avoid incoming damage.
- Medium shield extenders can be used in place of Large Shield Extenders. They are easier to fit, but provide proportionally less protection. Small shield extenders provide little benefit, and the mid slot they occupy can often be better used with utility modules.
- Shield Hardeners Resistance modules increase your shield's resistance to incoming damage. Invulnerability Fields provide an equal percentile boost to your defenses, but take some CPU and power grid to fit. Shield Hardeners also consume capacitor to remain active.
- Remember, each successive shield resistance module provides less protection than the previous module.
- Resistance Amplifiers These passive modules provide a permanent boost to one type of damage resistance. They are easier to fit than their active Shield Hardener counterparts and use no capacitor, but provide a smaller bonus than their active counterparts.
- Shield Power Relays Shield power relays are potent modules which significantly increase your shield recharge rate. However, they dramatically decrease your capacitor recharge rate. Make sure you don't compromise your ability to run other modules by equipping too many!
- Shield Flux Coils provide a similar function and increase shield recharge rate. However, they also decrease the amount of shield HP of your vessel. These modules are not recommended.
[Post some example fits, if possible.]
Active Shield Tanks
- Advantages
- Defensive regeneration “on demand.” Boosters are very quick reacting. Their regeneration speed as a result is very customizable; on precisely when you need it, off precisely when you don’t.
- It’s the most micro-manageable. AST grants much faster regeneration, on average, than the same number of modules allocated to Passive Shield Tanking. As a rule, a good AST can use as few as three modules, all of them middle slots.
- Disadvantages
- Active Shield Tanking is inherently less damage-efficient than Armor Tanking, as the total base resistance on Shields is less
- Active Shield Tanking uses a great deal more capacitor energy than Armor Tanking orPassive Shield Tanking
- Modules
- Shield Booster modules repair, or boost, your ship's shield amount. The better modules are more efficient, and may cycle somewhat faster. Shield boosters are not very efficient, giving somewhere near 1 shield for 1 unit of capacitor.
- Unlike Armor Repairers, Shield Boosters give the boost at the beginning of the cycle time instead of at the end, meaning you can wait until you need the shields to activate the shield booster instead of activating it in anticipation of needing it, as is commonly done with armor repairers.
- Shield Boost Amplifier modules improve the efficiency of Shield Boosters. Given that they occupy a valuable mid-slot, they are only infrequently on cruiser sized and smaller hulls, but more commonly seen on battlecruisers and battleships. These modules are stacking-penalized and typically no more than two is ever appropriate on any ship.
[Post some example fits, if possible.]
Armor Tanks
- Armor tanking focuses on maximizing your size and effectiveness of your armor to withstand and/or repair damage. This is the most common type of defense for ships with larger number of low-slots, where most armor-related modules are fitted.
- Disadvantages
- Unlike shields, there is no inherent regeneration rate to armor.
- When your armor tank fails, you have less buffer before your ship is destroyed than a shield tank.
- It takes more skill points to mount an effective Tech II armor tank.
- Advantages
- Passive armor damage resistance modules are more effective than the shield equivalents.
- Active armor damage resistance modules consume less energy than the shield equivalents.
- Armor repair modules are generally more efficient than the shield equivalents.
- Mid slots are left free for afterburners, tackling modules, etc.
- Modules
- Damage Control - A Damage Control module gives a significant boost to any ship's durability by giving resistance bonuses to armor, shields and hull. This is the only module to increase hull resistances, which makes it very valuable in most ships, as it gives you a larger buffer before your ship is destroyed, buying you more time to escape if necessary. It is an active module, but it is easy to fit and uses very little energy (less energy than the base cap recharge at 0% cap). These resistance bonuses don't incur stacking penalties with other tanking modules, but only one Damage Control can be active in a ship at a time. If you fit only one tanking module to your ship, the DC is the module to use. Just don't forget to turn it on.
- Armor plates are the simplest armor module; they add a flat amount of armor to ship. These can be a excellent way of adding buffer to your tank, but they will only make reppers' jobs harder so they are uncommon in PvE. They also add a large amount of mass to your ship, reducing its agility, and so are less used on faster ships. While 1600mm plates are the largest size, they can often be fitted to cruisers, giving a big boost to their EHP. Note: the Rolled Tungsten plates are the best in any category, adding more armor and less mass than other plates, and are relatively inexpensive compared to the Tech I/II (Steel) versions.
- Energized Membranes are passive modules that boost armor attributes. Energized Adaptive NanoMembrane gives a boost to all 4 resistances. Very popular, and with good reason. Energized Regenerative NanoMembrane module gives your ship a percentage bonus to armor, using very little powergrid. If you'd like to fit an armor plate, or an additional armor plate, consider this module instead. Because it's a percentage bonus, you get more benefit on larger ships, or on T2 ships with high resistances.
- Specific hardeners (Thermic/Magnetic/Reflective/Reactive) -- these are used to boost one of the four resistances. Explosive hardeners are the most popular, because most ships have very low explosive resistances. In a ship with lots of tanking slots, you may do better to have these modules than multiple ENAMs.
- Standard Membranes these modules are similar to the energized membranes, but use no CPU and are less effective. They are useful if you're short of CPU, and the faction variants approach the effectiveness of the energized modules, but they are not widely used.
- Armor Hardeners are active modules that boost one of the four armor resistances: EM, Thermic, Kinetic or Explosive. Compared to membranes, they use some cap and slightly more CPU but offer a large boost in effectiveness. Adaptive/Regenerative armor hardeners are not available.
- Repairers these modules repair your ship's armor, just as you'd expect. The better modules are more efficient, and may cycle somewhat faster. Armor reppers are not usually recommended in PvP, because they cycle fairly slowly. If your ship is called primary, it's likely that the repper won't have time to cycle before your ship explodes. Fitting a buffer tank, and warping out when you're targeted, is recommended instead. Reppers are, however, very useful in PvE activities, since NPC ships don't typically deal damage as quickly.
[Post some example fits, if possible.]
Speed Tanking
- Speed tanking is a tactic that emphasizes speed and agility of the ship to protect it from damage. This tactic is most often combined with some amount of shield or armor tanking, as speed alone is most often insufficient.
- Against missiles, speed prevents some amount of damage due to explosion calculations. The slower the missile, the less of the total damage is applied to the ship.
- Particularly against direct damage turrets (lasers, projectile turrets, and hybrid turrets), this most often attempts to evade the turret's tracking speed, allowing the weapon fewer and less accurate shots.
- A big reason why speed tanking is useful is because one person can go in and take the aggression from a lot of targets without getting hit allowing the rest of the fleet to safely take down the enemies.
- Modules
- Overdrive Injector At the cost of a percentage of your Cargohold, the Overdrive Injector will increase your base speed by a percent. The Stacking Penalty applies to the speed increase, making multiple Overdrive Injectors, or other modules that increase speed, ineffective after a certain number have been installed. The drawback of having your Cargohold reduced is usually negligible for PVP activities, but might be an issue for PVE if you need to carry a lot of loot.
- Nanofiber Internal Structure module increases the maximum speed of your ship while simultaneously improving the agility. In effect, the ship flies faster, while also turning and accelerating/decelerating quicker. The speed increase is about 20% less effective than the Overdrive Injector, and the agility boost is about 20% less effective than the Inertial Stabilizer. If one effect of the Nanofiber Internal Structure module is desired, yet a player doesn't mind the loss of 20% of the effect, the player may install this module instead to receive the other effect. Especially for players who dislike the cargohold decrease penalty of the Overdrive Injector, the Nanofiber Structure is a decent alternative.
- Inertial Stabilizer module will decrease the Inertial Factor of your ship by a percent (or improve the "Agility", depending on the term you prefer). This has a few consequences. It will allow the ship to make the same turns at higher speeds, or make tighter turns without losing speed. Additionally, the ship will accelerate or decelerate much quicker. Aside from being able to make sharper turns at closer ranges, having a few of these equipped will help a ship align to a target and accelerate faster. Both mean that you can get into Warp much quicker. The catch is that your signature radius will increase by a small percent, as well. If the purpose of installing the module is to improve your ability to Orbit and evade enemy fire, you may be served better by the Nanofiber Internal Structure module. It is a slightly less effective improvement to the same statistic, but the drawback is only to your Structure HP. You receive a speed bonus as well.
[Post some example fits, if possible.]
Class Wrap-up
- Thanks for attending this class!
- I would appreciate any feedback from people on how to improve the class
- Questions ?
[* Practical exercise: ....]
