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= Tanking Basics =
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{{Merge|Passive shield tanking|target= Tanking}}
The goal of this guide to to provide a consolidated reference for tanking. There a number of class syllabi that cover the topics for teachers as well.
 
  
== What is Tanking? ==
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In EVE Online, '''Tanking''' is the combat science of absorbing and reducing incoming damage. A player upgrades their ship's defense grid, commonly called its '''tank''', to prevent or delay their ship's destruction.
[[Image:402status panel.jpg|right|Ship Status Panel]]
 
Tanking is the act of fitting a ship with modules in order to improve its defensive capabilities to resist, absorb, or mitigate incoming damage, thus preventing or delaying your ship's destruction.
 
  
* Damage to your ship is represented by the Ship Status Panel - the three rings on the top of the status panel represent, from outermost to the inner ring, your ship's shield, armor and structure (also called "hull"). As you incur damage, each ring will fill with red coloring, starting with your shields, then your armor, and finally, your structure. When the structure ring is completely red, that means your hull has been breached, and your ship is destroyed - and you'll find yourself floating in space in a pod.  
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Tanking is a core part of most ship combat in EVE Online. Different tanking approaches exist, split into passive or active tanking and focusing on upgrading one of a ship's defense pools: its shield, armor, or hull. The [[damage types]] of EVE Online — energy, thermal, kinetic, and explosive damage — affect shield, armor, and hull differently through resistances, and these resistances can also be upgraded by fitting modules and rigs. Shields regenerate over time, while armor and hull do not, though with the right equipment each defense pool can be repaired by the self or remotely repaired by other ships.  
  
There are four principle components to tanking:
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Even a basic understanding of tanking can greatly increase survivability in EVE, while more advanced knowledge and optimization can give competitive pilots and ship planners an edge. [[EVE University]] members are encouraged to direct questions to experienced corporation mates or to the #fitting-chat channel on the University [[Discord]].
* Maximizing hit points
 
* Resisting incoming damage
 
* Repairing or recharging damage taken
 
* Avoiding damage altogether
 
  
== Tanking Types ==
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Note that while evading damage is also commonly called tanking, as in "speed tanking" and "signature tanking," this page focuses on reducing inflicted damage.
Common methods used to mitigate damage taken by your ship during a fight:
 
  
*Armor Tanking: Focuses on maximizing strength and effectiveness of your armor to withstand and/or repair damage. This is the most common type of defense for ships with a greater number of low-slots, where most armor-related modules are fitted.
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== Basic concepts ==
*Shield Tanking: Focuses on maximizing your shields' ability to withstand and/or repair damage. This is the most common type of defense for ships with larger numbers of mid-slots, where most shield modules are fitted.
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[[file:402status panel.jpg|thumb|450px|Ship Status Panel]]
*Hull Tanking: Focuses on reinforcing the structure of your ship to withstand and/or repair damage. Generally, hull tanking is not considered to be very viable, as hull repairers are relatively inefficient.
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The Ship Status Panel shows the hitpoints(HP) of the player's ship with three rings, from outside to inside:
*Spider Tanking: Focuses on a fleet tactic in which ships mount remote armor repair modules so they can repair each other.
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# shield (outer semicircle)
*Speed Tanking: Focuses on maximizing the velocity of your ship, in order to avoid damage. This approach can be effective for some extremely fast ships, though it requires a highly skilled pilot to execute.
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# armor (middle semicircle)
*Range Tanking: Focuses on engaging from a distance so that you are out of the range of enemy fire.
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# and structure (also called "hull"; inner semicircle)
*Cloak Tanking: Focuses on the use of a cloaking device to avoid being detected, targeted or engaged.
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Ship defenses suffer damage in this order, marked by red coloring filling each ring. When the last ring (the structure ring) is completely red, the ship's hull has been breached and the ship is destroyed, ejecting the pilot into space as an escape pod.  
*EW Tanking: Focuses on electronic warfare modules to make it difficult for enemies to inflict damage. This approach is generally difficult to execute without the support of other ships and is often used in combination with speed and/or range tanking.
 
  
== The Key to Tanking ==
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Tanking follows one of two general approaches:
*There are two ways to minimise your incoming damage - moving fast and being small.  The smaller and faster you are, the less damage you take from all primary weapon systems (with a couple of exceptions, such as bombs, smartbombs or doomsday devices - these don't care how small or fast you are).
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* Buffer tanking – raising the ship's raw HP
*When you fit armor plates and armor rigs, this makes you slower and less agile.
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* Active tanking – repairing damage received
*When you fit shield extenders and shield rigs, this makes you bigger.
 
*If you do both, you get slower ''and'' bigger - thus, you take a lot more damage.
 
*To find out ''why'' you take less damage by being small and fast, have a look at the missile and gunnery classes - the equations these weapon systems use to determine how much damage you take depend in part on your velocity and your signature radius. See [[Gunnery 101]].
 
  
== How Armor and Shield Resistances Work  ==
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Buffer tanking involves raising HP by fitting passive armor, shield, or hull HP modules. These passive modules do not require control or ammunition, but they generally come paired with negative side effects like reduced evasion. In contrast, active tanking employs equipment that requires capacitor energy or specialized ammunition.  
*Resistance percentages are calculated in a way that many people find confusing. A module may list itself as having a 30% bonus to resistances -- but the only time you'll actually see a 30% increase in resistance when using it is if your current resistance is 0%.
 
*The way the calculations work is that the percentage is applied to the remaining vulnerability. If things didn't work this way, you'd easily get resistances above 100%, and shooting you would cause armor to grow on your ship.
 
*Resistances are easier to figure out if you think in damage vulnerability rather than damage resistance.
 
*Example:  let's say we're flying a Harbinger, and we want to buff up our explosive resistance.  The Harbinger already has a built-in 20% explosive resistance, so we have a 80% vulnerability, and if we get hit by something that does 100 explosive damage, we take 80 damage. Pretty simple.
 
*That's still a lot of damage, so we now fit an Armor Explosive Hardener I, which gives us a 50% resistance bonus (the game lists this as a -50% resistance bonus which is also confusing).  This 50% is applied to the remaining vulnerability, which if you remember is currently 80%.  Half of 80% is 40%, which means this is our new vulnerability, and thus a 60% explosive resistance. If we get hit by that explosive damage missile again that deals 100 damage, now we are taking only 40 damage.
 
*(Now on slide 8) But we want to reduce this even more.  So we fit an Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II.  This is a super awesome module that gives us an extra -20% resistance to all four damage types.  However we now run into [[Stacking penalties|stacking penalties]], which apply to armor and shield resistance modules and rigs. The second module (that is the module or rig with the second-biggest bonus) that affects a specific damage resistance is only 87% effective, the module with the third-biggest bonus is 57% effective, and it gets less and less effective as you fit more of the same thing.  Because we now have two modules that affect explosive resistance, the smaller bonus (i.e. the -20% from the EANM) is actually only 87% effective, which means it only gives us a 17.4% bonus to armor resistance.  Note that the other EM, thermal and kinetic resistances are unaffected because we only have one resistance bonus for each of them, so those three still give the full 20%.
 
*Remember we had a vulnerability of 40% from the previous slide.  This -17.4% is applied to this 40% vulnerability, which results in a 33% vulnerability, and a 67% explosive resistance.  The missile hitting us for 100 damage now only deals 33 damage to us.
 
*Because of stacking penalties, and the way resistances multiply together, it is not possible to be 100% resistant to a damage type.  The best possible resistance is about 99.3% EM resistance, which is possible on a Loki with officer modules ''(link in chat: http://i.imgur.com/FHaNYk4.png - point out the use of 100% EM incoming damage)'' - if doomsday devices could be used on sub-capital ships, this Loki would survive three strikes.  
 
  
= Armor tanking =
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Damage-type resistances reduce incoming damage by a percentage and increase a ship's effective hit points, or EHP. Tanking builds generally combine raw HP increases with damage resistance to maximize EHP.
Armor tanking focuses on maximizing strength and effectiveness of your armor to withstand and/or repair damage.
 
  
== Advantages of Armor Tanking  ==
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=== Buffer tanking ===
*There are many more modules to choose from when armor tanking than when shield tanking, probably one will fit your specific requirement.  
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Buffer tanking boosts raw HP to increase a ship's survivability between repairs, at the expense of self-repairing capability. In fleet battles, a buffer tank can survive heavier bursts of damage between remote repairs. Note that a ship's hull is far slower to remote repair than armor or shields.
*Active armor tanking modules are more capacitor-efficient than shield tanking modules.
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*Your midslots are left free for afterburners, tackling modules, and other very useful utility modules.  
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Buffer tanking has low or zero [[capacitor]] demands, freeing up the capacitor for other tactical equipment. In the same way, having no active modules to manage liberates a pilot's attention for other challenges. However, a buffer tank without repair support has a set lifespan. Once the HP buffer is compromised, an unsupported buffer tank will soon reach the end of its engagement value.
*Some ships have bonuses to armor tanking, and some ships have a large number of low slots and fewer mid slots - these sorts of ships will benefit from being armor tanked.
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Any damage threat that can overwhelm a ship before it can actively repair itself calls for buffer tanking. PvP fleet combat is a key example as it subjects players to heavy focus fire. In contrast, solo PvE [[missions]] have more sustained damage threats that limit the value of solo buffer tanks, though group PvE fleets may use buffer tanks and [[logistics]] support together: this is common in [[Incursions]] and in [[wormhole]] PvE battles.
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When expecting remote repairs, a ship planner may focus their build on more damage resistance, at the expense of EHP, to enhance the value of repairs by decreasing damage suffered.
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Buffer tanking comes in three flavors: [[#Armor tanking|armor buffer tanking]], [[#Passive shield tanking|passive shield tanking]], and [[#Hull tanking|hull tanking]].
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=== Active tanking ===
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An "active tank" uses armor repair or shield booster modules to restore the damage done to the ship. Active tanks use energy from the ship's capacitor to run local armor-repairing or shield-boosting modules. So long as the incoming damage never exceeds your restoration capacity and your capacitor never gives out under the pressure, an active tank can last forever ("perma-tanking"). If either of these two things happens, your tank will collapse ("break") under the pressure.
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Active tanks can achieve either high burst restoration or sustained restoration over a long (potentially endless) time period. They require more management from the pilot than buffer tanks and are often vulnerable to [[Capacitor Warfare]] that drains the ship's capacitor dry.
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==== Sustained active tanks ====
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In PvE, players usually need a permanent tank that can consistently restore a steady stream of moderate damage, forever.
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A PvE active tank uses one or more armor repairers or shield boosters, modules to boost either shield or armor resistances to damage, and modules to support the recharging of the ship's capacitor so that the rest of the tank can keep on running. For most PvE combat, players can look up ahead of time what types of damage they are likely to receive, and will fit modules that harden their resistances against that type of damage in particular.
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Sustained active tanks are rare in PvP.
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==== Burst active tanks ====
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Though fleet PvP can deliver incoming damage beyond the capacity of any sub-capital sustained active tank, solo and small gang PvP often involves lower incoming damage, which a short-term active tank can fend off. The modules central to this tactic are Ancillary Armor Repairers (AAR) and Ancillary Shield Boosters (ASB). These modules can be loaded with Nanite Repair Paste (armor) and Cap Boosters (shield). While these modules have charges, ancillary armor repairers repair far more hitpoints than any other repair module, and ancillary shield boosters consume 0 capacitor energy to cycle.
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However, once their charges run out (in general after 8 cycles for an armor repairer or 9 cycles for a shield booster), the AAR becomes very weak and inefficient, and the ASB becomes prohibitively capacitor-intensive. Ancillary repair modules have a 60 second reload time to refresh their charges from your cargo hold. Only one ancillary armor repairer, or capital ancillary shield booster, can be fitted to a ship.
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The size of charges used and the rate at which they are consumed is based on the size of the module. Larger ancillary armor repairers hold more paste but consume more paste per cycle, and larger ancillary shield boosters require larger cap charges to be loaded. While ancillary shield boosters may have multiple different sizes of charges loaded, larger charges offer no benefit over smaller charges (and with their larger volume, allow fewer charges to be loaded at once), and so only the smallest available charge should be used.
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Because [[Overheating]] repair modules increase both the cycle speed and the number of hitpoints repaired, ancillary repair modules should always be run overheated to maximize the value of their limited cycles. (The overheat damage sustained can then be repaired while the modules are reloading.)
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Another module often important to a burst active tank is the capacitor booster. A cap booster uses charges to fire more energy into your capacitor, allowing a ship to exceed its normal power output for a limited time. Ancillary repairers/boosters and cap boosters offer some protection against capacitor warfare, and a burst active tank can achieve a startlingly-high rate of restoration, especially on a ship with bonuses like those found on the [[Maelstrom]] or [[Hyperion]].
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The drawbacks of a burst active tank are that it requires considerable attention from the pilot, takes up a lot of cargo space, and (most importantly) will eventually give out.
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=== Avoid mixing tanks ===
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Modules are available to help both your shields and your armor, but it is a good rule of thumb to focus on ''either'' shields ''or'' armor, not both.
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Most of the time a tank takes up a substantial proportion of powergrid, CPU and either midslots (shield tank) or lowslots (armor tank). If you fit a shield tank, you can put useful things (damage modules, speed and agility modules &c) in your lowslots, and if you armor tank you can put useful things (tackling modules, electronic warfare modules, propulsion modules &c) in your midslots. Both types of tank at once leave you with little space for other useful modules.
  
== Disadvantages of Armor Tanking  ==
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This rule also applies to mixing buffer tank with active tank. Buffer and active tank modules both require heavy powergrid and CPU, both consume the same limited set of slots, and both fitting theories satisfy different, usually mutually exclusive, goals and conditions.
*Unlike shields, there is no inherent regeneration rate to armor.
 
*When your armor tank fails, you have less of a buffer before your ship is destroyed than a shield tank.  
 
*It takes more skill points to mount an effective Tech II armor tank - mostly due to the skill Hull Upgrades 5.
 
*Armor mods occupy low power slots, reducing your ability to fit damage mods.
 
*Although active armor tanking modules are more cap-efficient than shield tanking ones, armor repairers cycle are a lot slower than shield boosters, repairing fewer hitpoints per second.
 
  
== Common Armor Tanking Ships  ==
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Double-tanked ships are usually only used as specially-designed bait.
*Because they generally have more low slots, and therefore can fit more armor-tanking modules, Gallente and Amarr ships are usually armor tanked. The Gallente Hyperion and Proteus, and the Amarr Abaddon and Legion, have the strongest sub-capital armor tanks in the game - and can exceed 60,000 hit points in armor protection, and over 200,000 effective hit points in total, with the right skills, modules and implants.
 
*Many Minmatar ships can also be armor tanked, as they typically have a more balanced distribution of low, mid and high slots.
 
*Very few Caldari ships armor tank, with the exception of the Scorpion and Blackbird. These are sometimes (and in the Scorpion's case, usually) armor-tanked so that they can keep as many midslots as possible free for ECM.
 
  
== Armor Tanking Modules  ==
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=== Resistances ===
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Resistances (or "resists) on a ship reduce the damage taken. A resist figure is a number that tells you by how large a percentage the incoming damage is reduced. For example, 30% thermal resistance on shields means that all incoming thermal damage is reduced by 30%: 100 hit points of shield damage becomes 70.
  
=== Armor Plates  ===
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The T1 ships have almost identical base resists, but many of the T2 ships have so called "[[T2 Resists]]" that drastically vary between races. For example, Minmatar ships with T2 resists have massive EM and thermal resists even on shields but have low resists against explosive and kinetic.
*Armor plates are the simplest armor module; they add a flat amount of armor to a ship. These can be an excellent way of adding buffer to your tank, but the penalties of increased mass make them uncommon in PvE.  
 
*The large amount of mass they add to a ship, reduces agility, so are rarely 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 Reinforced Rolled Tungsten plates are the Meta 4 version and are also very popular.  They don't add as much armor HP than the T2 steel plates, but they use significantly less powergrid and add less mass (thus retaining some of your agility).  They can be useful if you're short on PG.
 
  
=== Damage Control  ===
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The base resists of a ship are almost always modified by modules fitted on the ship. Resistance percentages are calculated in a way that many people find confusing. A module may list itself as having a 30% bonus to resistances, but the only time you'll actually see a 30% increase in resistance when using it is if your current resistance is 0%.  
*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 a passive 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|stacking penalties]] with other tanking modules but do with `Armor Resistance Shift Hardener`, only one Damage Control can be active in a ship at a time.
 
*Extremely common in PvP, some snipers or EWAR might choose not to fit them but most will. Less common in PvE but can still be useful for armor tanking PvE.
 
*If you fit only one tanking module to your ship, the DCU is the module to use.
 
  
=== Armor Hardeners  ===
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The way the calculations work is that the percentage is applied to the remaining damage after resists. If things didn't work this way, you'd easily get resistances above 100%, and shooting you would cause armor or shields to grow on your ship.  
*Armor Hardeners are active modules that boost one of the four armor resistances: EM, Thermic, Kinetic or Explosive.
 
*Compared to membranes, they use capacitor (not much though) and slightly more CPU but offer a large boost in effectiveness
 
*Realize that when you are in game the fitting window won't show you an active module's bonus until you actually activate it.  Which means you have to be in space. (Alt-F is the default shortcut combination to open your fitting window).
 
  
=== Reactive Armor Hardener ===
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Resistances are easier to figure out if you think in terms of "damage vulnerability" rather than "damage resistance". A ship with 60% EM resist is then going to take 40% EM damage received. Adding a 30% resist module multiplies the damage taken by 0.7, so you now take 0.7*0.4 = 0.28 = 28% of the raw damage.  
*This is a new module introduced in Inferno and you can only fit one.
 
*Uses more capacitor than standard armor hardeners, when you turn it on it gives you -15% extra armor resistance across the board to all resistances.
 
*However it shifts its resistances according to incoming armor damage, moving the resistances gradually per cycle. Example: if you are being hit by only EM damage, the 15% to all resistances will gradually shift to 60% EM resistance and 0% all other resistances The shifting effect is only activated when your shield has gone and you are taking armor damage.
 
*Shifts by 6% per damage type per cycle.  If you're being continually hit by only EM damage, each cycle your EM resistance will increase by 18% and the other three resistance will each decrease by 6%.
 
*Useful module for buffer tanking if you have a lot of armor EHP and will survive long enough for the shifting resistances to benefit you.
 
*Also it doesn't suffer from normal stacking penalties with other armor modules but does conflict with the DCU.
 
*The Armor Resistance Phasing skill will reduce cycle time and capacitor need of the module, which makes it a much better module. Before Kronos, the cap use reduction was less than the cycle time reduction meaning you would use more cap per time with higher skills. In Kronos both reductions go in step, so capusage stays constant.
 
*The modules looks at damage *after* resistances and shifts resistances accordingly. This makes the module usefull even if you are receiving omni damage as it will try to plug your worst holes.
 
  
=== Energized Plating  ===
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Because of [[stacking penalties]], and the way resistances multiply together, it is not possible to be 100% resistant to a damage type <ref group=Note>It ''is'' possible to have over 100% resist by overheating either an x-type or one of the best or second best officer hardeners on a [[Deep Space Transport]] in a class 6 red giant wormhole system. This will result in '''immediate destruction''' of the ship if any damage is taken—so don't do it.</ref>.
These are armor membranes, passive modules that boost armor attributes. They take a lot of CPU, but only 1 powergrid
 
  
*EANM (Adaptive) -- The Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane gives a boost to all 4 resistances. Very popular to increase armor resistance across the board.  30/36 CPU for T1/T2 versions.
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For those interested in the math (pilots do not need to know these details if they don't want to), the final resist with multiple modules and stacking penalties can be calculated with the formula
*EALM (Layering) -- this module gives your ship a percentage bonus to armor.  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. The T2 version of this has the same effect as a T1 trimark armor pump rig - the rig might be a better, to keep your low slots free.
 
*Specific hardeners (EM/Thermal/Kinetic/Explosive) -- 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 EANMs.
 
* The EANM and the specific energized membranes become more effective when you train your EM/Explosive/Kinetic/Thermic Armor Compensation skills, gaining 5% increase with each level.  For example, the T2 EANM gives you 20% to all resistances.  If you train all the Armor Compensation skills to 4, this will become a +24% to all resistances.
 
*The Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane is one of the most popular faction modules and is pretty cheap nowadays.
 
  
=== Resistance Plating  ===
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:<math> \displaystyle \text{Resist} = 1 - ( 1 - R_0 )( 1 - R_1)( 1-R_2 \times 0.869)( 1 - R_3 \times 0.571)( 1 - R_4 \times 0.283)...</math>
These modules are very similar to the energized membranes above, except they use no CPU and are less effective.  
 
  
*They have the same versions as the energized membranes.
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where R0 is the hull resist and R1, R2, R3,... are module resists in descending order.
*They are very useful if you're short of CPU, and the faction variants approach the effectiveness of the energized modules.
 
*Use Energized Plating if you can, downgrading to Resistance Plating if you run out of CPU.
 
  
=== Armor Repairers  ===
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=== Negative resistances ===
*These modules repair your ship's armor, just as you'd expect. The better modules are more efficient, and may cycle somewhat faster.
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Certain effects will apply negative resists to a ship. These include [[incursion]] effects, [[Abyssal Deadspace]] effects and [[Capital_Ship_Modules#Phenomena_Generator|phenomena generators]]. The way these are applied may seem confusing, but they are simpler than they seem. The idea is exactly the same as with normal resists explained above where the percentage change is applied to vulnerability (100% - resist) instead of resist.
*Armor reppers are not usually recommended in fleet 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. See also [[Armor Repairer]]. They can also be extremely effective in solo PvP.
 
*For ships with armor repairer bonuses, such as the Gallente battlecruisers and battleships, two armor repairers can be very effective for mission runners, if cap stability can be maintained.
 
  
=== Ancillary Armor Repairers ===
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A 50% resist penalty means that your ship will take 50% more damage.
*Similar to the Armor Repairers with the following differences
 
*Always uses the same cap as a normal (T1/T2/Named) Armor Repper.
 
*Uses Nanite Repair Paste.
 
**Small uses 1 paste per cycle.
 
**Medium uses 4 paste per cycle.
 
**Large uses 8 paste per cycle.
 
*Holds 8 cycles worth of paste at a time.
 
*Reload time is 1 minute.
 
*When not loaded with Nanite Repair Paste, the AAR has 3/4 the rep amount as a T1 Armor Repairer.
 
*When loaded with Nanite Repair Paste, the AAR triples the rep amount (repairs 2.25x a T2 repairer when loaded).
 
*The AAR has the same cycle time and fittings as T1 reps.
 
*Limited to one per ship.
 
  
[http://i.imgur.com/RoF5Aj4.jpg Some graphs comparing ancillary vs normal repairers] - linked in [http://crossingzebras.com/hyperion-the-king-of-brawling-battleships/ Mr Hyde's article about the Hyperion]
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Example: You fly your ship with 70% resist into a situation where you receive 50% resist penalty. Your new resist is 55%; how can this make any sense? <br>
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Your ship has 70% resistance meaning you will receive 30% of the incoming damage. If 50% resist penalty is applied on your ship you will take 50% more damage. You will be receiving 1.5×30% = 45% damage after your resists. So the new resistance is 100% - 45% = 55%.
  
=== Remote Armor Repair Systems  ===
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The math is:
*Remote repair modules repair armor on other pilots' ships. Note that you must target the ship to be repaired, and that your cannot repair your own ship with a remote repper. They are more useful in fleet operations than regular reppers, for a couple of reasons. First, one repper can repair many ships, given time. Second, the repper cycles more quickly than an onboard repper does. Third, if several ships have them, they can focus their repair power on whatever ship in the fleet is being attacked, giving that ship a great deal of armor repair capability. This is known as [[Spider Tanking]]. The problem with using the remote repair modules on non logi ships is the range, all the ships need to remain in a small area.
 
*Note that remote repair modules take a significant amount of capacitor to run -- non-logistics ships will probably need a cap booster module to use it for any length of time.
 
  
=== Armor Rigs  ===
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:<math> \displaystyle \text{New resist} = 1 - ( 1 - \text{Original resist} ) \times ( 1 + \text{Penalty} ) </math>
There are a few commonly used [[Rig#Armor|armor rigs]]:
 
  
*Trimark Armor Pump -- The Tech I version gives a 15% boost to total armor, at the cost of some ship speed. It's the rig equivalent of the Armor Layering Membrane. Trimark rigs are not stacking penalised (armor HP is never stacking penalised).  They apply after any fixed HP bonus from armor plates. Incurs a 10% penalty to maximum speed.
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The resist penalties will never cause the ship to have below 0% resist. If the penalty is big enough that the new resist would be negative, the new resist will simply be 0%.
*There are also damage-specific resistance improvement rigs. The most commonly used is the Anti-Explosive Pump, since armor tanks are generally weakest to explosive damage. Armor resist rigs are stacking penalized with; Armor Hardners, Energized Planing and Resistance Plating modules. Armor resist rigs penalize speed by 10%.
 
*Auxiliary Nano Pump -- Increases a ship's armor repairer repair amount per cycle by 15% at the expense of increased power grid use for local armor reps. Suffers from stacking penalties if you fit more than one.
 
*Nanobot Accelerator -- This rig speeds up armor repair module cycle times by 15%, again at the cost of power grid use. In theory this is more effective for active armor tanks than the Auxiliary Nano Pump, but because it also causes you to use a lot more capacitor, it is used less often. Despite what the description says, it doesn't suffers from stacking penalties if you fit more than one.
 
  
=== Armor Tank Implants  ===
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=== Negative hitpoints ===
*There are several useful implants that focus on armor tank improvement, all from the Inherent Implants "Noble" series:
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It is possible that the hitpoints of the shield, armor, and/or hull become a negative value. The game tracks "damaged value" for each layer of hitpoints, changes to max hitpoints will not change the damaged amount of hitpoints, unlike capacitors, which change energy with capacity changes to maintain the same percentage.
**Repair Systems RS-6xx series - Slot 6 - reduces armor and hull repair systems duration by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 
**Remote Repair Sustems RA-7xx series - Slot 7 - reduces capacitor need for remote armor repair modules by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 
**Repair Proficiency RP-9xx series - Slot 9 - increases armor repair system amount by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 
**Hull Upgrades HP-10xx series - Slot 10 increases armor hit points by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 
  
*There is also the incredible Slave set of pirate implants.  
+
When the max hitpoints are reduced and the new max hitpoint minus damaged hitpoints is a negative value, negative hitpoints occur. Common causes are:
**This is a series of implants that fit into slots 1-6. Each provides a bonus to armor hit points, but when you fit the entire set, it provides a multiplicative total bonus of 53.63%. Unfortunately, a complete Slave set cost about 1.8 billion ISK or more.  
+
* The pilot is ejected, and the max hitpoints bonus from skills, implants, and boosters are removed.
**There is a less expensive low-grade Slave set, which provides an aggregate bonus of 33.83% to armor hit points. These are a relative bargain at only 750 million ISK or so.
+
* Modules that give extra max hitpoints become offline because either the pilot ejected caused the module to be out of CPW/PWG, burned to overheating, the pilot did not have skills for it, or they were put offline by the pilot or unfitted.
**You can mix & match HG and LG Slave implants, for a final armor HP bonus partway in between.
+
* Modules that decrease max hitpoints are fitted and brought online.
 +
* [[Medical boosters]], [[Command Bursts]] or system effects (like Pulsar or Wolf Rayet in [[Wormhole space]]) caused changes in max hitpoints. Either the effect caused a decrease in max hitpoints, or the ship took too much damage and had the effect that increased max hitpoints wear off.
  
*You can also get some officer-fit implants, that are variations of existing implant series except more effective.  Once example is Akemon's Modified 'Noble' ZET5000 implant, which is an 8% version of the Hull Upgrades HP-10xx series of implants. It's correspondingly more expensive as well.
+
Negative hitpoints will show 0 hitpoints, but they will absorb some amount of heal from hull repairers, armor repairers and shield boosters, resulting in odds that the ship is repaired but hitpoints are not changed, but with enough fixes eventually bringing hitpoints to a positive value.
  
== Armor Tanking Strategies ==
+
If hull hitpoints reach 0 or a negative value via max hull hitpoints decreased instead of damage, the ship won't be destroyed until the next hull damage, allowing the ship to be hull repaired.
Armor tanking emphasizes the use of the low slot modules described in the previous section to increase armor hit points, resistance to damage and repair damage done to it. Regardless of the approach taken to armor tanking, it is wise to understand that armor has an inherent weakness to explosive damage and plan your resistance modules accordingly.
 
  
There are two primary approaches to Armor tanking:
+
== Armor tanking ==
*'''Buffer tanking'''
+
=== General approach ===
*'''Active tanking'''
+
Armor tanking emphasizes the use of low-slot modules to increase armor hit points, resistance to damage, and gain the ability to repair damage taken by armor. Regardless of the approach taken to armor tanking, understand that armor on T1 hulls has an inherent weakness to Explosive damage, and usually a mild weakness to Kinetic damage, and you should plan your resistance modules accordingly.  
*Note:'''Passive tanking''' doesn't exist in the same sense as in shield tanking, since armor doesn't repair itself.
 
  
=== Buffer tanking ===
+
Armor-tanked ships generally have much stronger buffers than shield-tanked ships. This is aided by Armor having near-universally higher base damage resistances than shields (albeit with the opposite order of strengths and weaknesses), and several modules which increase armor hitpoints and resistances that have no shield equivalents.
*Typically used for PvP, the buffer tank is based around the principle of having high damage resistance and as many hit points as possible, thus increasing the Effective HitPoints (EHP) of the ship. The concept behind this is simple, add enough EHP to your ship to outlast your opponent through the use of active and/or passive resistance modules, which complement the Armor Plate modules that add raw hit points.
+
 
*Ideally this should free up enough fitting slots, CPU and power grid to fit bigger weapons and more combat utility modules, such as tackling equipment, to maximize your damage output. This type of fitting uses a minimal amount of capacitor to run Armor Hardeners making it easily sustainable, but can be made fully passive by using only passive resistance modules instead. The primary drawback to Buffer Tanking is that you have no way to repair yourself, so when you run out of hit points you are toast.
+
Armor Repairers are more capacitor-efficient than Shield Boosters (in terms of raw HP recovered per GJ of capacitor used), and they repair large amounts of HP on every cycle. However, they also cycle very slowly, meaning that they effectively restore less HP per second than shield boosters; and the HP gained is applied at the ''end'' of the module cycle (rather than the ''beginning'' as it is for shield boosters), meaning that a pilot must anticipate when the repairs will be needed several seconds in advance.
*Most common in fleet PvP, but also group PvE (like incursions, wormhole anomalies / signatures and a few others). In PvP a fleet will overwhelm an active tank in fairly short order, whereas a buffer tank will give you more survival time.&nbsp; Although, some ships with faction gear and active tank bonuses can field some extremely resistant active tanks that can take on more than you might think. In general if you are expecting to have Logistical support (friends to rep your armor) then you want to buffer tank more towards resistance, because the higher your resistances the more effective logistic reps are. While if you don't expect logistical support you only care about the Effective Hit Points, so whatever combination gives you more effective hit points is the best option.
+
 
 +
Armor tanking modules generally do not use nearly as much CPU as shield tanking modules. (Some armor tanking modules even consume no CPU at all!) However, Armor Plates and Armor Repairers use much, much more powergrid than any shield-tanking modules. Because armor tanking modules take up low slots, they leave their ship's mid slots free for capacitor modules, [[Electronic Warfare]] modules, and damage application modules, which gives armor-tanked ships much more utility and versatility than shield-tanked ships. However, in exchange, because armor takes up low slots, and damage-increasing modules also take up low slots, armor-tanked ships generally have lower potential damage output than shield-tanked ships.
 +
 
 +
Once a ship's armor is depleted, only its hull stands between it and death. This means that, in theory, armor-tanked ships have smaller safety margins than shield-tanked ships. However, this is a fact that Gallente ships are designed around: some Gallente ships have bonuses to local armor repair modules, and Gallente ships also have the thickest hulls of any ships.
 +
 
 +
Armor Plates have a unique penalty to them: increased ship mass. This penalty reduces ship agility (acceleration and alignment time), and reduces the speed bonus gained from [[Propulsion equipment]]. Armor Rigs also (usually) reduce ship max speeds. As a result, heavily armored ships tend to be significantly slower than heavily shielded ships.
  
=== Active Tanking ===
+
In short, the advantages of armor tanks are:
*Active tanking is most commonly used for solo activities such as mission/complex running, ratting, and solo PvP. Active Tanking differs from Buffer Tanking in that it uses Armor Repair modules to actively repair damage done to the ship. You should be careful to include enough resistance and buffer to keep your repair modules from being overwhelmed by incoming damage; frequently this means packing resistance modules (either passive or active) that compensate for the specific types of damage you expect to be receiving.
+
* A wide range of modules available to enhance resistances
*This type of fitting takes a lot of capacitor to sustain your cap-hungry Armor Repair modules so it should ideally include modules such as Cap Rechargers and/or Capacitor Batteries to balance out and maintain capacitor stability.
+
* Armor repairers use less capacitor than shield boosters
*Capacitor stability is important because it allows you to leave your Tank modules turned on without ever worrying about running out of capacitor. So long as incoming damage is less than what your repair modules can handle your ship should be able to sustain that level of damage indefinitely. This is commonly referred to as Perma-tanking. If incoming damage exceeds your repair capacity you will gradually run out of Hit Points and die. This is commonly referred to as having a broken tank.
+
* Relatively limited CPU demand and capacitor burden
*For PvP purposes a Cap Booster can be used to temporarily supplement capacitor output to allow for short bursts of heavy tanking. The primary drawback to this approach is that unlike the capacitor stable fitting described above, when you run out of charges to run your Capacitor Booster, you quickly run out of capacitor, your tank will fail and you will die horribly.
+
* Mid slots are available for propulsion, tackle, EWAR, and damage-application modules
*Similarly, weapon systems that drain your ship's capacitor will effectively disable your active tanking modules. As above, your tank will fail and you will die horribly. In this case, the Capacitor Booster can be used on an otherwise capacitor stable fitting to provide emergency power to prevent being drained and destroyed.
 
  
=== Spider Tanking (Armor) ===
+
And the disadvantages of armor tanks are:
*In simple terms, Spider tanking involves the use of a Buffer and/or highly resistant tank that is repaired remotely by other ships in your squad who are in turn repaired by remote repair modules on your ship. This is an advanced technique that requires a good deal of coordination to function effectively, and will be covered later in this guide.
+
* (active tanks only) armor repairers only repair at the end of their cycle, requiring precise management from pilots
 +
* Many armor tanking modules and rigs slow the ship down
 +
* Use of low slots reduces space for damage-boosting modules
 +
* Relatively greater powergrid demand
 +
* Armor doesn't repair naturally on its own over time as shields do, so pilots might have to dock up and pay for repairs
  
=== Fitting Strategy ===
+
Armor tanking is most common in Amarr and Gallente ships, which tend to have lots of low slots and sometimes have bonuses for armor resistance (Amarr) or active armor repairers (Gallente). Minmatar ships and even some Caldari ships are sometimes also given armor tanks: the [[Hurricane]] and [[Blackbird]] are two examples.
*Whether fitting active or buffer tanking it is advisable to use some sort of fitting tool, such as EFT or Pyfa, to create and compare fits:
 
**For PvP, fit the largest single plate you can, and then play around with '''Armor Hardeners''', '''Energized Plating''', '''Resistance Plating''' to get the most Effective Hit Points that you can get.
 
**For PvE, fit one or two repair modules (depending on how much cap you have available), and then fit as many armor damage resistance modules of the appropriate damage types for the expected enemy.
 
  
== Armor Tanking Skill Summary ==
+
=== Racial resistances ===
The following skills are required to field a full Tech 2 Armor tank:
+
''see also: [[Natural Resistances#Tech I armor resistances]]''
*{{sk|Hull Upgrades}} V: To fit Tech 2 Resistance and Plate modules and maximize Armor hit points
 
*{{sk|Mechanics}} V: to fit Tech 2 Armor Repairers and maximize your structure hit points
 
*{{sk|Repair Systems}} IV: to fit Tech 2 Armor Repairers
 
  
*The primary armor tanking skill is [[Skills:Armor#Hull_Upgrades|Hull Upgrades]], which grants a 5% bonus to armor hit points per skill level. Hull Upgrades V is the prerequisite for the most useful Tech II armor resistance modules.
+
One major consideration when choosing resistance modules is that different races' Tech 1 ships have slightly different base armor resistances. This is explained in the article on [[Natural Resistances]], however for a discussion of tanking, there are four major takeaways:
 +
* Amarr ships can generally get sufficient resistances using a combination of Multispectrum Energized Membranes, a Damage Control, and/or a Reactive Armor Hardener.
 +
* Gallente ships generally need to run one Explosive Membrane, Coating, or Hardener
 +
* Caldari ships are generally not armor-tanked at all, however on the rare occasion that they are, they generally need an Explosive, and possibly a Kinetic, resist module
 +
* Minmatar ships generally need to run both an Explosive and a Kinetic resist module, or in extreme cases run full "Rainbow -1"
 +
The reason for these takeaways is that one of the general goals in resistance modules is to have all four of your ship's resistances be at some fairly equal high value; and because different races have different base values, different amounts of effort are required to even the numbers.
  
*[[Skills:Armor#Mechanics|Mechanics]] is also required to fit armor repairers, and should be trained up to level V to fit Tech II equipment and operate it effectively. Mechanics also provides a 5% bonus to structure hit points per skill level.
+
=== Rainbow -1 ===
 +
"Rainbow" tanking refers to an attempt to maximize damage resistance by running one pure resistance module for each of the four damage types. This is generally only done on Battleships or Capital Ships, because of the large number of slots required to do it. However, because of the distribution of base armor resistances, rainbow tanking is generally not quite the most efficient way to maximize resistances. What is generally more efficient is "Rainbow -1": One Membrane or Hardener for each of Explosive, Kinetic, and Thermal, and then a single Multispectrum Energized Membrane. This strategy takes advantage of armor's naturally high EM resistance, improves the other three resistances to match, then uses a single Multispec to further improve everything. This has the added advantage of only applying 1 layer of Stacking Penalties to most resists and no Stacking Penalties at all to the EM resist, and synergizes very well in a fleet setting with [[Command Bursts|Armored Command Bursts]].
  
*Training the four armor-compensation skills is also important, since most of the commonly-used armor hardener modules will benefit significantly from them. These skills increase resistance to specific types of damage by 5% per skill level for passive armor hardeners, before Retribution 1.1 these skills also helped active modules but this is no longer the case. For regular armor tankers, each of these skills should be trained to at least level III or higher, IV is highly recommended. Maybe even V once your ships get bigger and more expensive.
+
=== Armor tanking modules ===
**[[Skills:Armor#EM_Armor_Compensation|EM Armor Compensation]]
 
**[[Skills:Armor#Explosive_Armor_Compensation|Explosive Armor Compensation]]
 
**[[Skills:Armor#Kinetic_Armor_Compensation|Kinetic Armor Compensation]]
 
**[[Skills:Armor#Thermic_Armor_Compensation|Thermic Armor Compensation]]
 
  
*For armor rigs, [[Skills:Rigging#Jury_Rigging|Jury Rigging III]]  and [[Skills:Rigging#Armor_Rigging|Armor Rigging I]] are required to fit the Tech I rigs, [[Skills:Rigging#Armor_Rigging|Armor Rigging]] also reduces the speed penalty by 10% per level, at level 4 you can fit Tech 2 rigs.  
+
{|class=wikitable style="width: 900px;"
 +
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon armor plate.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Armor plates}}''' increase armor HP by a flat amount with the cost of increasing ship mass, decreasing ship speed and agility. Oversized plates, those intended for larger ship sizes, can be fitted onto smaller ships if they have adequate power grid.
  
*[[Skills:Armor#Repair_Systems|Repair Systems]] is required to operate armor repair-units effectively - each level reduces repair systems duration by 5%. Tech II units are available at skill level IV, though training to level V is recommended to minimize the length of repair unit cycles.  It should be noted that a reduction in activation time increase the capacitor need of the module.
+
|-
  
*[[Skills:Armor#Armor_Layering|Armor Layering]] reduces the mass penalty of fitting armor plates by 5% per level. Which means that if a ship is fitted with an armor plate, training this skill up improves both the ships agility all the time, and top speed when using an afterburner or microwarpdrive. In other words training this skill up will reduce some of the disadvantages of choosing to armor tank.
+
|[[File:Icon adaptive nano plating.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Resistance coatings}}''' are passive modules that increase armor resistances. They have very low fitting costs.
  
*[[Skills:Armor#Armor_Resistance_Phasing|Armor Resistance Phasing]] is useful if you fit a Reactive Armor Hardener, It reduces the cycle time of the module (10% per level) and decreases the capacitor need (10% per level).  More information on the Reactive Armor Hardener later in the class.
+
* Resistance Coatings come in 5 types: one for each of the four damage elements and one multispectrum model which moderately resists all damage.
 +
* The [[#Armor Compensation|Armor Compensation]] skills further increases bonus resistances.
  
*[[Skills:Shields#Shield_Management|Shield Management]] while not technically an armor tanking skill, increases your overall shield hit points by 5% per level, which helps any ship, regardless of the way its tanked.
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon energized membrane.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Energized membranes}}''' are an upgraded version of Resistance Coatings, passively increasing armor resistances by a larger amount. They have higher CPU fitting costs than resistance coatings and are more expensive to produce.
  
*[[Skills:Shields#Tactical_Shield_Manipulation|Tactical Shield Manipulation]] also not technically an armor tanking skill (actually required for a Tech 2 shield tank) but it helps increase your shield buffer.  When your shields fall below 25% damage starts "leaking" through to your armor, training this skill helps minimize how much damage leaks through, when trained to level 5 no damage leaks through.  This is a "nice to have" when it comes to armor tanking but not required.
+
*Energized Membranes also come in four elemental types and one multispectrum model which moderately resists all damage.
 +
* The [[#Armor Compensation|Armor Compensation]] skills further increases bonus resistances.
  
==Armor Module Reference==
+
|-
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0"
 
|+(Ranges are for tech1 – tech2 versions)
 
|----
 
!colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Module Type
 
!colspan="3"|Fitting
 
!colspan="2"|Bonuses
 
!rowspan="2"|Notes
 
|----
 
  
 +
|[[File:Icon armor thermal hardener.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Armor hardeners}}''' are active modules that significantly increase one of the four armor resistances, more than Energized Membranes. They consume small amounts of Capacitor energy to run and require slightly more CPU to fit than Energized Membranes. They can also be [[Overheat]]ed for a further increase in strength.
  
!Cap
+
* (Active) Armor Hardeners come in 4 types: one for each type of damage.
!PG
+
* Armor Hardeners do '''not''' benefit from the [[#Armor Compensation|Armor Compensation]] skills.
!CPU
 
!Resist
 
!Armor
 
  
|----
+
|-
!Damage Control
+
|
+
|[[File:Icon module damage control.png|link=]]
|
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Damage control}}''' is a passive module that increases a ship's shield, armor, and hull resists. This module is not stacking penalized with most other resist modules. Only a Reactive Armor Hardener is stacking penalized with a damage control. As a result, this module is commonly seen as one of the most efficient defensive modules in the game.
|1
 
|25-30
 
|10-15%
 
|
 
|Also adds 7.5-12.5% shield and 50-60% structure resists
 
|----
 
!rowspan="2"|Armor plates
 
|100-
 
|
 
|8-18
 
|5-30
 
|
 
|263-1050
 
|
 
|----
 
  
|800-
+
|-
|
+
|[[File:Icon assault damage control.png|link=]]
|23-28
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Assault damage control}}''' is a variant of the Damage Control which can only be used by [[Assault Frigates]] and [[Heavy Assault Cruisers]]. Passively, it gives weaker bonuses to shield, armor, and hull resistances than a normal Damage Control. In exchange, the ADC can be activated once every two minutes to give 12 seconds of massive reduction to all incoming damage. Like the normal Damage Control, the ADC is stacking penalized with the Reactive Armor Hardener but not with any other resist modules.
|200-500
 
|
 
|2100-4200
 
|
 
|----
 
!rowspan="3"|Resistance plating
 
|Adaptive
 
|
 
|1
 
|
 
|8-15%
 
|
 
|
 
|----
 
  
|Regenerative
+
|-
|
+
|[[File:icon_reactive_armor_hardener.png|link=]]
|1
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Reactive armor hardener}}''' is an active module that increases armor resists. it gives in total 60% resist bonus split across all four damage types. When first activated, the module gives 15% resistance to each type of damage. As the ship receives armor damage, every time the RAH cycles its resistances will change to become more resistant to the damage which was last sustained, and less resistant to other damage types which were not sustained. The resists shift by up to 6% per cycle per resist. This module is not stacking penalized with other modules except for Damage Control.
|
 
|
 
|6-8%
 
|
 
|----
 
  
|Specific
+
|-
|
+
|[[File:Icon armor repairer i.png|link=]]
|1
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Armor repairers}}''' are modules that consume moderate amount of capacitor and use that to repair the ship's armor.<br>
|
+
The capacitor is consumed at the beginning of the cycle but the repair happens at the end of the cycle.
|20-26%
 
|
 
|Damage-type specific
 
|----
 
!rowspan="3"|Energized plating
 
|Adaptive (EANM)
 
|
 
|1
 
|30-36
 
|15-20%
 
|
 
|
 
|----
 
  
|Regenerative
+
|-
|
+
|[[File:Icon armor repairer i.png|link=]]
|1
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Ancillary armor repairers}}''' ("Ancils") can consume Nanite Repair Paste to fix armor quickly in short bursts. A loaded Ancil fixes ~1.7x the armor of a comparable T2 armor repairer for the first eight repair cycles. A depleted Ancil repairs much slower, at ~0.6x repair yield. Reloading the module requires '''1 minute''', and an Ancil '''cannot be used''' while reloading. Auto-reload can be disabled to keep the module available until reload is desired.
|25-30
 
|
 
|13%-15%
 
|
 
|----
 
  
|Specific
+
* PvP is the primary setting for Ancillary Armor Repairers where they provide strong bursts of active tanking. (Certain types of PvE, such as [[Abyssal Deadspace]], also popularly feature this module.)
|
+
* [[Overheating]] a loaded Ancillary Armor Repairer is especially advisable, due to its limited number of activation cycles.
|1
 
|25-30
 
|33-38%
 
|
 
|Damage-type specific
 
|----
 
!Armor hardeners
 
|Specific
 
|30cap/20sec
 
|1
 
|33-36
 
|50-55%
 
|
 
|Damage-type specific, can be overloaded for 20% more resist
 
|----
 
!rowspan="3"|Armor repairers
 
|Small
 
|40cap/6sec
 
|5-6
 
|5-6
 
|
 
| +60-80
 
|rowspan="3"|Repairers can be overloaded for 10% more repair and 15% increased speed
 
|----
 
  
|Medium
+
|-
|160cap/12sec
+
|[[File:Icon adaptive nano plating.png|link=]]
|150-173
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Layered Coatings}}''' are passive modules that increase a ship's armor by a percentage amount, including bonus armor added by Armor Plates. Also, unlike Armor Plates, they do not increase ship mass.
|25-28
 
|
 
| +240-320
 
  
|----
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon energized membrane.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Layered Energized Membranes}}''' are upgraded Layer Coatings that increase armor percentage by a higher amount. They have higher CPU fitting costs and are more expensive to produce.
  
|Large
+
|-
|400cap/15sec
+
|[[File:Icon remote armor repair i.png|link=]]
|2000-2300
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Remote armor repair systems}}''' consume capacitor to remotely repair armor on another ship. Their short range is extended significantly when fit to [[Logistics]] class ships.
|50-55
 
|
 
| +600-800
 
  
|----
+
* Remote Armor Repairers heal marginally more than their self-repair counterparts over time, and at faster activation speeds.
!rowspan="3"|Remote Reppers
 
|Small
 
|59-54cap/5-4.5sec
 
|7-8
 
|20-24
 
|
 
| +80-96
 
|rowspan="3"|While the T2 versions use less cap per activation, the shorter cycle time means they still use more cap overall.  
 
  
Remote reppers can be overloaded for 15% increased speed
+
|-
|----
+
|[[File:Icon remote armor repair i.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Ancillary remote armor repair systems}}''' are the remote counterpart of local ancillary armor repairers. Like the local ancillary armor repairers These can be loaded with nanite repair paste for 8 cycles of increased repairs. However, once the paste runs out they will repair less than normal remote repairers.
  
|Medium
+
|-
|118-108cap/5-4.5sec
+
|[[File:Module icon armor rig tech1.png|link=]]
|150-165
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Rigs}}'''
|30-36
+
* Trimark Armor Pumps increases the raw HP by a percentage, at the cost of reduced maximum speed.
|
+
* Anti-damage type rigs increase damage resist to a single damage type, at the cost of reduced maximum speed.
| +160-192
+
* Auxiliary Nano Pumps increase a ship's armor repairer repair amount per cycle. Increases the power grid use for local armor reps.
 +
* Nanobot Accelerator speeds up armor repair module cycle times at the cost of armor repairers' power grid use. In theory, this is more effective for active armor tanks than the Auxiliary Nano Pump, but note that shorter cycle time also results in higher capacitor use.
 +
Tech II Armor Rigs tend to all be very expensive because of the rarity of one component (Intact Armor Plates) which they all use.
  
|----
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon_implant_hardwiring.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Implants}}'''
 +
*Repair Systems RS-6xx series - Slot 6 - reduces armor and hull repair systems duration by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 +
*Remote Repair Sustems RA-7xx series - Slot 7 - reduces capacitor need for remote armor repair modules by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 +
*Repair Proficiency RP-9xx series - Slot 9 - increases armor repair system amount by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 +
*Hull Upgrades HP-10xx series - Slot 10 increases armor hit points by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 +
* There are two [[Implants#Advanced_Attribute_Enhancer_Reference|implant sets]] that benefit armor tanking. Like most sets, they use implant slots 1-6, are available in three grades (low, medium, and high), and each additional implant amplifies the bonus of the entire set. For both, the bonus from a full set can range from 20.03% with low-grades, to 53.63% with high-grades.
 +
** The '''{{co|wheat|Amulet}}''' implant set gives a multiplicative increase to armor hit points.
 +
** The '''{{co|wheat|Asklepian}}''' implant set gives a multiplicative increase to armor repair amounts.
 +
** You can mix & match HG, MG, and LG implants, for a final bonus partway in between.
  
|Large
+
|-
|252cap/5-4.5sec
+
|[[File:Icon exile.png|link=]]
|600-660
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Exile}}''' medical booster greatly increases the ship's active armor repair amount, however, they carry a chance to reduce your Armor hitpoints, capacitor capacity, turret tracking, or missile damage application.
|40-48
 
|
 
| +320-384
 
  
 
|}
 
|}
  
= Shield Tanking =
+
=== Armor tanking skills ===
Shield Tanking focuses on maximizing your shields' ability to withstand and/or repair damage.
+
* {{sk|Hull Upgrades}}
 +
** 5% armor HP per level
 +
** Required for armor plates, hardeners, membranes, and resist plates.
 +
* {{sk|Mechanics}}
 +
** 5% hull HP per level
 +
** Required for armor repairers
 +
* {{sk|Repair Systems}}
 +
** 5% reduction in armor repair module cycle duration. It should be noted that a reduction in activation time increases the capacitor need of the module.
 +
** Required for armor repairers
 +
* {{Anchor|Armor Compensation}}Armor Compensation
 +
** {{sk|EM Armor Compensation}}
 +
** {{sk|Thermal Armor Compensation}}
 +
** {{sk|Kinetic Armor Compensation}}
 +
** {{sk|Explosive Armor Compensation}}
 +
*** 5% increase per level in the corresponding resist for membranes and resist plates
 +
* {{sk|Armor Rigging}}
 +
** Reduces the drawbacks of armor rigs by 10% per level.
 +
* {{sk|Armor Layering}}
 +
** 5% redution in mass penalty of armor plates per level.
 +
* {{sk|Resistance Phasing}}
 +
** 10% reduction in cycle time and 15% reduction in capacitor usage of Reactive Armor Hardener (and Capital Flex Armor Hardener) per level.
  
== Advantages ==
+
== Shield tanking ==
*Shields heal themselves over time at a natural recharge rate. Armor and Hull damage taken is going to sit there until it is repaired.  
+
Shield tanking employs buffer tanking with passive shield regeneration (aka. passive shield tanking) or active shield boosting to withstand damage. Shields are innately resistant to explosive damage and weak to EM damage.
*After shields are exhausted there is still some armor and hull remaining, leaving a little more room for error.
 
*Active shield boosters repair faster than active armor repairers, meaning you can effectively tank more incoming DPS
 
*Shield tank modules & rigs don't affect your speed or maneuverability, thus keeping you fast and agile.
 
*Low slots are left free for damage modules, etc.
 
  
== Disadvantages ==
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Note that, like a ship's capacitor, shield regeneration is strongest when shields are at 25% of their capacity, regenerating slower as shield levels rise above or sink below this value. (For more information on shield regeneration, see [[#Shield recharge rate|shield recharge rate]].) Note also that damage can bypass shields, and that the amount bypassed increases as shield levels fall.  
*There's a smaller range of different modules to choose from when shield tanking than when armor tanking, giving you less choice in how to fit your ship.
 
*Although shield boosters repair faster than armor repairers, they are also less capacitor efficient.
 
*Shield tank modules & rigs can increase your signature radius, that attribute of every ship that affects how fast other people target you, and how easy it is to hit you with turrets & missiles.
 
*Passive resistance modules are less effective than the armor equivalents, and there is no single passive resistance module that boosts all shield resistances at once.
 
*Shield tanking modules are almost exclusively fit in mid slots, competing with tackling, EWAR, and propulsion modules.
 
  
== Common Shield Tanking Ships ==
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Shield modules generally fit in mid slots. This leaves low slots for damage modules, fitting modules or piloting modules. As a result, shield ships generally have higher damage output than their armored cousins. But using mid slots for tank can sometimes limit the ship fit into more or less pure damage dealing as the tank competes with tackling, EWAR, and propulsion modules.
The Caldari and Minmatar are the two races that offer ships with shield-tanking bonuses.  
 
  
*Caldari ships are generally shield tanked, with the primary exceptions being plated [[Blackbird]]s and [[Scorpion]]s.  
+
Shield extenders and shield rigs apply a penalty to the ship's signature radius: they make it larger, making the ship easier to hit with turrets and easier to damage with missiles. Shields generally also have less buffer than armor ships. This is most notable when fighting against ships larger than your own.
*Some Minmatar ships are commonly seen shield tanked, such as the [[Rifter]], [[Jaguar]], [[Stabber]], [[Vagabond]], [[Cyclone]], [[Sleipnir]], and [[Maelstrom]].
 
  
The Gallente and Amarr design ships which are mostly armor tanked. There are a few exceptions, and also a few ships which can mount shield buffer tanks for PvP.  
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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 boosters also repair much faster and more than armor repairers. This comes at cost of using more capacitor.
  
*A few Gallente ships can be well shield tanked, such as the [[Myrmidon]] and the [[Ishtar]] which often use ''passive shield tanks'' in PvE. Some Gallente ships, such as the [[Brutix]] can fit viable shield buffer tanks for PvP.
+
After shields are exhausted there is still some armor and hull remaining, leaving a little more room for error.  
*Amarr ships are almost all better suited for armor tanks, but the [[Arbitrator]], [[Curse]] and [[Harbinger]] can mount good PvP buffer shield tanks.
 
  
== Shield Tanking Modules ==
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Shields naturally recharge themselves over time, while armor and hull damage remains until it is repaired. This passive regeneration is taken to extreme in "passive shield tanking", described below.
=== Shield Extenders ===
 
Shield Extenders are a mid slot mod are pretty straightforward -- they add base shield points. Remember that as increasing shield capacity also effectively increases shield recharge rate, they are also useful on passively tanked shields. As a drawback they increase the ship's signature radius which makes you faster to target and somewhat easier to hit with bigger weapons and for more damage. They also use significant power grid to fit.  You can easily oversize these modules; try fitting medium shield extenders to frigates and large ones to cruisers or battlecruisers.
 
  
=== Damage Control ===
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In short, the advantages of shield tanking are:
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 any tank. It is an passive module that is relatively easy to fit. These resistance bonuses don't incur stacking penalties with other shield tanking modules, making it very effective when combined with other hardeners and resistance amplifiers. If you fit only one tanking module to your PvP ship, the DC is the module to use.
+
* Does not reduce speed or maneuverability.
 +
* As a first line of defense, leaves you with armor and hull as a fallback if shields go down.
 +
* Shields recharge on their own - no need to dock and pay for repairs.
 +
* Shield boosting modules work more quickly than armor repair modules and apply effects immediately.
 +
* Low slots are available for weapon enhancing modules.
  
=== Shield Hardeners ===
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And the disadvantages of shield tanking are:
Shield Hardeners require varying amounts of CPU and only one MW of power grid to fit, but do almost nothing to improve resistances when they are not activated. Like all active modules they will not run when you don't have enough energy in your capacitor to run them, or when you cannot activate them (such as when docked or cloaked).
+
* Increases signature radius – ship becomes easier to hit.
 +
* Fewer kinds of enhancement modules – less choice than with armor.
 +
* Shield recharge modules use more capacitor than armor repair modules.
 +
* Mid slots are not available for EWAR, tackle or propulsion modules.
  
=== Adaptive Invulnerability Field ===
+
Shield tanks are most common on Caldari ships, followed by Minmatar ships. Both races' ships tend to have adequate numbers of mid slots; some Caldari ships have bonuses to shield resistances, and some Minmatar ships have bonuses to shield boosters. Shield tanks also synergize well with Minmatar ships' emphasis on speed. Some Gallente and Amarr ships are sometimes shield-tanked: one example is the [[Curse]].
Among the Shield Hardeners, but worth mentioning separately, is the Adaptive Invulnerability Field which grants a bonus to resistance of all four damage types with one module. Although it requires more capacitor and more CPU to fit than the damage specific hardeners, it is still a very useful module.
 
  
=== Resistance Amplifiers ===
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=== Active shield tanking ===
There are four damage-type specific resistance amplifiers -- these are used to boost one of the 4 resistances. They use no capacitor and require less CPU than active shield hardeners, and can thus be quite useful.
+
Active shield tanking is most commonly used in higher-level PvE but also has a place in solo or small-gang PvP. Active shield tanking is based on using a shield booster to recover shield HP faster than incoming damage can deplete it, while also fitting modules to harden the shields' resistances.
  
The Basic modules use less CPU than the normal variants and no power grid, but are much less effective. They are useful if you're unable to fit a standard Resistance Amplifier.
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=== Passive shield tanking ===
 +
{{See also|Passive shield tanking}}
 +
Unlike Armor hit points, shields will recharge themselves after taking damage. A passive Shield tank maximizes this natural recharge rate without the use of active booster modules. The shields of a ship have two stats that are relevant to passive recharge: shield capacity and shield recharge time. The shield capacity is simply the maximum HP for the shields while the recharge time tells how long it takes for the shields to recharge.
  
Shield Dampening Amplifiers have two varieties: those that require more CPU and one Power Grid and have higher resistances, and those that have lower CPU requirements and no Power Grid and provide lower resistances.
+
The concept behind the Passive Shield Tank is deceptively simple: find a ship with a relatively high natural recharge rate (Shield HP / Recharge time = Average recharge rate), then add as many additional shield hit points to your ship as possible using shield extenders. Because the recharge time for a given ship is a fixed amount no matter how many points of shields you have, adding more shield HP indirectly increases the recharge rate, because more HP are being recharged in the same amount of time. Now add passive modules that increase the recharge rate even further, such as Shield Rechargers, Shield Power Relays and Power Diagnostic Systems, and you have a monster sized buffer tank that also regenerates very quickly, without using any capacitor. Shield Flux Coils also increase recharge rate, but should be avoided because they also lower your shield hit points, which is self-defeating.
  
The EM/Thermal/Kinetic/Explosive Shield Compensation skills will increase the benefit gained from these passive amplifiers.
+
As the name implies, a fully passive tank does not require any modules that need to be “turned on” to function, and therefore does not require capacitor. The drawback to Passive Shield tanking is the number of modules required to pull it off, which leaves very little room to fit other useful modules such as damage improvement and tackling equipment, which makes this fitting of limited use outside of PvE combat.
  
=== Shield Power Relays ===
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Adding resistance modules will greatly increase the effectiveness of passive recharge. Some passive shield tanks also use Multispectrum Shield Hardeners and Shield Hardeners to improve damage resistance. Note that these do put a (gentle) load on the capacitor, and the capacitor's own recharge rate is reduced by the Shield Power Relays that increase shield recharge rates. Careful balancing is therefore necessary to make a passive shield tank work. When done correctly, however, this approach can be used to handle tough missions with a single ship.
Shield Power Relays are low-slot modules which trade capacitor recharge rate for an increase in the shield recharge rate, resulting in a significantly higher regeneration of shield points per second. This may endanger capacitor longevity when running active Shield Hardeners and is not compatible with Shield Boosters. Since shield power relays fit in low slots, they do not compete as directly with resistance modules and shield extenders when fitting a passive tank.
 
  
=== Shield Flux Coils ===
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It is generally advised '''NOT''' to mix modules that increase shield recharge rate (a passive shield tank) rate with modules that repair shield damage (an active shield tank).
Shield Flux Coils are low-slot modules which trade the maximum shield capacity for an increase in the shield recharge rate, resulting in a higher regeneration of shield points per second. The trade off is smaller buffer which increases shields fail point and reduces the natural shield recharge amount and for this reason they tend to be less popular than shield power relays. That they fit in a low-slot means they do not compete as directly with resistance modules and shield extenders when fitting a passive tank. So when the damage is relatively low but constant they may be effective modules when using a passive tank.
 
  
=== Shield Rechargers ===
+
==== Shield recharge rate ====
Shield Recharger modules are mid-slot modules which provide a modest increase to the shield recharge rate.  
+
All ships have shields, and all shields have a recharge rate.  
  
=== Shield Boosters ===
+
A ship's information screen, on the attributes tab, under the shield heading, lists the total shield amount of the hull and the shield recharge time. The recharge time expresses how long it will take to go from 0% shields to roughly 98% shields when the ship is sitting idle in space and no one is repairing the shields or damaging them. That last ~2% of your shields will take much longer.
These 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 for the meta 0 version and 1.5 shield for 1 unit of capacitor for the tech 2 version.
 
  
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.  
+
To get a crude measure of recharge rate, you can simply divide the shield HP by the time listed for recharging. But shields do not recharge at a constant rate: this only calculates an average rate. The ''actual'' behavior is that when the shield is near 0% or 100% it replenishes slower. The ''peak recharge'' rate will be 2.5x the average rate and will occur when the shields are damaged to 25% of shield maximum capacity.  
  
Shield boosters are not usually recommended on Uni fleet operations, because while they typically cycle fairly quickly, they do not give large boosts to shields for each cycle and they are hard on your capacitor. If your ship is called primary, it's likely that the booster won't keep up with the incoming damage. Similarly, passive tanks that emphasize shield recharge rate likely won't keep up with the incoming damage. Fitting shield hardeners or resistance amplifiers with shield extenders and being prepared to warp out if you take fire is the recommended strategy.  
+
Shield recharge rates above ~98% shield arr extremely low. For ships with small shield capacity it is essentially non-existent. The shield recharge rate also drops sharply below 25% capacity. Once shields have been damaged beyond 25% the passive tank "breaks" and the ship dies rapidly.
  
Shield boosters can be useful in PvE activities. Typically you can reduce the incoming damage by eliminating some of the NPC ships to slow the incoming damage. This combined with ''pulsing'' the shield booster on and off (or setting Auto-Repeat to off) and/or using a capacitor booster and other capacitor modules can help pilots establish a balance point between the incoming damage and the capacitor energy used to run the shield booster. This is an active strategy and does require more focus than a passive tanking PvE strategy but can bring other benefits in fitting.  
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[[File:Shield_recharge.png|thumb|400px|Measured shield HP during passive recharge from zero and theoretical shield HP from formula plotted. Click to enlarge.]]
 +
[[File:Shield recharge rate.png|thumb|400px|Shield recharge rate as function of shield HP according to the formula. Click to enlarge.]]
  
=== Shield Boost Amplifiers ===
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As the shield takes damage, its level goes ''down''. In response, the rate at which it rebuilds itself goes ''up''. The increase in shield recharge rate continues until it peaks at 25% of shield capacity. At this threshold, the default ship Health Alert noise will sound to warn the pilot that the shield is at its recharging limit. If it continues to take more damage than it can hold, the regeneration will drop off quickly. This means if constant damage is applied, the shield will regenerate less as it becomes empty, thus making it easier to shoot the armor below it.
These modules improve the efficiency of Shield Boosters. Given that they occupy a valuable mid-slot, they are infrequently seen on cruiser sized and smaller hulls, but are more commonly seen on battlecruisers and battleships in PvE activities. These modules have a stacking penalty and typically no more than two is ever appropriate on any ship. Tech II gives 36% increase compared to a 30% for tech I. Note that they will boost the Ancillary Shield Booster as well.
 
  
=== Ancillary Shield Boosters ===
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{{ note box | THE MAIN POINT: In combat the shield will recharge at an increasing rate until 25% of its capacity remains; then the rate will fall off quickly towards zero.}}
The Ancillary Shield Booster works in the same way as a normal Shield Booster does: it transfers capacitor energy into shield hit-points (HP), but it repairs a lot more shield HP per cycle than a normal Shield Booster does. It has an efficiency of around 1 shield unit to 1 capacitor unit, and this means it would use a huge amount of capacitor per cycle. However, the main advantage of the Ancillary Shield Booster is that it is able to use Cap Booster Charges as a direct source of cap energy. The size of the charge depends on the size of Shield Booster. It always uses 1 charge per cycle, and when the cap booster charges are spent, only then does it use the ship's capacitor. The maximum number of charges an Ancillary Shield Booster can hold is 10. The recharge amount doesn't depend on the charge size, so '''always''' load the smallest possible charges to give the largest number of cycles per reload. Due to the short cycle time the Ancillary Shield Booster depletes within 20 to 40 seconds depending on the module size. After the charges are depleted you can run the Ancillary Shield Booster without charges (it then uses your ship's capacitor) or you can reload it. But here is the biggest drawback of the module, the reloading time is 60 seconds. Currently only a tech 1 version is available. The quick transfer of cap energy to shield HP has made this popular in PVP.
 
  
The Ancillary Shield Booster's main features:
+
The math for shield regeneration is exactly the same as that of the [[capacitor recharge rate]]. Two numerical attributes are required: shield capacity, and shield recharge time. These are both displayed in the ship's "show info" attributes panel in-game, below its capacity. Note that modules that refer to "recharge rate" modify the recharge time number, not the raw regeneration in HP/s.
*It works like a Shield Booster
 
*It repairs more shield HP than a Shield Booster per cycle (around 1:2.2)
 
*It needs high amounts of capacitor if you run out of cap booster charges (around 1:1)
 
*It can use Cap Boosters as charges and uses one charge per cycle
 
*Its reload time is 60 seconds
 
  
=== Remote Shield Boosters ===
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:<math> \displaystyle \frac{\text{d}C}{\text{d}t} = \frac{ 10C_{\rm{max}}}{T} \left( \sqrt{ \frac{C}{C_{\rm{max}}} } - \frac{C}{C_{\rm{max}}} \right) </math>
Remote Shield Boosters operate similarly to local Shield Boosters by converting capacitor energy into shields, except in this case the shields are added to your target (ships, drones, anchored structures, etc). Note that you must target lock the ship to be repaired, and that your cannot repair your own ship with a remote shield booster.
 
  
They can be more useful in fleet operations than shield booster, for a couple of reasons. First, one RSB can repair many ships. Second, an RSB is generally more efficient than a shield booster. Third, if several ships have them, they can focus their repair power on whatever ship in the fleet is being attacked, giving that ship a great deal of shield repair capability. This tactic is used by [[Cruiser#Logistics|Logistics]] cruisers and several T1 cruisers to try and repair the damage being done to friendly ships; thus the ship is either saved, or at worst survives a while longer, allowing the rest of the fleet some more time to burn through the hostile ships.
+
...where:<br />
 +
'''C''' is your current shield HP.<br />
 +
'''C<sub>max</sub>''' is your maximum shield HP.<br />
 +
''dC''/''dt'' is your current shield regeneration in HP/s.<br />
 +
''T'' is shield recharge time.
  
Remote repair is also the favoured form of defense in [[Incursions]]; ships will mount a large buffer tank to be repaired by a small number of highly skilled [[Cruiser#Logistics|Logistics]] pilots.
+
;Consequences
  
Note that remote repair modules take a significant amount of capacitor to run -- your ship will probably need a cap booster module to use it for any length of time.
+
The fact that these attributes are both set has some interesting consequences. Notably, for this calculation, recharge time is ''not'' dependent on anything else, including maximum shield capacity, as you might have intuitively expected. This has the effect that if two ships have the same "recharge time" attribute, and one has more capacity, then the one with the larger capacity will get more raw HP/s regeneration, and appear to "repair faster" in a passive tank despite reaching its maximum level in the same time.
 +
;Calculating Average rate
  
=== Power Diagnostics Systems ===
+
=== Fitting a shield tank ===
Power Diagnostics Systems are low-slot modules that increase your shield points, capacitor points and power grid while also reducing the recharge time of both shield and capacitor by a small percentage. They are not shield modules, strictly speaking, and can be found in the Engineering equipment section.
+
In many cases the technical construction of the ship dictates the use of shields (or armor) as its primary defense. Any ship receiving a bonus to shield capabilities would likely use shields. And because most shield modules use medium power slots, a ship with more mid than low slots will tend to use shields. As a shield ships use mainly mid slots for defense, they can fit much higher damage output and are often faster.
  
=== Capacitor Power Relays ===
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Every ship has a shield. Whether or not a pilot decides to expand and improve the shield is his or her choice.<br>
These are not a shield tanking module, but I mention them because they have an ''adverse'' effect on shield tanking. Capacitor Power Relays are a low slot module that greatly increases capacitor recharge, which would be an active shield tanker's dream, except that to balance this capacitor power relays apply a penalty to shield boost amount when fitted. As such, they are not recommended for active shield tank fits. Capacitor Power Relays do not penalise passive shield tanks, and the penalty does not apply to Remote Shield Boosters.
+
That said, here are the factors that you look for when you are thinking about shields:
 +
* Shield specific hull bonus.
 +
* Surplus of mid slots or shortage of low slots.
 +
* More need to favor modules that improve weapons (which tend to need low slots).
 +
* Less need for EWAR modules (which tend to need mid slots).
  
=== Shield Rigs ===
+
{|class=wikitable style="width: 900px;"
For shield rigs, {{sk|Jury Rigging|III}} and {{sk|Shield Rigging|I}} are required to fit T1 rigs, though not to use them. All shield rigs bring with them the penalty of an increase signature radius on the ship using them.  
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon shield extender.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Shield extenders}}''' increase ships shield HP by a flat number. The drawback is increased signature radius that makes the ship easier to hit. Oversized modules are often used (Medium size on a Frigate class ship, for example).  
  
There are several commonly used shield rigs.
+
|-
*Core Defense Field Extender works similarly to a Shield Extender by increasing shield capacity.  
+
|[[File:Icon resists.png|link=]]
*Core Defense Field Purger works similarly to a Shield Recharger by increasing the shield recharge rate. It is however, a lot more effective than a Shield Recharger, and is a staple on almost all passively-tanked ships.
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|'''{{co|wheat|Shield hardeners}}''' are active modules that increase ship's shield resists. Multispectrum Shield Hardener increases resist to all damage types but less than type specific modules. The name is misleading and the module does not adapt to damage like the reactive armor hardener. Active shield hardeners are considerably more effective than the passive shield resistance amplifiers.
*Screen Reinforcers increases a ship resistance to single type of damage. The most commonly used is the Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I, because typically shields are vulnerable to EM damage.  
 
**Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer
 
**Anti-Explosive Screen Reinforcer
 
**Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer
 
**Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer
 
*Core Defense Capacitor Safeguard makes a shield booster run more efficiently reducing the cap requirement, whilst the Core Defense Operational Solidifier makes the booster run faster, increasing tank but also capacitor use. Unlike its armour equivalent, usually ignored in favour of a boost amplifier module.
 
*Core Defense Charge Economizer reduces the powergrid need of shield extenders. Rarely used except in some very large buffers to pvp fits. Much cheaper than the general PG upgrade rig.
 
  
<br> '''Other rigs'''  
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|-
 +
|[[File:Icon thermal amplifier.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Shield resistance amplifiers}}''' are passive modules that increase ship's shield resists. Easier to fit than active hardeners and do not need any capacitor. Considerably lower resist bonus compared to active hardeners. The resist bonus increases with appropriate shield compensation skill. There is no resistance amplifier that increases all resist types like there is for armor.
  
*For Active shield fits capacitor will be a major concern and many will rely on a Capacitor Control Circuit I to make the tank work.  
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon module damage control.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Damage control}}''' is a passive module that increases the ship's shield, armor and hull resists. This module is not stacking penalized with any other shield resist module.
  
=== Shield Implants ===
+
|-
There are various shield implants available on the market. These can be interesting for various shield fits. This is especially true for passive tanks, where the tank can be increased by 6% for just a few million.  
+
|[[File:Icon shield recharger.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Shield power relays}}''' are passive modules that increase the ship's shield recharge rate at the cost of reduced capacitor recharge rate. This module defines a passive shield tank. Since the relay modules fit in low slots, this means more Extenders may be fitted alongside them. On the other hand, this also means no low slot weapon upgrade modules for high damage. This will limit the situations where a passive tank may be used. One of the few low slot shield modules.
 +
|-
  
*Slot 6: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Upgrades SU-6 series... Reduces shield extender power needs by a few&nbsp;%. Rarely used
+
|[[File:Icon shield recharger.png|link=]]
*Slot 7: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Management SM-7 series... Bonus to shield capacity. Useful for buffer and passive tanks
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Shield flux coils}}''' are passive modules that increase ship's shield recharge rate at the cost of reduced shield capacity. The reduced shield capacity reduces the shield recharge rate but the recharge rate bonus on flux coils is larger than on power relays resulting in higher recharge rate.
*Slot 8: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Emission Systems SE-8 series... Reduced capacitor need for remote shield repair equipment. Useful for logistics fits
 
*Slot 9: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Operation SP-9 series... Increases shield recharge rate. useful for passive tanks
 
*Slot 10: Siege Warfare Mindlink; technically not a direct shield implant, but increases the effectiveness of shield leadership skills in fleets.
 
  
You can also pick up the 'Crystal' pirate implant set for a large amount of ISK.  This is a set of 6 implants that fit in slots 1 to 6, and taken together will increase your shield boosting rates to fantastic levels - such as this Sleipnir ''(link in chat: http://i.imgur.com/hwsM51F.jpg)'' which tanks nearly 1900 DPS of incoming damage, and that's without overheating or using a booster.  The 'Crystal' set comes in high-grade, mid-grade, and low-grade versions, low-grade being for the poor people out there that can't afford the real deal. You can mix and match from different grade sets for a final boost bonus somewhere in between the two values stated on the presentation.  (See [[Implants#Advanced_Attribute_Enhancer_Reference|here]] for boost percentages.)
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon shield recharger.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Shield rechargers}}''' are passive mid slot modules that provide a modest increase to the shield recharge rate. If there is fitting room for shield extender then that may be a better choice.
  
=== Boosters ===
+
|-
*The "Blue Pill" range of boosters adds bonuses to the repair amount of shield boosters.  
+
|[[File:Icon shield glow.png|link=]]
*"Mindflood" boosters can also come in handy, as they increase capacitor capacity, which in turn boosts cap recharge rate and allows shield boosters and active shield hardeners to run longer.  
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Shield boosters}}''' consume ship's capacitor to repair (or ''boost'', as the name says) the shields in exchange. Note that the repair happens at the beginning of the module cycle. Shield boosters generally have short cycle time and mediocre capacitor:hitpoint rate compared to Armor Repairers.
  
== Shield tanking Strategies ==
+
|-
Shield tanking comes in three types.  
+
|[[File:Icon ancillary shield booster.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Ancillary shield booster}}'''  provides a capacitor-free method of active shield tanking for limited time. They can be loaded with Capacitor Booster Charges, and will consume the loaded charges upon activation. When no charges are loaded, it will consume quite a large amount of capacitor instead. They will reload in 1 minute (60 seconds). Capacitor Booster Charges of different sizes can be fitted, however it is recommended to use the Navy variant of the smallest charge available (the accepted charge size is displayed on the Show Info tab). Using larger charges offers no benefits. Ancillary shield boosters are almost exclusively used in PvP situations to provide repairs without consuming the precious capacitor. Usage in PvE is not recommended due to the long reload time, the cost of Capacitor Booster Charges and burst tanking nature.
  
*'''Active shield tanks'''  
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon shield boost amplifier.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Shield boost amplifiers}}''' are passive mid slot modules that increase shield booster repair amount without increasing the capacitor usage. They are completely passive and use only 1 powergrid, however they require quite a bit of CPU. This makes these impractical for smaller hulls due to the limited med slots and fitting resources. However, Boost Amplifiers double the heat damage from [[overheating]].
  
*'''Buffer shield tanks''' use shield extenders and resistance modules (like the Adaptive Invulnerability Field, and damage control) to maximize the ship's EHP (Effective Hit Points) without concern for recharge. This type of shield tanking is often used in PvP fleet fits.
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|-
 +
|[[File:Icon shield transporter i.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Remote shield boosters}}''' use capacitor to repair shields of a single target. Moderately short Optimal range and long Falloff range. Note that the repair is delivered at the start of the cycle.
 +
|-
  
*'''Passive shield tanks'''  
+
|[[File:Icon_shield_transporter_i.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Ancillary remote shield boosters}}''' are remote shield boosters that can be loaded with cap boosters. They behave exactly the same with local Ancillary Shield Boosters except they repair other ships instead. Usage without Cap Booster Charges are highly discouraged due to the large Capacitor usage.
  
=== Active Tanking ===
+
|-
Active tanking is most commonly used for solo activities such as mission/complex running, ratting, and solo PvP. Active Shield tanking differs from Passive Shield tanking in that it uses active Resistance and Shield Booster modules to actively repair damage done to the ship.
+
|[[File:Icon powergrid.png|link=]]
You should be careful to include enough resistance and buffer to keep your Booster modules from being overwhelmed by incoming damage; frequently this means packing resistance modules (either passive or active) that compensate for the specific types of damage you expect to be receiving.
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Power diagnostics systems}}''' are low slot engineering modules. Small percentage increase to shield capacity, capacitor capacity, powergrid output, shield recharge rate and capacitor recharge rate.
 +
|-
  
This type of fitting takes a lot of capacitor to sustain your capacitor hungry Shield Hardener and Booster modules so it should ideally include modules such as Cap Rechargers to balance out and maintain capacitor stability. Unlike the Passive Shield tank Shield Power Relays are not recommended because they cripple your capacitor recharge rate making capacitor stability difficult to achieve. Shield Flux Coils still suck for the same reasons mentioned previously.
+
|[[File:Icon capacitor recharger.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Capacitor power relays}}''' are not exactly a shield modules, but an engineering module. They are a passive low slot module that increase capacitor recharge rate at the expense of reduced shield booster repair amount. These are generally avoided on active shield tanked ships. The penalty does not apply to remote shield boosters.
  
Active Tanking uses energy from the ship's capacitor to run a Shield Booster module which repairs damage to shields. Active shield tanks are stronger against higher bursts of damage but tend to drain the pilot's capacitor over time resulting in the tank 'breaking' during long engagements and are vulnerable to capacitor warfare (tactics which drain a ship's capacitor actively, such as Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizers, see the [[Capacitor Warfare Guide]]).
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Module icon shield rig tech1.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Rigs}}'''
 +
* Core defense field extenders increase shield capacity by a percentage amount. They are popular on PvP fits, and thus are a bit more expensive due to the high demand.
 +
* Core defense field purgers increase the shield recharge rate. It is however, a lot more effective than a Shield Recharger, and is a staple on almost all passively-tanked ships.
 +
* Screen reinforcers increases a ship resistance to single type of damage. The most commonly used is the anti-EM and anti-thermal reinforcers as the shields are naturally vulnerable to these damage types.
 +
* Core defense capacitor safeguards make a shield booster run more efficiently reducing the cap requirement.
 +
* Core defense operational solidifiers make the shield boosters run faster, increasing tank but also capacitor use. Unlike its armor equivalent, usually ignored in favour of a boost amplifier module.
 +
* Core defense charge economizers reduce the powergrid need of shield extenders. Rarely used except in some very large buffers to pvp fits. They are much cheaper than the general PG upgrade rig
  
Capacitor stability is important because it allows you to leave your Tank modules turned on without ever worrying about running out of capacitor. So long as incoming damage is less than what your shield booster modules and passive recharge rate can handle your ship should be able to sustain that level of damage indefinitely. This is commonly referred to as Perma-tanking. If incoming damage exceeds your recharge capacity you will gradually run out of Hit Points and die. This is commonly referred to as having a broken tank.
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon implant hardwiring.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Implants}}'''
 +
* Slot 6: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Upgrades SU-6XX series reduces shield extender powergrid needs by a few&nbsp;%. Rarely used.
 +
* Slot 7: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Management SM-7XX series bonus to shield capacity. Useful for buffer and passive tanks.
 +
* Slot 8: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Emission Systems SE-8XX series reduced capacitor need for remote shield repair equipment. Useful for logistics fits.
 +
* Slot 9: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Operation SP-9XX series increases shield recharge rate. useful for passive tanks.
 +
* Like with armor tanking, there are two implant sets that benefit shield tanking. Like most sets, they use implant slots 1-6, are available in three grades (low, medium, and high), and each additional implant amplifies the bonus of the entire set. For both, the bonus from a full set can range from 20.03% with low-grades, to 53.63% with high-grades.
 +
** The '''{{co|wheat|Crystal}}''' implant set gives a multiplicative increase to shield boost amounts.  
 +
** The '''{{co|wheat|Nirvana}}''' implant set gives a multiplicative increase to shield hit points.
 +
** You can mix & match HG, MG, and LG implants, for a final bonus partway in between.
  
For PvP purposes a Capacitor Booster can be used to temporarily supplement capacitor output to allow for short bursts of heavy tanking. The primary drawback to this approach is that unlike the capacitor stable fitting described above, when you run out of charges to run your Capacitor Booster, you quickly run out of capacitor, your tank will fail and you will die horribly.
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon blue pill.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Blue Pill}}''' medical booster greatly increases the ship's active shield boosting amount, however they have a chance to penalize your ship's Capacitor and Shield capacity, your turret's optimal range, or your missile's explosion velocity.  
  
Similarly, weapon systems that drain your ship's capacitor will effectively disable your active tanking modules. As above, your tank will fail and you will die horribly. In this case, the Capacitor Booster can be used on an otherwise capacitor stable fitting to provide emergency power to prevent being drained and destroyed.
+
|}
  
=== Buffer Tanking ===
+
=== Shield skills ===
*Typically used for PvP, the buffer tank is based around the principle of having high damage resistance and as many hit points as possible, thus increasing the Effective HitPoints (EHP) of the ship. The concept behind this is simple, add enough EHP to your ship to outlast your opponent through the use of active and/or passive resistance modules, which complement the Armor Plate modules that add raw hit points.
+
The following skills are required to field a full Tech 2 Shield tank:
*Buffer Tanks use shield extenders and resistance modules (like the Adaptive Invulnerability Field, and damage control) to maximize the ship's EHP (Effective Hit Points) without concern for recharge. This type of shield tanking is often used in PvP fleet fits.
 
  
=== Passive Shield tanking ===
+
* {{sk|Shield Management}}
Unlike Armor hit points, shields will recharge themselves after taking damage. The Passive Shield tank is designed to maximize this natural recharge rate without the use of active Shield Booster modules. The concept behind the Passive Shield Tank is deceptively simple: find a ship with a relatively high natural recharge rate (Shield HP / Recharge time = Recharge rate), then add as many additional shield hit points to your ship as possible using shield extenders. Because the recharge time for a given ship is a fixed amount no matter how many points of shields you have, adding multiple shield extenders not only adds a lot of buffer, it indirectly increases the recharge rate because more Hit Points are being recharged in the same amount of time. Now add passive modules that increase the recharge rate even further, such as Shield Rechargers, Shield Power Relays and Power Diagnostic Systems; and you have a monster sized Buffer tank that regenerates very quickly without using any capacitor making your defense invulnerable to weapons that drain the capacitor. Shield Flux Coils also increase recharge rate, but should be avoided because they also lower your shield hit points, which is self defeating for the same reason adding Shield Extenders improves your recharge rate.
+
** 5% increase in shield capacity per level.
 +
** Required for shield boost amplifiers.
  
As the name implies, a fully passive tank does not require any modules that need to be “turned on” to function, and therefore does not require capacitor. The drawback to Passive Shield tanking is the number of modules required to pull it off, which leaves very little room to fit other useful modules such as damage improvement and tackling equipment, which makes this fitting of limited use outside of mission running and bait ships.
+
* {{sk|Energy Grid Upgrades}}
 +
** 5% PG per level. Required for shield power relays and power diagnostic units.
  
Passive Shield Tank relies on the fact that shields will naturally recharge themselves over time. This is achieved by increasing the resistance to various damage types, increasing the natural recharge rate (by adding recharge rate bonuses), and increasing the overall size of the shield (because recharge rate is proportional to shield capacity).
+
* {{sk|Shield Upgrades}}
 +
** 5% reduction in shield extener PG usage.
 +
** Required for resistance amplifier, shield recharger modules.
  
Note: This fitting is more about raw hit points than it is damage resistance, but if you have enough fitting room, Shield resistance amplifiers can be added to provide a little damage reduction. Some people use Adaptive Invulnerability Fields and Shield Hardeners to improve damage resistance, but these are active modules that require capacitor, thus making your Passive Shield tank not quite passive any more. This can be problematic because the Shield Power Relays you depend on to increase your shield recharge rate also totally gimp your capacitor recharge rate. For this reason careful balancing is necessary to make the Passive Shield Tank effective. When done correctly, however, Passive Shield tanking can be used to handle tough missions with a single ship.
+
* {{sk|Shield Operation}}
 +
** 5% reduction in shield recharge time per level.
 +
** Required for shield boosters and maximize shield recharge.
  
==== Understand Shield Recharge Rate ====
+
* {{sk|Tactical Shield Manipulation}}
It is valuable to understand the mechanics for shield recharge rate before you continue. All ships have some shields, and all shields have a recharge rate so this concept applies to every ship shuttle and pod in Eve, and thus to every pilot who undocks, and is similar to the recharge rate of a ship's energy capacitor.  In fact it is the same as your capacitor's recharge rate.
+
** Reduces damage bleeding to armor through shields-.
 +
** Required for shield hardeners. No good reason for training beyond IV unless you want to use certain capital modules.
  
In a ship's information screen, on the attributes tab, under the shield heading, is listed the total shield amount of the hull, and the shield recharge time. The recharge time expresses how long it will take to go from 0% shields to roughly 98% shields when the ship is sitting idle in space and no one is repairing the shields or damaging them. That last ~2% of your shields will take much longer.
+
* {{sk|EM Shield Compensation}},<br> {{sk|Thermal Shield Compensation}},<br> {{sk|Kinetic Shield Compensation}},<br> {{sk|Explosive Shield Compensation}}
 +
** Increases the specific resist of the passive shield resistance amplifiers.
 +
** Training the four damage type-specific shield compensation skills is less important. The passive Shield Amplifier modules benefit most from them, but are not widely used, but active resistance modules (like Multispectrum Shield Hardeners) get no benefit at all.
  
But shields do not recharge at a constant (linear) rate. Imagine a ship with a 440 shield and a shield recharge time of 440 seconds. To find out how many shield points you regain per second you might divide: 440 shields / 440 seconds = 1.0 shields per second.  
+
* {{sk|Shield Compensation}}
 +
** 2% reduced capacitor usage for shield boosters.
  
That is close but not quite correct. The ''average'' shield recharge rate is going to be 1.0 shields per second but sometimes it will be higher, and sometimes it will be lower.  
+
* {{sk|Shield Emission Systems}}
 +
** 5% reduced capacitor usage for remote shield boosters.
  
The ''actual'' behavior is that when the shield is near 0% or 100% it replenishes slower. The ''peak recharge'' rate will be approximately 2.5 shields per second and will occur when the shields are damaged to somewhere near 25% of shield capacity remaining. Page 10 of the presentation shows this behaviour graphically.
+
* {{sk|Shield Rigging}}
 +
** Reduces the drawbacks of shield rigs.
  
This imaginary shield tanked ship above takes a constant damage of 5 damage every 8 seconds  It will
+
* {{sk|Hull Upgrades}}
slowly lose shields as the incoming damage is greater than the amount of shields recharging.  Somewhere
+
** 5% hull HP per level. Required for damage control.
around 50% shield capacity the shields will start to heal about 5 damage every 8 seconds and the tank
 
will stabilize at this equilibrium.
 
...
 
When a new damage source is then added to the scenario, adding an additional 5 damage every 8 seconds
 
the ship will begin to lose shields again.  Somewhere around 35% the incoming damage will barely be
 
more than the ship replenishes and the shield tank will be ''broken'' as the ship falls below it's
 
''peak recharge'' rate.  From here the ship's recharge rate drops off quickly and the shields will be
 
exhausted soon.
 
...
 
If the original damage source is removed just as the ship is at 30% shields, leaving only 5 damage
 
every 8 seconds the shields might stabilize again but if the original damage source is removed as
 
the ship reaches 10% shields the recharge rate will be too low and the ship will continue to lose
 
shields, and continue into armor and hull damage unless the incoming damage is effectively reduced
 
to zero.
 
  
Shield recharge rates above ~98% shield is extremely low. For ships with small shield capacity it is essentially non-existant.  
+
== Hull tanking ==
 +
Hull Tanking is a rare and dangerous art employed only by the pilots with either the most bravery or the thickest of skulls. With hull tanking there is no safety buffer. Once your hull tank is gone your ship goes out in glorious explosion. Additionally, incoming hull damage slowly bleeds into the ship's modules, causing them to artificially burn out and making it unwise to hull tank for long period of time. Hull tanking is also very much an 'all or nothing' affair: it is nearly impossible to repair hull damage without docking in a starbase.
  
As we increase the total shield capacity, the average shield recharge rate will increase
+
Regardless of these disadvantages, hull tanking is sometimes done unironically, as with certain ships their base hull HPs are so high that a hull tank is actually the best way to maximize their HP buffer. A bait ship with hull tank can lull attackers into a false sense of victory as they see the shields and armor vanish, only to spend ages grinding down the hull. Gallente ships like [[Hecate]], [[Brutix]], and [[Megathron]] have notably thick hulls (and ''very high'' damage Blaster turrets), making them viable at hull tanking.
  
The ship before with 440 shields and a 440 second recharge period is improved to have twice the shield
+
One advantage that hull tanking has, however is access to Damage Control modules, which gives significant bonus to hull resistances, usually bringing it to the most damage resisting layer of ship hitpoints.
capacity:  880 shields and a 440 second recharge.  The average shield recharge rate will be
 
880 / 440 = 2.0 shields per second, and peak recharge will be near 3.8 shields per second.
 
  
Similarly improving the shield recharge rate will increase the average shield recharge rate
+
As all the practically useful hull tanking modules are passive, a hull tank is resistant to neuting and other forms of capacitor warfare.
  
We double the shield recharge rate instead:  440 shields in 220 seconds. Now
+
The only scenario that hull logistics are required, are repair unmanned hull damaged ships, as hull damaged ships cannot be board.
the average shield recharge rate will be 440 / 220 = 2.0 shields per second. Peak recharge increases
 
as well.
 
  
Passive Shield Tanking is a difficult concept and a separate wiki page,[[Passive_Shield_Tank|Passive Shield Tank]], is devoted to fits and utilizing it in combat.
+
{|class=wikitable style="width: 900px;"
 +
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon reinforced bulkhead.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Reinforced bulkheads}}''' give a percentage bonus to hull HP. These are the only modules that increase hull HP.
  
=== Spider Tanking (Shield) ===
+
|-
In simple terms, Spider tanking involves the use of a Buffer and/or highly resistant tank that is repaired remotely by other ships in your squad who are in turn repaired by shield transporter modules on your ship. However, this is an advanced technique that requires a good deal of coordination to function effectively, and is better left for discussion later in this guide.
+
|[[File:Icon module damage control.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Damage control}}''' increases ship's hull resist to all damage.
  
=== Fitting Strategy ===
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon hull repairer i.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Hull repairers}}''' use capacitor to repair hull. These modules are extremely slow and can not be practically used in combat.
  
It's often more sensible to increase the resistances of your ship than to increase the total number of shield points. The damage reduction of resistance modules is a constant where as the shield buffer reduces with each attack.  The fitting requirements for resistance modules are often less than the fitting requirements for Shield Extenders. The one drawback is [[Stacking_penalties|stacking penalties]] these will inhibit the effectiveness of additional resistance modules but do not apply to Shield Extenders.  
+
|-
 +
|[[File:Icon remote hull repair i.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Remote hull repairers}}''' allow you to remotely repair another ship's hull. These modules are extremely slow and can not be practically used in combat. No ship is bonused for using these modules.
  
Imagine you have a shield booster that repairs 100 points per cycle. If someone
+
|-
deals you 1000 points of EM damage, to which you have a 10% resistance, will result
+
|[[File:Module icon armor rig tech1.png|link=]]
in 900 points of shield damage. Your shield booster will repair this in 9 cycles.
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Transverse bulkheads}}''' give a large percentage bonus to hull HP. No other rig gives any bonuses to hull.
If someone deals you 1000 points of explosive damage to which you have 70%
+
 
resistance, you'll only sustain 300 points of shield damage, which the shield
+
|-
booster will fix in three cycles.
+
|[[File:Icon_implant_hardwiring.png|link=]]
+
|'''{{co|wheat|Implants}}'''
So you would use three times as much energy, and take three times as long to repair
+
*Repair Systems RS-6xx series - Slot 6 - reduces armor and hull repair systems duration by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
the EM damage because of the lack of resistance.
+
*Mechanic MC-8xx series - Slot 8 - increases hull hit points by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
 +
 
 +
|-
 +
|[[File:Hobgoblin.png|link=]]
 +
|'''{{co|wheat|Hull Repair Bots}}''' allow a logistics ship to remotely repair another ship's hull. These are the only form of hull logistics that are commonly used, as they count as Logistics Drones and thus receive bonuses from certain Logistics Cruisers. They are commonly used as an emergency backup, to patch up the hull of an allied ship that recently took a little too much heat.
 +
 
 +
|}
 +
 
 +
Hull tanking is improved by only a single skill:
 +
* {{sk|Mechanics}}
 +
** 5% hull HP per level. Required for damage control.
 +
 
 +
== Remote repair ==
 +
{{main|Logistics}}
  
It is generally advised  '''NOT''' to mix modules that increase shield recharge rate with modules that repair shield damage.
+
Remote repairing refers to the use of modules to restore the shields or armor of another ship. Typically this involves a wing of dedicated logistics ships, which have bonuses for the range and effectiveness of remote shield boosters and remote armor repairers.
  
== Shield Tanking Skill Summary ==
+
A remote repair tactic allows the main fleet to fit large buffer tanks that makes them able to survive the alpha of enemy fleet, secure in the knowledge that their logistics wing will repair damage. This also allows the logi wing to focus the repping power of whole fleet on single ship.
The following skills are required to field a full Tech 2 Shield tank:
 
*{{sk|Hull Upgrades}} IV: to use a Tech 2 DCU. (Optional)
 
*{{sk|Energy Grid Upgrades}} IV: to fit Tech 2 Shield Power Relays and Power Diagnostic Systems.
 
*{{sk|Shield Upgrades}} IV: to fit Tech 2 Resistance Amplifier, Shield Recharger modules and fitting requirements.
 
*{{sk|Shield Operation}} V: to fit Tech 2 Shield Boosters and maximize shield recharge.
 
*{{sk|Shield Management}} V: to fit Tech 2 Shield Boost Amplifiers and maximize shield capacity.
 
*{{sk|Tactical Shield Manipulation}} IV: to fit Tech 2 Shield Hardeners and prevent damage bleed through when your shields get low.
 
  
There are seven primary shield tanking skills, and four additional shield specific skills.  
+
=== Spider tanking ===
 +
While normal logistic fleet configuration outsources repairing to specialized logistics ships, "spider tanking" shares the repairing and combat duty between the whole fleet. Most or all of the ships in the fleet fit one or more remote restoration modules, and the fleet as a whole repairs whichever member comes under attack.
  
#{{sk|Shield Operation}} is the only Rank 1 skill in the set. It improves the natural shield recharge rate and also grants the ability to use Shield Booster modules. Tech 2 units are available between skill level III and V, depending on size.
+
This is an advanced tactic that requires a good deal of coordination to function effectively. It is most commonly used with battleships, particularly the [[Dominix]], which has no weapon bonuses (only drone bonuses), and so can mount remote restoration modules in its free high slots if pilots do not want to use those slots for weapons.
#{{sk|Shield Management}} is a companion skill to Shield Operation. It improves a ship's maximum shield amount and also grants the ability to use Shield Boost Amplifiers, which magnify the size of shield repair amount for running Shield Boosters.
 
#{{sk|Shield Upgrades}} grants access to modules that increase a ship's maximum shield amount as well as passive shield hardeners and Shield Rechargers, a module that improves the natural recharge rate of shields, while also making it easier to fit all of these modules by reducing the Power Grid requirement to fit them.  
 
#{{sk|Tactical Shield Manipulation}} stops damage from bleeding through low shields into armor. More importantly it is the prerequisite for Adaptive Invulnerability Fields, the most useful shield resistance modules. The skill requires {{sk|Power Grid Management|III}} and unlocks Tech 2 Adaptive Invulnerability Fields at level IV.
 
#{{sk|Shield Compensation}} serves as a companion to active shield tanking by reducing the amount of capacitor used for each cycle for shield boosters. Available after training {{sk|Shield Operation|III}}.
 
#{{sk|Shield Emission Systems}} grants the ability to use remote shield repair modules. Tech 2 units are available between skill level III and IV, depending on size.
 
#{{sk|Shield Rigging}} allows fitting of rigs that can increase total shields, shield resistances, passive shield recharge rates, and active shield booster cycle rates. Higher levels of the skill allows use of tech 2 rigs and also reduces the signature radius penalty that those rigs incur. You'll also need the basic skill {{sk|Jury Rigging}} to fit rigs.
 
  
Training the four damage type-specific shield compensation skills is less important. The passive Shield Amplifier modules benefit most from them, but are not widely used, but active resistance modules (like Adaptive Invulnerability Fields) get no benefit at all. These skills are:
+
== Burst resistance modules ==
 +
{{see also|Capital Ship Modules#Capital Emergency Hull Energizer}}
  
#{{sk|Thermal Shield Compensation}}
+
There are also a couple of modules that can be activated to give a short burst of high resistances. [[Assault Frigates]] and [[Heavy Assault Cruisers]] can equip an '''Assault Damage Control''' (or '''ADC'''), which gives lower passive resists compared to a regular Damage Control, but can be activated to give a burst of 95% omni resistance to shield, armor, and hull for up to 14.4 seconds with a 150 second reactivation delay. [[Capital Ships]] can equip a '''Capital Hull Emergency Energizer''' (or '''CEHE'''), which only gives a 95% omni resistance bonus to structure, has no passive benefit, and burns out after a single use. Both modules take the place of a regular Damage Control.
#{{sk|EM Shield Compensation}}
 
#{{sk|Explosive Shield Compensation}}
 
#{{sk|Kinetic Shield Compensation}}
 
  
=== Other Skills ===
+
== Notes ==
*{{sk|Energy Grid Upgrades}} provides access to modules that increase shield recharge rate as well as modules that influence the operation of the ship's capacitor. Power Diagnostic Systems, for example, are low slot modules that provide small increases to shield hit points, shield recharge rate, total capacitor capacity, capacitor recharge rate, and to powergrid available for fitting.
+
<references group=Note />
*{{sk|Capacitor Systems Operation}} and {{sk|Capacitor Management}} influence the size and recharge rate of the ship's capacitor which allows a pilot to run active shield tanks longer.
 
*{{sk|Hull Upgrades}} increases armor hit points, but also provides access to the '''Damage Control''' module, the only low slot module to affect shield resistances.
 
  
[[Category:Tank]]
+
[[Category:Combat]]

Latest revision as of 10:22, 19 July 2024

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Passive shield tanking  to Tanking . ( Discuss )

In EVE Online, Tanking is the combat science of absorbing and reducing incoming damage. A player upgrades their ship's defense grid, commonly called its tank, to prevent or delay their ship's destruction.

Tanking is a core part of most ship combat in EVE Online. Different tanking approaches exist, split into passive or active tanking and focusing on upgrading one of a ship's defense pools: its shield, armor, or hull. The damage types of EVE Online — energy, thermal, kinetic, and explosive damage — affect shield, armor, and hull differently through resistances, and these resistances can also be upgraded by fitting modules and rigs. Shields regenerate over time, while armor and hull do not, though with the right equipment each defense pool can be repaired by the self or remotely repaired by other ships.

Even a basic understanding of tanking can greatly increase survivability in EVE, while more advanced knowledge and optimization can give competitive pilots and ship planners an edge. EVE University members are encouraged to direct questions to experienced corporation mates or to the #fitting-chat channel on the University Discord.

Note that while evading damage is also commonly called tanking, as in "speed tanking" and "signature tanking," this page focuses on reducing inflicted damage.

Basic concepts

Ship Status Panel

The Ship Status Panel shows the hitpoints(HP) of the player's ship with three rings, from outside to inside:

  1. shield (outer semicircle)
  2. armor (middle semicircle)
  3. and structure (also called "hull"; inner semicircle)

Ship defenses suffer damage in this order, marked by red coloring filling each ring. When the last ring (the structure ring) is completely red, the ship's hull has been breached and the ship is destroyed, ejecting the pilot into space as an escape pod.

Tanking follows one of two general approaches:

  • Buffer tanking – raising the ship's raw HP
  • Active tanking – repairing damage received

Buffer tanking involves raising HP by fitting passive armor, shield, or hull HP modules. These passive modules do not require control or ammunition, but they generally come paired with negative side effects like reduced evasion. In contrast, active tanking employs equipment that requires capacitor energy or specialized ammunition.

Damage-type resistances reduce incoming damage by a percentage and increase a ship's effective hit points, or EHP. Tanking builds generally combine raw HP increases with damage resistance to maximize EHP.

Buffer tanking

Buffer tanking boosts raw HP to increase a ship's survivability between repairs, at the expense of self-repairing capability. In fleet battles, a buffer tank can survive heavier bursts of damage between remote repairs. Note that a ship's hull is far slower to remote repair than armor or shields.

Buffer tanking has low or zero capacitor demands, freeing up the capacitor for other tactical equipment. In the same way, having no active modules to manage liberates a pilot's attention for other challenges. However, a buffer tank without repair support has a set lifespan. Once the HP buffer is compromised, an unsupported buffer tank will soon reach the end of its engagement value.

Any damage threat that can overwhelm a ship before it can actively repair itself calls for buffer tanking. PvP fleet combat is a key example as it subjects players to heavy focus fire. In contrast, solo PvE missions have more sustained damage threats that limit the value of solo buffer tanks, though group PvE fleets may use buffer tanks and logistics support together: this is common in Incursions and in wormhole PvE battles.

When expecting remote repairs, a ship planner may focus their build on more damage resistance, at the expense of EHP, to enhance the value of repairs by decreasing damage suffered.

Buffer tanking comes in three flavors: armor buffer tanking, passive shield tanking, and hull tanking.

Active tanking

An "active tank" uses armor repair or shield booster modules to restore the damage done to the ship. Active tanks use energy from the ship's capacitor to run local armor-repairing or shield-boosting modules. So long as the incoming damage never exceeds your restoration capacity and your capacitor never gives out under the pressure, an active tank can last forever ("perma-tanking"). If either of these two things happens, your tank will collapse ("break") under the pressure.

Active tanks can achieve either high burst restoration or sustained restoration over a long (potentially endless) time period. They require more management from the pilot than buffer tanks and are often vulnerable to Capacitor Warfare that drains the ship's capacitor dry.

Sustained active tanks

In PvE, players usually need a permanent tank that can consistently restore a steady stream of moderate damage, forever.

A PvE active tank uses one or more armor repairers or shield boosters, modules to boost either shield or armor resistances to damage, and modules to support the recharging of the ship's capacitor so that the rest of the tank can keep on running. For most PvE combat, players can look up ahead of time what types of damage they are likely to receive, and will fit modules that harden their resistances against that type of damage in particular.

Sustained active tanks are rare in PvP.

Burst active tanks

Though fleet PvP can deliver incoming damage beyond the capacity of any sub-capital sustained active tank, solo and small gang PvP often involves lower incoming damage, which a short-term active tank can fend off. The modules central to this tactic are Ancillary Armor Repairers (AAR) and Ancillary Shield Boosters (ASB). These modules can be loaded with Nanite Repair Paste (armor) and Cap Boosters (shield). While these modules have charges, ancillary armor repairers repair far more hitpoints than any other repair module, and ancillary shield boosters consume 0 capacitor energy to cycle.

However, once their charges run out (in general after 8 cycles for an armor repairer or 9 cycles for a shield booster), the AAR becomes very weak and inefficient, and the ASB becomes prohibitively capacitor-intensive. Ancillary repair modules have a 60 second reload time to refresh their charges from your cargo hold. Only one ancillary armor repairer, or capital ancillary shield booster, can be fitted to a ship.

The size of charges used and the rate at which they are consumed is based on the size of the module. Larger ancillary armor repairers hold more paste but consume more paste per cycle, and larger ancillary shield boosters require larger cap charges to be loaded. While ancillary shield boosters may have multiple different sizes of charges loaded, larger charges offer no benefit over smaller charges (and with their larger volume, allow fewer charges to be loaded at once), and so only the smallest available charge should be used.

Because Overheating repair modules increase both the cycle speed and the number of hitpoints repaired, ancillary repair modules should always be run overheated to maximize the value of their limited cycles. (The overheat damage sustained can then be repaired while the modules are reloading.)

Another module often important to a burst active tank is the capacitor booster. A cap booster uses charges to fire more energy into your capacitor, allowing a ship to exceed its normal power output for a limited time. Ancillary repairers/boosters and cap boosters offer some protection against capacitor warfare, and a burst active tank can achieve a startlingly-high rate of restoration, especially on a ship with bonuses like those found on the Maelstrom or Hyperion.

The drawbacks of a burst active tank are that it requires considerable attention from the pilot, takes up a lot of cargo space, and (most importantly) will eventually give out.

Avoid mixing tanks

Modules are available to help both your shields and your armor, but it is a good rule of thumb to focus on either shields or armor, not both.

Most of the time a tank takes up a substantial proportion of powergrid, CPU and either midslots (shield tank) or lowslots (armor tank). If you fit a shield tank, you can put useful things (damage modules, speed and agility modules &c) in your lowslots, and if you armor tank you can put useful things (tackling modules, electronic warfare modules, propulsion modules &c) in your midslots. Both types of tank at once leave you with little space for other useful modules.

This rule also applies to mixing buffer tank with active tank. Buffer and active tank modules both require heavy powergrid and CPU, both consume the same limited set of slots, and both fitting theories satisfy different, usually mutually exclusive, goals and conditions.

Double-tanked ships are usually only used as specially-designed bait.

Resistances

Resistances (or "resists) on a ship reduce the damage taken. A resist figure is a number that tells you by how large a percentage the incoming damage is reduced. For example, 30% thermal resistance on shields means that all incoming thermal damage is reduced by 30%: 100 hit points of shield damage becomes 70.

The T1 ships have almost identical base resists, but many of the T2 ships have so called "T2 Resists" that drastically vary between races. For example, Minmatar ships with T2 resists have massive EM and thermal resists even on shields but have low resists against explosive and kinetic.

The base resists of a ship are almost always modified by modules fitted on the ship. Resistance percentages are calculated in a way that many people find confusing. A module may list itself as having a 30% bonus to resistances, but the only time you'll actually see a 30% increase in resistance when using it is if your current resistance is 0%.

The way the calculations work is that the percentage is applied to the remaining damage after resists. If things didn't work this way, you'd easily get resistances above 100%, and shooting you would cause armor or shields to grow on your ship.

Resistances are easier to figure out if you think in terms of "damage vulnerability" rather than "damage resistance". A ship with 60% EM resist is then going to take 40% EM damage received. Adding a 30% resist module multiplies the damage taken by 0.7, so you now take 0.7*0.4 = 0.28 = 28% of the raw damage.

Because of stacking penalties, and the way resistances multiply together, it is not possible to be 100% resistant to a damage type [Note 1].

For those interested in the math (pilots do not need to know these details if they don't want to), the final resist with multiple modules and stacking penalties can be calculated with the formula

[math] \displaystyle \text{Resist} = 1 - ( 1 - R_0 )( 1 - R_1)( 1-R_2 \times 0.869)( 1 - R_3 \times 0.571)( 1 - R_4 \times 0.283)...[/math]

where R0 is the hull resist and R1, R2, R3,... are module resists in descending order.

Negative resistances

Certain effects will apply negative resists to a ship. These include incursion effects, Abyssal Deadspace effects and phenomena generators. The way these are applied may seem confusing, but they are simpler than they seem. The idea is exactly the same as with normal resists explained above where the percentage change is applied to vulnerability (100% - resist) instead of resist.

A 50% resist penalty means that your ship will take 50% more damage.

Example: You fly your ship with 70% resist into a situation where you receive 50% resist penalty. Your new resist is 55%; how can this make any sense?
Your ship has 70% resistance meaning you will receive 30% of the incoming damage. If 50% resist penalty is applied on your ship you will take 50% more damage. You will be receiving 1.5×30% = 45% damage after your resists. So the new resistance is 100% - 45% = 55%.

The math is:

[math] \displaystyle \text{New resist} = 1 - ( 1 - \text{Original resist} ) \times ( 1 + \text{Penalty} ) [/math]

The resist penalties will never cause the ship to have below 0% resist. If the penalty is big enough that the new resist would be negative, the new resist will simply be 0%.

Negative hitpoints

It is possible that the hitpoints of the shield, armor, and/or hull become a negative value. The game tracks "damaged value" for each layer of hitpoints, changes to max hitpoints will not change the damaged amount of hitpoints, unlike capacitors, which change energy with capacity changes to maintain the same percentage.

When the max hitpoints are reduced and the new max hitpoint minus damaged hitpoints is a negative value, negative hitpoints occur. Common causes are:

  • The pilot is ejected, and the max hitpoints bonus from skills, implants, and boosters are removed.
  • Modules that give extra max hitpoints become offline because either the pilot ejected caused the module to be out of CPW/PWG, burned to overheating, the pilot did not have skills for it, or they were put offline by the pilot or unfitted.
  • Modules that decrease max hitpoints are fitted and brought online.
  • Medical boosters, Command Bursts or system effects (like Pulsar or Wolf Rayet in Wormhole space) caused changes in max hitpoints. Either the effect caused a decrease in max hitpoints, or the ship took too much damage and had the effect that increased max hitpoints wear off.

Negative hitpoints will show 0 hitpoints, but they will absorb some amount of heal from hull repairers, armor repairers and shield boosters, resulting in odds that the ship is repaired but hitpoints are not changed, but with enough fixes eventually bringing hitpoints to a positive value.

If hull hitpoints reach 0 or a negative value via max hull hitpoints decreased instead of damage, the ship won't be destroyed until the next hull damage, allowing the ship to be hull repaired.

Armor tanking

General approach

Armor tanking emphasizes the use of low-slot modules to increase armor hit points, resistance to damage, and gain the ability to repair damage taken by armor. Regardless of the approach taken to armor tanking, understand that armor on T1 hulls has an inherent weakness to Explosive damage, and usually a mild weakness to Kinetic damage, and you should plan your resistance modules accordingly.

Armor-tanked ships generally have much stronger buffers than shield-tanked ships. This is aided by Armor having near-universally higher base damage resistances than shields (albeit with the opposite order of strengths and weaknesses), and several modules which increase armor hitpoints and resistances that have no shield equivalents.

Armor Repairers are more capacitor-efficient than Shield Boosters (in terms of raw HP recovered per GJ of capacitor used), and they repair large amounts of HP on every cycle. However, they also cycle very slowly, meaning that they effectively restore less HP per second than shield boosters; and the HP gained is applied at the end of the module cycle (rather than the beginning as it is for shield boosters), meaning that a pilot must anticipate when the repairs will be needed several seconds in advance.

Armor tanking modules generally do not use nearly as much CPU as shield tanking modules. (Some armor tanking modules even consume no CPU at all!) However, Armor Plates and Armor Repairers use much, much more powergrid than any shield-tanking modules. Because armor tanking modules take up low slots, they leave their ship's mid slots free for capacitor modules, Electronic Warfare modules, and damage application modules, which gives armor-tanked ships much more utility and versatility than shield-tanked ships. However, in exchange, because armor takes up low slots, and damage-increasing modules also take up low slots, armor-tanked ships generally have lower potential damage output than shield-tanked ships.

Once a ship's armor is depleted, only its hull stands between it and death. This means that, in theory, armor-tanked ships have smaller safety margins than shield-tanked ships. However, this is a fact that Gallente ships are designed around: some Gallente ships have bonuses to local armor repair modules, and Gallente ships also have the thickest hulls of any ships.

Armor Plates have a unique penalty to them: increased ship mass. This penalty reduces ship agility (acceleration and alignment time), and reduces the speed bonus gained from Propulsion equipment. Armor Rigs also (usually) reduce ship max speeds. As a result, heavily armored ships tend to be significantly slower than heavily shielded ships.

In short, the advantages of armor tanks are:

  • A wide range of modules available to enhance resistances
  • Armor repairers use less capacitor than shield boosters
  • Relatively limited CPU demand and capacitor burden
  • Mid slots are available for propulsion, tackle, EWAR, and damage-application modules

And the disadvantages of armor tanks are:

  • (active tanks only) armor repairers only repair at the end of their cycle, requiring precise management from pilots
  • Many armor tanking modules and rigs slow the ship down
  • Use of low slots reduces space for damage-boosting modules
  • Relatively greater powergrid demand
  • Armor doesn't repair naturally on its own over time as shields do, so pilots might have to dock up and pay for repairs

Armor tanking is most common in Amarr and Gallente ships, which tend to have lots of low slots and sometimes have bonuses for armor resistance (Amarr) or active armor repairers (Gallente). Minmatar ships and even some Caldari ships are sometimes also given armor tanks: the Hurricane and Blackbird are two examples.

Racial resistances

see also: Natural Resistances#Tech I armor resistances

One major consideration when choosing resistance modules is that different races' Tech 1 ships have slightly different base armor resistances. This is explained in the article on Natural Resistances, however for a discussion of tanking, there are four major takeaways:

  • Amarr ships can generally get sufficient resistances using a combination of Multispectrum Energized Membranes, a Damage Control, and/or a Reactive Armor Hardener.
  • Gallente ships generally need to run one Explosive Membrane, Coating, or Hardener
  • Caldari ships are generally not armor-tanked at all, however on the rare occasion that they are, they generally need an Explosive, and possibly a Kinetic, resist module
  • Minmatar ships generally need to run both an Explosive and a Kinetic resist module, or in extreme cases run full "Rainbow -1"

The reason for these takeaways is that one of the general goals in resistance modules is to have all four of your ship's resistances be at some fairly equal high value; and because different races have different base values, different amounts of effort are required to even the numbers.

Rainbow -1

"Rainbow" tanking refers to an attempt to maximize damage resistance by running one pure resistance module for each of the four damage types. This is generally only done on Battleships or Capital Ships, because of the large number of slots required to do it. However, because of the distribution of base armor resistances, rainbow tanking is generally not quite the most efficient way to maximize resistances. What is generally more efficient is "Rainbow -1": One Membrane or Hardener for each of Explosive, Kinetic, and Thermal, and then a single Multispectrum Energized Membrane. This strategy takes advantage of armor's naturally high EM resistance, improves the other three resistances to match, then uses a single Multispec to further improve everything. This has the added advantage of only applying 1 layer of Stacking Penalties to most resists and no Stacking Penalties at all to the EM resist, and synergizes very well in a fleet setting with Armored Command Bursts.

Armor tanking modules

Icon armor plate.png Armor plates increase armor HP by a flat amount with the cost of increasing ship mass, decreasing ship speed and agility. Oversized plates, those intended for larger ship sizes, can be fitted onto smaller ships if they have adequate power grid.
Icon adaptive nano plating.png Resistance coatings are passive modules that increase armor resistances. They have very low fitting costs.
  • Resistance Coatings come in 5 types: one for each of the four damage elements and one multispectrum model which moderately resists all damage.
  • The Armor Compensation skills further increases bonus resistances.
Icon energized membrane.png Energized membranes are an upgraded version of Resistance Coatings, passively increasing armor resistances by a larger amount. They have higher CPU fitting costs than resistance coatings and are more expensive to produce.
  • Energized Membranes also come in four elemental types and one multispectrum model which moderately resists all damage.
  • The Armor Compensation skills further increases bonus resistances.
Icon armor thermal hardener.png Armor hardeners are active modules that significantly increase one of the four armor resistances, more than Energized Membranes. They consume small amounts of Capacitor energy to run and require slightly more CPU to fit than Energized Membranes. They can also be Overheated for a further increase in strength.
  • (Active) Armor Hardeners come in 4 types: one for each type of damage.
  • Armor Hardeners do not benefit from the Armor Compensation skills.
Icon module damage control.png Damage control is a passive module that increases a ship's shield, armor, and hull resists. This module is not stacking penalized with most other resist modules. Only a Reactive Armor Hardener is stacking penalized with a damage control. As a result, this module is commonly seen as one of the most efficient defensive modules in the game.
Icon assault damage control.png Assault damage control is a variant of the Damage Control which can only be used by Assault Frigates and Heavy Assault Cruisers. Passively, it gives weaker bonuses to shield, armor, and hull resistances than a normal Damage Control. In exchange, the ADC can be activated once every two minutes to give 12 seconds of massive reduction to all incoming damage. Like the normal Damage Control, the ADC is stacking penalized with the Reactive Armor Hardener but not with any other resist modules.
Icon reactive armor hardener.png Reactive armor hardener is an active module that increases armor resists. it gives in total 60% resist bonus split across all four damage types. When first activated, the module gives 15% resistance to each type of damage. As the ship receives armor damage, every time the RAH cycles its resistances will change to become more resistant to the damage which was last sustained, and less resistant to other damage types which were not sustained. The resists shift by up to 6% per cycle per resist. This module is not stacking penalized with other modules except for Damage Control.
Icon armor repairer i.png Armor repairers are modules that consume moderate amount of capacitor and use that to repair the ship's armor.

The capacitor is consumed at the beginning of the cycle but the repair happens at the end of the cycle.

Icon armor repairer i.png Ancillary armor repairers ("Ancils") can consume Nanite Repair Paste to fix armor quickly in short bursts. A loaded Ancil fixes ~1.7x the armor of a comparable T2 armor repairer for the first eight repair cycles. A depleted Ancil repairs much slower, at ~0.6x repair yield. Reloading the module requires 1 minute, and an Ancil cannot be used while reloading. Auto-reload can be disabled to keep the module available until reload is desired.
  • PvP is the primary setting for Ancillary Armor Repairers where they provide strong bursts of active tanking. (Certain types of PvE, such as Abyssal Deadspace, also popularly feature this module.)
  • Overheating a loaded Ancillary Armor Repairer is especially advisable, due to its limited number of activation cycles.
Icon adaptive nano plating.png Layered Coatings are passive modules that increase a ship's armor by a percentage amount, including bonus armor added by Armor Plates. Also, unlike Armor Plates, they do not increase ship mass.
Icon energized membrane.png Layered Energized Membranes are upgraded Layer Coatings that increase armor percentage by a higher amount. They have higher CPU fitting costs and are more expensive to produce.
Icon remote armor repair i.png Remote armor repair systems consume capacitor to remotely repair armor on another ship. Their short range is extended significantly when fit to Logistics class ships.
  • Remote Armor Repairers heal marginally more than their self-repair counterparts over time, and at faster activation speeds.
Icon remote armor repair i.png Ancillary remote armor repair systems are the remote counterpart of local ancillary armor repairers. Like the local ancillary armor repairers These can be loaded with nanite repair paste for 8 cycles of increased repairs. However, once the paste runs out they will repair less than normal remote repairers.
Module icon armor rig tech1.png Rigs
  • Trimark Armor Pumps increases the raw HP by a percentage, at the cost of reduced maximum speed.
  • Anti-damage type rigs increase damage resist to a single damage type, at the cost of reduced maximum speed.
  • Auxiliary Nano Pumps increase a ship's armor repairer repair amount per cycle. Increases the power grid use for local armor reps.
  • Nanobot Accelerator speeds up armor repair module cycle times at the cost of armor repairers' power grid use. In theory, this is more effective for active armor tanks than the Auxiliary Nano Pump, but note that shorter cycle time also results in higher capacitor use.

Tech II Armor Rigs tend to all be very expensive because of the rarity of one component (Intact Armor Plates) which they all use.

Icon implant hardwiring.png Implants
  • Repair Systems RS-6xx series - Slot 6 - reduces armor and hull repair systems duration by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
  • Remote Repair Sustems RA-7xx series - Slot 7 - reduces capacitor need for remote armor repair modules by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
  • Repair Proficiency RP-9xx series - Slot 9 - increases armor repair system amount by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
  • Hull Upgrades HP-10xx series - Slot 10 increases armor hit points by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
  • There are two implant sets that benefit armor tanking. Like most sets, they use implant slots 1-6, are available in three grades (low, medium, and high), and each additional implant amplifies the bonus of the entire set. For both, the bonus from a full set can range from 20.03% with low-grades, to 53.63% with high-grades.
    • The Amulet implant set gives a multiplicative increase to armor hit points.
    • The Asklepian implant set gives a multiplicative increase to armor repair amounts.
    • You can mix & match HG, MG, and LG implants, for a final bonus partway in between.
Icon exile.png Exile medical booster greatly increases the ship's active armor repair amount, however, they carry a chance to reduce your Armor hitpoints, capacitor capacity, turret tracking, or missile damage application.

Armor tanking skills

Shield tanking

Shield tanking employs buffer tanking with passive shield regeneration (aka. passive shield tanking) or active shield boosting to withstand damage. Shields are innately resistant to explosive damage and weak to EM damage.

Note that, like a ship's capacitor, shield regeneration is strongest when shields are at 25% of their capacity, regenerating slower as shield levels rise above or sink below this value. (For more information on shield regeneration, see shield recharge rate.) Note also that damage can bypass shields, and that the amount bypassed increases as shield levels fall.

Shield modules generally fit in mid slots. This leaves low slots for damage modules, fitting modules or piloting modules. As a result, shield ships generally have higher damage output than their armored cousins. But using mid slots for tank can sometimes limit the ship fit into more or less pure damage dealing as the tank competes with tackling, EWAR, and propulsion modules.

Shield extenders and shield rigs apply a penalty to the ship's signature radius: they make it larger, making the ship easier to hit with turrets and easier to damage with missiles. Shields generally also have less buffer than armor ships. This is most notable when fighting against ships larger than your own.

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 boosters also repair much faster and more than armor repairers. This comes at cost of using more capacitor.

After shields are exhausted there is still some armor and hull remaining, leaving a little more room for error.

Shields naturally recharge themselves over time, while armor and hull damage remains until it is repaired. This passive regeneration is taken to extreme in "passive shield tanking", described below.

In short, the advantages of shield tanking are:

  • Does not reduce speed or maneuverability.
  • As a first line of defense, leaves you with armor and hull as a fallback if shields go down.
  • Shields recharge on their own - no need to dock and pay for repairs.
  • Shield boosting modules work more quickly than armor repair modules and apply effects immediately.
  • Low slots are available for weapon enhancing modules.

And the disadvantages of shield tanking are:

  • Increases signature radius – ship becomes easier to hit.
  • Fewer kinds of enhancement modules – less choice than with armor.
  • Shield recharge modules use more capacitor than armor repair modules.
  • Mid slots are not available for EWAR, tackle or propulsion modules.

Shield tanks are most common on Caldari ships, followed by Minmatar ships. Both races' ships tend to have adequate numbers of mid slots; some Caldari ships have bonuses to shield resistances, and some Minmatar ships have bonuses to shield boosters. Shield tanks also synergize well with Minmatar ships' emphasis on speed. Some Gallente and Amarr ships are sometimes shield-tanked: one example is the Curse.

Active shield tanking

Active shield tanking is most commonly used in higher-level PvE but also has a place in solo or small-gang PvP. Active shield tanking is based on using a shield booster to recover shield HP faster than incoming damage can deplete it, while also fitting modules to harden the shields' resistances.

Passive shield tanking

See also: Passive shield tanking

Unlike Armor hit points, shields will recharge themselves after taking damage. A passive Shield tank maximizes this natural recharge rate without the use of active booster modules. The shields of a ship have two stats that are relevant to passive recharge: shield capacity and shield recharge time. The shield capacity is simply the maximum HP for the shields while the recharge time tells how long it takes for the shields to recharge.

The concept behind the Passive Shield Tank is deceptively simple: find a ship with a relatively high natural recharge rate (Shield HP / Recharge time = Average recharge rate), then add as many additional shield hit points to your ship as possible using shield extenders. Because the recharge time for a given ship is a fixed amount no matter how many points of shields you have, adding more shield HP indirectly increases the recharge rate, because more HP are being recharged in the same amount of time. Now add passive modules that increase the recharge rate even further, such as Shield Rechargers, Shield Power Relays and Power Diagnostic Systems, and you have a monster sized buffer tank that also regenerates very quickly, without using any capacitor. Shield Flux Coils also increase recharge rate, but should be avoided because they also lower your shield hit points, which is self-defeating.

As the name implies, a fully passive tank does not require any modules that need to be “turned on” to function, and therefore does not require capacitor. The drawback to Passive Shield tanking is the number of modules required to pull it off, which leaves very little room to fit other useful modules such as damage improvement and tackling equipment, which makes this fitting of limited use outside of PvE combat.

Adding resistance modules will greatly increase the effectiveness of passive recharge. Some passive shield tanks also use Multispectrum Shield Hardeners and Shield Hardeners to improve damage resistance. Note that these do put a (gentle) load on the capacitor, and the capacitor's own recharge rate is reduced by the Shield Power Relays that increase shield recharge rates. Careful balancing is therefore necessary to make a passive shield tank work. When done correctly, however, this approach can be used to handle tough missions with a single ship.

It is generally advised NOT to mix modules that increase shield recharge rate (a passive shield tank) rate with modules that repair shield damage (an active shield tank).

Shield recharge rate

All ships have shields, and all shields have a recharge rate.

A ship's information screen, on the attributes tab, under the shield heading, lists the total shield amount of the hull and the shield recharge time. The recharge time expresses how long it will take to go from 0% shields to roughly 98% shields when the ship is sitting idle in space and no one is repairing the shields or damaging them. That last ~2% of your shields will take much longer.

To get a crude measure of recharge rate, you can simply divide the shield HP by the time listed for recharging. But shields do not recharge at a constant rate: this only calculates an average rate. The actual behavior is that when the shield is near 0% or 100% it replenishes slower. The peak recharge rate will be 2.5x the average rate and will occur when the shields are damaged to 25% of shield maximum capacity.

Shield recharge rates above ~98% shield arr extremely low. For ships with small shield capacity it is essentially non-existent. The shield recharge rate also drops sharply below 25% capacity. Once shields have been damaged beyond 25% the passive tank "breaks" and the ship dies rapidly.

Measured shield HP during passive recharge from zero and theoretical shield HP from formula plotted. Click to enlarge.
Shield recharge rate as function of shield HP according to the formula. Click to enlarge.

As the shield takes damage, its level goes down. In response, the rate at which it rebuilds itself goes up. The increase in shield recharge rate continues until it peaks at 25% of shield capacity. At this threshold, the default ship Health Alert noise will sound to warn the pilot that the shield is at its recharging limit. If it continues to take more damage than it can hold, the regeneration will drop off quickly. This means if constant damage is applied, the shield will regenerate less as it becomes empty, thus making it easier to shoot the armor below it.

THE MAIN POINT: In combat the shield will recharge at an increasing rate until 25% of its capacity remains; then the rate will fall off quickly towards zero.

The math for shield regeneration is exactly the same as that of the capacitor recharge rate. Two numerical attributes are required: shield capacity, and shield recharge time. These are both displayed in the ship's "show info" attributes panel in-game, below its capacity. Note that modules that refer to "recharge rate" modify the recharge time number, not the raw regeneration in HP/s.

[math] \displaystyle \frac{\text{d}C}{\text{d}t} = \frac{ 10C_{\rm{max}}}{T} \left( \sqrt{ \frac{C}{C_{\rm{max}}} } - \frac{C}{C_{\rm{max}}} \right) [/math]

...where:
C is your current shield HP.
Cmax is your maximum shield HP.
dC/dt is your current shield regeneration in HP/s.
T is shield recharge time.

Consequences

The fact that these attributes are both set has some interesting consequences. Notably, for this calculation, recharge time is not dependent on anything else, including maximum shield capacity, as you might have intuitively expected. This has the effect that if two ships have the same "recharge time" attribute, and one has more capacity, then the one with the larger capacity will get more raw HP/s regeneration, and appear to "repair faster" in a passive tank despite reaching its maximum level in the same time.

Calculating Average rate

Fitting a shield tank

In many cases the technical construction of the ship dictates the use of shields (or armor) as its primary defense. Any ship receiving a bonus to shield capabilities would likely use shields. And because most shield modules use medium power slots, a ship with more mid than low slots will tend to use shields. As a shield ships use mainly mid slots for defense, they can fit much higher damage output and are often faster.

Every ship has a shield. Whether or not a pilot decides to expand and improve the shield is his or her choice.
That said, here are the factors that you look for when you are thinking about shields:

  • Shield specific hull bonus.
  • Surplus of mid slots or shortage of low slots.
  • More need to favor modules that improve weapons (which tend to need low slots).
  • Less need for EWAR modules (which tend to need mid slots).
Icon shield extender.png Shield extenders increase ships shield HP by a flat number. The drawback is increased signature radius that makes the ship easier to hit. Oversized modules are often used (Medium size on a Frigate class ship, for example).
Icon resists.png Shield hardeners are active modules that increase ship's shield resists. Multispectrum Shield Hardener increases resist to all damage types but less than type specific modules. The name is misleading and the module does not adapt to damage like the reactive armor hardener. Active shield hardeners are considerably more effective than the passive shield resistance amplifiers.
Icon thermal amplifier.png Shield resistance amplifiers are passive modules that increase ship's shield resists. Easier to fit than active hardeners and do not need any capacitor. Considerably lower resist bonus compared to active hardeners. The resist bonus increases with appropriate shield compensation skill. There is no resistance amplifier that increases all resist types like there is for armor.
Icon module damage control.png Damage control is a passive module that increases the ship's shield, armor and hull resists. This module is not stacking penalized with any other shield resist module.
Icon shield recharger.png Shield power relays are passive modules that increase the ship's shield recharge rate at the cost of reduced capacitor recharge rate. This module defines a passive shield tank. Since the relay modules fit in low slots, this means more Extenders may be fitted alongside them. On the other hand, this also means no low slot weapon upgrade modules for high damage. This will limit the situations where a passive tank may be used. One of the few low slot shield modules.
Icon shield recharger.png Shield flux coils are passive modules that increase ship's shield recharge rate at the cost of reduced shield capacity. The reduced shield capacity reduces the shield recharge rate but the recharge rate bonus on flux coils is larger than on power relays resulting in higher recharge rate.
Icon shield recharger.png Shield rechargers are passive mid slot modules that provide a modest increase to the shield recharge rate. If there is fitting room for shield extender then that may be a better choice.
Icon shield glow.png Shield boosters consume ship's capacitor to repair (or boost, as the name says) the shields in exchange. Note that the repair happens at the beginning of the module cycle. Shield boosters generally have short cycle time and mediocre capacitor:hitpoint rate compared to Armor Repairers.
Icon ancillary shield booster.png Ancillary shield booster provides a capacitor-free method of active shield tanking for limited time. They can be loaded with Capacitor Booster Charges, and will consume the loaded charges upon activation. When no charges are loaded, it will consume quite a large amount of capacitor instead. They will reload in 1 minute (60 seconds). Capacitor Booster Charges of different sizes can be fitted, however it is recommended to use the Navy variant of the smallest charge available (the accepted charge size is displayed on the Show Info tab). Using larger charges offers no benefits. Ancillary shield boosters are almost exclusively used in PvP situations to provide repairs without consuming the precious capacitor. Usage in PvE is not recommended due to the long reload time, the cost of Capacitor Booster Charges and burst tanking nature.
Icon shield boost amplifier.png Shield boost amplifiers are passive mid slot modules that increase shield booster repair amount without increasing the capacitor usage. They are completely passive and use only 1 powergrid, however they require quite a bit of CPU. This makes these impractical for smaller hulls due to the limited med slots and fitting resources. However, Boost Amplifiers double the heat damage from overheating.
Icon shield transporter i.png Remote shield boosters use capacitor to repair shields of a single target. Moderately short Optimal range and long Falloff range. Note that the repair is delivered at the start of the cycle.
Icon shield transporter i.png Ancillary remote shield boosters are remote shield boosters that can be loaded with cap boosters. They behave exactly the same with local Ancillary Shield Boosters except they repair other ships instead. Usage without Cap Booster Charges are highly discouraged due to the large Capacitor usage.
Icon powergrid.png Power diagnostics systems are low slot engineering modules. Small percentage increase to shield capacity, capacitor capacity, powergrid output, shield recharge rate and capacitor recharge rate.
Icon capacitor recharger.png Capacitor power relays are not exactly a shield modules, but an engineering module. They are a passive low slot module that increase capacitor recharge rate at the expense of reduced shield booster repair amount. These are generally avoided on active shield tanked ships. The penalty does not apply to remote shield boosters.
Module icon shield rig tech1.png Rigs
  • Core defense field extenders increase shield capacity by a percentage amount. They are popular on PvP fits, and thus are a bit more expensive due to the high demand.
  • Core defense field purgers increase the shield recharge rate. It is however, a lot more effective than a Shield Recharger, and is a staple on almost all passively-tanked ships.
  • Screen reinforcers increases a ship resistance to single type of damage. The most commonly used is the anti-EM and anti-thermal reinforcers as the shields are naturally vulnerable to these damage types.
  • Core defense capacitor safeguards make a shield booster run more efficiently reducing the cap requirement.
  • Core defense operational solidifiers make the shield boosters run faster, increasing tank but also capacitor use. Unlike its armor equivalent, usually ignored in favour of a boost amplifier module.
  • Core defense charge economizers reduce the powergrid need of shield extenders. Rarely used except in some very large buffers to pvp fits. They are much cheaper than the general PG upgrade rig
Icon implant hardwiring.png Implants
  • Slot 6: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Upgrades SU-6XX series reduces shield extender powergrid needs by a few %. Rarely used.
  • Slot 7: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Management SM-7XX series bonus to shield capacity. Useful for buffer and passive tanks.
  • Slot 8: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Emission Systems SE-8XX series reduced capacitor need for remote shield repair equipment. Useful for logistics fits.
  • Slot 9: Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Operation SP-9XX series increases shield recharge rate. useful for passive tanks.
  • Like with armor tanking, there are two implant sets that benefit shield tanking. Like most sets, they use implant slots 1-6, are available in three grades (low, medium, and high), and each additional implant amplifies the bonus of the entire set. For both, the bonus from a full set can range from 20.03% with low-grades, to 53.63% with high-grades.
    • The Crystal implant set gives a multiplicative increase to shield boost amounts.
    • The Nirvana implant set gives a multiplicative increase to shield hit points.
    • You can mix & match HG, MG, and LG implants, for a final bonus partway in between.
Icon blue pill.png Blue Pill medical booster greatly increases the ship's active shield boosting amount, however they have a chance to penalize your ship's Capacitor and Shield capacity, your turret's optimal range, or your missile's explosion velocity.

Shield skills

The following skills are required to field a full Tech 2 Shield tank:

  • Shield Management
    • 5% increase in shield capacity per level.
    • Required for shield boost amplifiers.
  • Shield Upgrades
    • 5% reduction in shield extener PG usage.
    • Required for resistance amplifier, shield recharger modules.
  • Shield Operation
    • 5% reduction in shield recharge time per level.
    • Required for shield boosters and maximize shield recharge.
  • Tactical Shield Manipulation
    • Reduces damage bleeding to armor through shields-.
    • Required for shield hardeners. No good reason for training beyond IV unless you want to use certain capital modules.

Hull tanking

Hull Tanking is a rare and dangerous art employed only by the pilots with either the most bravery or the thickest of skulls. With hull tanking there is no safety buffer. Once your hull tank is gone your ship goes out in glorious explosion. Additionally, incoming hull damage slowly bleeds into the ship's modules, causing them to artificially burn out and making it unwise to hull tank for long period of time. Hull tanking is also very much an 'all or nothing' affair: it is nearly impossible to repair hull damage without docking in a starbase.

Regardless of these disadvantages, hull tanking is sometimes done unironically, as with certain ships their base hull HPs are so high that a hull tank is actually the best way to maximize their HP buffer. A bait ship with hull tank can lull attackers into a false sense of victory as they see the shields and armor vanish, only to spend ages grinding down the hull. Gallente ships like Hecate, Brutix, and Megathron have notably thick hulls (and very high damage Blaster turrets), making them viable at hull tanking.

One advantage that hull tanking has, however is access to Damage Control modules, which gives significant bonus to hull resistances, usually bringing it to the most damage resisting layer of ship hitpoints.

As all the practically useful hull tanking modules are passive, a hull tank is resistant to neuting and other forms of capacitor warfare.

The only scenario that hull logistics are required, are repair unmanned hull damaged ships, as hull damaged ships cannot be board.

Icon reinforced bulkhead.png Reinforced bulkheads give a percentage bonus to hull HP. These are the only modules that increase hull HP.
Icon module damage control.png Damage control increases ship's hull resist to all damage.
Icon hull repairer i.png Hull repairers use capacitor to repair hull. These modules are extremely slow and can not be practically used in combat.
Icon remote hull repair i.png Remote hull repairers allow you to remotely repair another ship's hull. These modules are extremely slow and can not be practically used in combat. No ship is bonused for using these modules.
Module icon armor rig tech1.png Transverse bulkheads give a large percentage bonus to hull HP. No other rig gives any bonuses to hull.
Icon implant hardwiring.png Implants
  • Repair Systems RS-6xx series - Slot 6 - reduces armor and hull repair systems duration by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
  • Mechanic MC-8xx series - Slot 8 - increases hull hit points by 1% to 6%, depending on model number
Hobgoblin.png Hull Repair Bots allow a logistics ship to remotely repair another ship's hull. These are the only form of hull logistics that are commonly used, as they count as Logistics Drones and thus receive bonuses from certain Logistics Cruisers. They are commonly used as an emergency backup, to patch up the hull of an allied ship that recently took a little too much heat.

Hull tanking is improved by only a single skill:

  • Mechanics
    • 5% hull HP per level. Required for damage control.

Remote repair

Main article: Logistics

Remote repairing refers to the use of modules to restore the shields or armor of another ship. Typically this involves a wing of dedicated logistics ships, which have bonuses for the range and effectiveness of remote shield boosters and remote armor repairers.

A remote repair tactic allows the main fleet to fit large buffer tanks that makes them able to survive the alpha of enemy fleet, secure in the knowledge that their logistics wing will repair damage. This also allows the logi wing to focus the repping power of whole fleet on single ship.

Spider tanking

While normal logistic fleet configuration outsources repairing to specialized logistics ships, "spider tanking" shares the repairing and combat duty between the whole fleet. Most or all of the ships in the fleet fit one or more remote restoration modules, and the fleet as a whole repairs whichever member comes under attack.

This is an advanced tactic that requires a good deal of coordination to function effectively. It is most commonly used with battleships, particularly the Dominix, which has no weapon bonuses (only drone bonuses), and so can mount remote restoration modules in its free high slots if pilots do not want to use those slots for weapons.

Burst resistance modules

See also: Capital Ship Modules#Capital Emergency Hull Energizer

There are also a couple of modules that can be activated to give a short burst of high resistances. Assault Frigates and Heavy Assault Cruisers can equip an Assault Damage Control (or ADC), which gives lower passive resists compared to a regular Damage Control, but can be activated to give a burst of 95% omni resistance to shield, armor, and hull for up to 14.4 seconds with a 150 second reactivation delay. Capital Ships can equip a Capital Hull Emergency Energizer (or CEHE), which only gives a 95% omni resistance bonus to structure, has no passive benefit, and burns out after a single use. Both modules take the place of a regular Damage Control.

Notes

  1. ^ It is possible to have over 100% resist by overheating either an x-type or one of the best or second best officer hardeners on a Deep Space Transport in a class 6 red giant wormhole system. This will result in immediate destruction of the ship if any damage is taken—so don't do it.