Tanking: Difference between revisions

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 thus 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 which have no shield equivalents.

Armor Repairers are more capacitor-efficient than Shield Boosters (in terms of HP recovered per GJ 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. Furthermore, 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 also fact that Gallente ships are well aware of and, in fact, designed around: Gallente ships commonly feature 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.

Here is a sample cruiser fitted with an armor tank:

*[[Tanking#Armor_tanking_modules|Multispectrum Energized Membrane]]

*[[Tanking#Armor_tanking_modules|Damage Control II]]

The ship has a bonus for medium energy turret damage, five High slots, and five Turret slots; so usually, these slots will be filled with lasers. Alternatively however, these high slots could be used for [[capacitor warfare]] (Neutralizers to drain an enemy, or Nosferatus to power its other modules).

 

 

In addition to the armor modules, this sample Maller also has one Heat Sink, to increase the damage of its laser turrets. Most armor-tanked ships would like to fit two Heat Sinks (or equivalent), however with the Maller's two massive plates, it runs out of slots.

The rigs are Trimark Armor Pumps which, increase increase armor HP. They are generally the most popular rig for buffer-tanked armor ships, however some fits will use Resistance-boosting rigs in stead. Active-tanked armor ships will usually use either Capacitor Control Circuits (for more cap regen), or a mix of Auxiliary Nano Pumps and Nanobot Accelerators (to improve the strength of their armor repair modules).

A Maller fit similar to this on can be viewed at [https://www.eveworkbench.com/fitting/maller/555bebb8-cdd0-4547-bb2c-08d6c4709780 EVE Workbench]. Other ships that often benefit from passive shield fits include the: [[Thorax]] (cruiser), [[Vexor]] (cruiser),[[Myrmidon]] (battlecruiser), [[Oracle]] (battlecruiser), [[Dominix]] (battleship) and [[Apocalypse]] (battleship).

''see also: [[Natural Resistances#Tech I armor resistances]]''

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" 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 require to do it. However, because of how base 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]].

|'''{{co|wheat|Energized membranes}}''' are passive modules which increase armor resists. The resist bonus is increased by Armor Compensation skills.

 

Energized Membranes come in 5 types: one for each type of damage, and one Multispectrum which moderately resists all damage.

|'''{{co|wheat|Resistance coatings}}''' are passive modules which increase armor resists. The resist bonus is increased by Armor Compensation skills. Resistance Coatings give smaller bonuses than Energized Membranes, and are generally much cheaper to buy, however they do not cost CPU to fit and so are very useful on ships with limited fitting space.

 

Resistance Coatings come in 5 types: one for each type of damage, and one Multispectrum which moderately resists all damage.

|'''{{co|wheat|Armor hardeners}}''' are active modules which significantly increase one of the four armor resistances. They consume small amounts of Capacitor energy to run, and slightly more CPU to fit than Energized Membranes. They can also be [[Overheating|Overheated]] for a further increase in strength, however they do not benefit from Armor Compensation skills.

(Active) Armor Hardeners come in 4 types: one for each type of damage.

|'''{{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 the Reactive Armor Hardener is stacking penalized with damage control.

|'''{{co|wheat|Reactive armor hardener}}''' is a active module that increases armor resists. it gives in total 60% resist bonus split across all four damage types. When you first activate the module the resists are evenly split to 15% per damage type. As you receive armor damage, the RAH will adjust its resist at the end of each cycle by increasing the resist against the highest received damage types, and reducing the resist against the other damage types. The resists shift by 6% per cycle per resist which is changing. This module is not stacking penalized with other modules except for Damage Control.

|'''{{co|wheat|Ancillary armor repairers}}''' ("Ancils") are similar to normal armor repairers. These modules can be loaded with Nanite Repair Paste to drastically increase the repair amount for the first 8 cycles it is used. With paste the ancillary armor repairers repair considerably (~1.7x) more than normal T2 armor repairers. Each cycle consumes nanite paste (1 for small, 4 for medium, 8 for large). Once the paste runs out the module can still be used, however without paste the ancillary armor repairers repair considerably (~0.6x) less than T2 normal armor repairers. Reloading the paste takes one minute. During this time the module can not be used. As such, it is commonly recommended that pilots Disable Auto-Reload for ancillary armor repair modules, so that the module does not spontaneously become unavailable at an inopportune moment.

 

Because of the limited number of full-strength cycles the module can perform, Ancillary Armor Repairers should always be run [[Overheating|Overheated]]; and because of their extremely powerful repair cycles, Ancils are often only activated for single cycles at a time.

 

|'''{{co|wheat|Layered Energized Membranes}}''' are passive modules that increase ship's armor by a percentage amount. These are very rarely used, as a plate and resist module are usually better than this module.

 

|'''{{co|wheat|Layered Coatings}}''' are passive modules that increase ship's armor by a percentage amount. These are less effective than the energized membrane variant but do not cost CPU to fit. These are almost never used, as plates and resistance modules are more effective in almost all cases.

|'''{{co|wheat|Remote armor repair systems}}''' consume capacitor to remotely repair armor on single target. The repair again happens at the end of the cycle. This can make it hard to repair targets if they die before the repair lands. Fairly short range when not fitted to a dedicated Logistics Frigate or Logistics Cruiser. Relatively long optimal range but short falloff range; as a result the effectiveness drops rapidly if the target is beyond optimal range.

|'''{{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.

* Trimark Armor Pumps increases the raw HP by a percentage, at the cost of reduced maximum speed.

* Auxiliary Nano Pumps increases 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.

|'''{{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.

** Required for armor plates, hardeners, membranes, and resist plates.

** Required for armor repairers

** 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.

** 10% reduction in cycle time and 15% reduction in capacitor usage of Reactive Armor Hardener (and Capital Flex Armor Hardener) per level.