Tanking

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.

Tanking Basics

Ship Status Panel

The amount of hitpoints on 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.

To avoid finding yourself floating in your pod you need to be able to tank the damage. This is generally achieved through three ways:

• Increase ship raw HP. Generally known as buffer tanking.
• Repair damage received. Known as active tanking. Passive shield tanking is a special case.
• Increase damage resists. Used to increase effectiveness of both passive and active tanking.

Buffer tanking

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 HP increasing modules that add raw hit points.

This type of fitting uses a minimal amount of capacitor to run 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.

Most common in fleet PvP, but also group PvE with logistic support (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. 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.

The effective hitpoints are product of raw HP and resist. 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.

Active tanking

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 or shield booster 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.

This type of fitting takes a lot of capacitor to sustain your cap-hungry repair modules so it should ideally include modules such as cap rechargers, capacitor batteries or capcitor rigs to balance out and maintain capacitor stability.

Active Tanking uses energy from the ship's capacitor to run a local repair module. Active 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 that drains the ships capacitor dry.

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 breaking the tank.

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. Cap boosters, will also offer some safety against neuting allowing you to keep on cycling modules even when your capacitor disappears in few seconds.

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.

Ancillary Repair Modules

Ancillary Armor Repairers (AAR) and Ancillary Shield Boosters (ASB) are another way to field strong active tank for a short duration. 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 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 armor repairer becomes very weak and inefficient, and the shield booster becomes prohibitively capacitor-intensive. Ancillary repair modules have a 60 second reload time to reload their charges. Only one ancillary armor repairer, or capital ancillary shield booster, can be fitted to a ship. Because of the combination of reload time and charge consumption, ancillary repair modules are almost never used in PvE, however they are very popular in solo PvP.

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 increases both the cycle speed and the amount 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.)

Resists

Resists on a ship will reduce the damage taken. It 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%.

The T1 ships have almost identical base resist values 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.

But 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 to grow on your ship.

Resistances are easier to figure out if you think in damage vulnerability rather than damage resistance. A ship with 60% EM resist is then 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. The final resist with multiple modules and stacking penalties can be calculated with formula

[math] \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.

It's often more sensible to increase the resistances of your ship than to increase the total number of raw HP. The damage reduction of resistance modules is a constant where as the buffer reduces with each attack. The fitting requirements for resistance modules are often less than the fitting requirements for Shield Extenders and armor plates. The one drawback is stacking penalties that will inhibit the effectiveness of additional resistance modules but do not apply to Shield Extenders.

Negative resists

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 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 simply:

[math] \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%.

Armor tanking

Armor tanking emphasizes the use of the low slot modules 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 on T1 hulls has an inherent weakness to explosive damage and plan your resistance modules accordingly. Armor tanking ships most commonly have high number of low slots to spare.

Armor tank generally has much stronger buffer than shield ships. There are additional kinds of armor tanking modules than shield tanking modules, most notably energized adaptive membrane and reactive armor hardener, which do not have shield counterparts.

Armor tanking modules are quite light on CPU usage but use lots of powergrid instead. Low slot using armor modules also leave all the mid slots free for various propulsion modules, electronic attack modules, capacitor modules or application modules. This freedom on mid slots makes armor tanked fits versatile. But using low slot for armor, prevents you from using damage modules resulting in lower damage output.

Armor repairers are more efficient at using capacitor but on the other hand a single armor repairer, repairs considerably less HP than corresponding shield booster. Armor repairs also apply the repair at the end of the module cycle requiring pilot to anticipate when the repair is needed.

Once your armor is gone your ship has only hull left. This leaves very little safety margin on armor ships. Combined with delayed repair cycles makes it possible for armor ships to easily die in between repair cycles.

Armor plates and armor rigs give penalty to ship mass. This reduces the speed bonus from propulsion modules and makes the ship less agile.

Unlike shields, armor has no passive regeneration of any kind. Armor repairers are the only way to get armor back.

Here is a typical cruiser fitted with an armor tank:

Ship: Amarr Maller

High Slots

• Medium Energy Turrets or Nosferatu x 5

Mid Slots

• Pilot Choice
• Pilot Choice
• Afterburner

Low Slots

• Armor Plates x 2
• Reactive Armor Hardener
• Energized Adaptive Nanomembrane
• Heat Sink
• Damage Control

Rigs

• Medium Trimark Armor Pump x 3

Drones x 3

This ship has six low level fitting slots. This is typical of armor tanked ships - and with only three mid slots, a shield fit would be difficult in any case.

The ship has a bonus for medium energy turret damage, so the five turret slots will most likely be fitted that way. Additionally, this ship could easily accommodate five nosferatu modules for capacitor warfare.

One mid slot will likely be a propulsion module. The other two are not needed to support the armor tank and can be used to support the pilot's goal, whatever it may be. They are frequently fitted for tackling.

The low slot fittings provide the bulk of the tank. Armor plates are the base. The other slots are usually filled with armor support modules. There are a variety of these (and for that matter, there are fits that use only plates). This example includes a single heat sink module which improves energy weapon performance. A player will want to experiment and adjust the balance to his or her liking.

The rigs are trimark armor pumps which increase the armor strength but reduce ship speed. They are arguably the most popular rig for armor tanked ships, but they may be replaced by offensive rigs if you wish to trade defense for damage potential.

The three drones should be chosen to match expected NPC damage types.

A Maller fit similar to this on can be viewed at 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).

Armor tanking modules

	Armor plates increase the ships armor HP by a flat number. The drawback is increased mass that results in slower and less agile ship. It is somewhat common to fit oversized plates. For example 1600mm plates on a cruiser.
	Layered Energized Membranes membranes are passive modules that increase ship's armor by a percentage amount. These are rarely used as a plate and resist module are usually better than this module.
	Layered coatings are passive modules that increase ship's armor by a percentage amount. These are less effective than the energized membrane variant but are much easier to fit. These are rarely used as a plate and resist module are both better than this module.
	Armor hardeners are active modules that boost one of the four armor resistances: EM, Thermal, Kinetic or Explosive. Compared to membranes, they use capacitor (not much though) and slightly more CPU, but offer a large boost in effectiveness.
	Energized membranes are passive resist modules that moderately increase the armor resists. The resist bonus is smaller than on active hardeners but greater than on resistance platings. There are damage type specific modules that increase only one resist type and an adaptive membrane that increases all resist types. The name "adaptive" is misleading and the resist bonus is static. The resist bonus is increased by corresponding Armor Compensation skill. It is good to note that only T2 energized adaptive nano membrane is generally worth using. Both meta 4 and T2 adaptive nano platings have better stats and lower requirements than any of the meta adaptive energized membranes.
	Resistance coatings are passive resistance modules that increase the armor resistances. They require practically nothing to fit, only 1 PG. They offer lower resist bonus than energized membranes or active hardeners. There are both type specific modules that increase only one resist type and a multispectrum coating that increases all resist types. The resist bonus is increased by the corresponding Armor Compensation skill.
	Damage control is a passive module that increases 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.
	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 cycle by increasing the resist against two highest received damage types and reducing the resist against rest of the damage types. The resists shift by 6% per cycle. This module is not stacking penalized with other modules except for Damage Control.
	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.
	Ancillary armor repairers are similar to normal armor repairers. These modules can be loaded with nanite repair paste to drastically increase the repair amount. With paste the ancillary armor repairers repair considerably (1.25x) 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 be used without paste. Without paste the ancillary armor repairers repair considerably (0.75x) less than T2 normal armor repairers. Reloading the paste takes one minute. During this time the module can not be used. Ancillary Armor Repairers are almost exclusively used in PvP to provide strong burst of active tanking. Usage in PvE is not recommended due to the high cost of nanite pastes and unreliable sustainable repairs.
	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. Long optimal range, short falloff range. As a result the effectiveness drops rapidly if the target is beyond optimal range.
	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 increased repairs. But once the paste runs out they will repair less than normal remote repairers.
	Rigs Trimark armor pump increases the raw HP by a percentage, at the cost of reduced maximum speed. They are popular in PvP fits and thus are generally expensive due to the high demand. Anti-damage type rigs increase damage resist to single damage type, at the cost of reduced maximum speed. Auxiliary nano pump 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.
	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.
	Exile medical booster greatly increases the ship's active armor repair amount, however they carry a chance to reduce your Armor hitpoints, Repair amount, or capacitor capacity.

Armor Tanking Skills

• Hull Upgrades
  • 5% armor HP per level
  • Required for armor plates, hardeners, membranes and resist plates.
• Mechanics
  • 5% hull HP per level
  • Reqruired for armor repairers
• Repair Systems
  • 5% reduction in armor repair module cycle duration. It should be noted that a reduction in activation time increase the capacitor need of the module.
  • Required for armor repairers
• EM Armor Compensation, Thermal Armor Compensation, Kinetic Armor Compensation, Explosive Armor Compensation
  • 5% increase per level in the corresponding resist for membranes and resist plates
• Armor Rigging
  • Reduces the drawbacks of armor rigs by 10% per level.
• Armor Layering
  • 5% redution in mass penalty of armor plates per level.
• Resistance Phasing
  • 10% reduction in cycle time and capacitor usage of reactive armor hardener per level.

Shield tanking

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. It should be remembered that shields on T1 hulls are naturally weak to EM damage.

The versatility of shield modules is somewhat more limited than that of armor modules. Most notable is the lack of good passive shield hardeners. As a result even buffer fit shield ships are often vulnurable to suficiently large number of neuting.

Shield modules generally fit on 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 on the other hand using mid slots for tank limits 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 have penalty to the ship's signature radius. This makes it easier to hit shield ships. 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 heal themselves over time at a natural recharge rate. Armor and Hull damage taken is going to sit there until it is repaired. This passive regeneration is taken to extreme on passive shield fits described below.

In short the advantages of shields 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.
• Recharge on their own – no need to dock 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 shields 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.

Passive Shield Tanking

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 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 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.

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.

While this fitting is more about raw hit points than it is damage resistance adding resit modules will greatly increase the effectiveness of passive recharge. Shield resistance amplifiers can be added to provide a little damage reduction. Some people use Multispectrum Shield Hardeners 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.

It is generally advised NOT to mix modules that increase shield recharge rate with modules that repair shield damage.

Here is a typical cruiser fitted with a passive shield tank for PvP:

Ship: Minmatar Rupture

High Slots

• Projectile Turret x 4, Free slot: launcher or drone module

Mid Slots

• Large Shield Extender x 2
• Compact Thermal Shield Hardener
• Afterburner

Low Slots

• Shield Power Relay x 2
• Gyrostabilizer x 2
• Tracking Enhancer

Rigs

• Medium Core Defense Purger x 3

Drones x 6

This ship has four mid level fitting slots. Five would be better, but the ship can still mount an effective passive shield tank.

The high slots support four turrets - most likely projectile weapons. These are used here because the Rupture has bonuses for projectiles. Note that the more power and cpu used by the weapons, the less power and cpu available to the shields. This is the trade-off that every player must make. Your first choice would probably be Tech II autocannons. But, if your gunnery skills are high and your engineering skills low, you might want to downgrade the turrets in order to have more cpu and power available for shields. (There are a large number of possible combinations among these modules.)

The fifth high slot cannot be used for a turret, but it can mount a launcher or other module. Many ships have this kind of unusual twist - a capacity that doesn't directly connect to the pilot's primary goal. In this case the slot is often filled with a missile launcher (for added damage), a drone control module (for added damage), or a probe launcher (for scouting).

In the mid slots, the shield extenders increase the shield's general capacity. Note that these are Large modules rather than the usual Medium fit. The thermal hardener increases thermal resistance, and can be swapped out to match the damage giving characteristics of the NPCs to be engaged.

The low slot fittings represent another choice for balance. The two shield power relays reduce capacitor recharge to rebuild the shields. The two gyrostabilizers increase the projectile damage and rate of fire. The tracking enhancer improves the accuracy of the projectiles. A player may want to change this balance to in order to trade offense for defense, or vice-versa.

The rigs are all core defense field purgers. These increase the shield recharge rate. If, however, your skills leave you short on capacitor, you may want to install rigs to remedy that.

The six drones provide a substantial damage boost and should be chosen to match expected NPC damage types.

A Rupture fit similar to this on can be viewed at EVE Workbench. Other ships that often benefit from passive shield fits include the: Moa (cruiser), Hurricane (battlecruiser), Ferox (battlecruiser), Rokh (battleship) and Maelstrom (battleship).

Active Shield Tanking

Active shield tanking is used primarily in PvE. PvP encounters are often over quickly, making a short term, but high mitigation tank preferable. PvE encounters tend to unfold more slowly, and in taking on opponents one at a time (or in small groups) a PvE player benefits from a renewable tank, even if its maximum power is less impressive.

A combat technique known as "kiting" makes use of active tanking and is widely used in PvE. A kiting ship attracts enemies and then flees, stringing the enemy out like the tail of a kite. By controlling its speed, the player ship can allow only a few enemy ships to come into range at any given time. These are killed, and while that is happening, the player's tank is rebuilding itself. (Note that this spreads out the wrecks and makes looting and salvaging take longer.)

An active shield fit needs enough tanking power to withstand the damage from a group a ships for some amount of time, with enough regenerating power to rebuild the shields before they collapse under the damage. If this sounds imprecise, it is - because the goal depends on the balance between power and regeneration, and there are many ways to accomplish that balance.

Here is a typical mission running cruiser fit:

Ship: Caldari Caracal

High Slots

• Light missile launcher x 5

Mid Slots

• Large Shield Extender x 2
• Compact Thermal Shield Hardener
• Compact Kinetic Shield Hardener
• Afterburner

Low Slots

• Shield Flux Coil x 2
• Ballistic Control System x 2

Rigs

• Medium Core Defense Purger x 3

Drones x 2

This ship has five mid level fitting slots. This is typical of shield tanked ships and also typical of Caldari ships, which often prefer shields.

The high slots will be filled with offensive weapons - depending on the players preference and skill level. Missiles are used here because the Caracal has bonuses for missiles. Note that the more power and cpu used by the weapons, the less power and cpu available to the shields. This is the trade-off that every player must make. If your missile skills are high, and your engineering skills low, you might want to downgrade the launchers in order to have more cpu and power available for shields. (There are a very large number of possible combinations.)

In the mid slots, the two shield extenders increase the shield's toughness in general. Note that these are Large modules rather than the usual Medium fit. The thermal hardener increases thermal resistance, and the same for the kinetic hardener. The hardeners can be swapped out to match the damage giving characteristics of the NPCs to be engaged.

The low slot fittings represent another choice for balance. The two flux coils draw capacitor to rebuild the shields. Among these kinds of modules, flux coils have the best recharge rate, but they use capacitor and are thereby vulnerable to neuting. This is why active tanks are primarily used in PvE. The two ballistic control systems increase the missile damage and rate of fire. A player may want to remove a ballistic control system and add another shield rebuilding module - exactly which module is a matter of skill level and preference.

The rigs are all core defense field purgers. These increase the shield recharge rate, which is key to an active shield tank. If, however, your skills leave you short on capacitor, you may want to install rigs to remedy that.

Drones should be chosen to match expected NPC damage types.

A caracal fit similar to this on can be viewed at EVE Workbench. Other typical ships that benefit from active shields include the: Drake (battlecruiser), Hurricane (battlecruiser), Raven (battleship) and Maelstrom (battleship).

Understand Shield Recharge Rate

It is valuable to understand the mechanics of shield recharge rate. All ships have shields, and all shields have a recharge rate. Therefore, this concept applies to every ship, shuttle, and pod in Eve, and thus to every pilot who undocks.

NOTE: The math behind the shield recharge rate calculation is the same as that used for a ship's capacitor recharge rate.

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.

But shields do not recharge at a constant 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.

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.

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 is 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 shortly.

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.
C_max 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' despite reaching its maximum level in the same time. In simple terms, recharge is calculated by percentage first, which is then translated into HP/s of regeneration. So maximum capacity indirectly affects the amount of HP/sec regenerated, having the effect that Extender modules increase regeneration, and flux coils become much less useful compared to Rechargers or Power Relays.

Calculating Average rate

The average shield regeneration per second can be computed by dividing the shield capacity by its recharge time.

Average HP/s = Shield maximum / Recharge time

The peak recharge Rate is 250% of average shield recharge. It occurs when the capacity of the shield is at 25% of its maximum value. Shield recharge rate drops rapidly once the shield falls below 25% of shield capacity.

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 capabilites 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. Though the purpose of the ship can never be ignored. As a shield ships use mainly mid slots for defence 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).

	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).
	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.
	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.
	Damage control is a passive module that increases ship's shield, armor and hull resists. This module is not stacking penalized with any other shield resist module.
	Shield power relays are passive modules that increase 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.
	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.
	Shield rechargers are passive mid slot modules which provide a modest increase to the shield recharge rate. If there is fitting room for shield extender then that may be a better choice.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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 vulnurable 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
	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.
	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.

• Energy Grid Upgrades
  • 5% PG per level. Required for shield power relays and power diagnostic units.

• 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.

• EM Shield Compensation, Thermal Shield Compensation, Kinetic Shield Compensation, 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.

• Shield Compensation
  • 2% reduced capacitor usage for shield boosters.

• Shield Emission Systems
  • 5% reduced capacitor usage for remote shield boosters.

• Shield Rigging
  • Reduces the drawbacks of shield rigs.

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

Hull tanking

Hull tanking is the most... adrenaline-inducing... form of tanking. With hull tanking there is no safety buffer. Once your hull tank is gone your ship goes out in glorious explosion. Additionally the incoming damage slowly bleeds into the ship's modules making it unwise to hull tank for long period of time. Not that you could maintain hull tank anyways since all active hull repair methods are laughably slow. Even the T2 hull repairers have staggering 24 second cycle time.

Regardless of these disadvantages hull tank is sometimes used unironically. A bait ship with hull tank can lull the gankers into false sense of victory as they see the shields and armor waning away, only to spend ages grinding down the hull. Gallente ships like Brutix have a notably impressive hull, making them viable at hull tanking.

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

	Reinforced bulkheads give a percentage bonus to hull HP. These are the only modules that increase hull HP.
	Damage control increases ship's hull resist to all damage.
	Hull repairers use capacitor to repair hull. These modules are extremely slow and can not be practically used in combat.
	Remote hull repairers allow you to remotely repair hull on another ship. These modules are extremely slow and can not be practically used in combat. No ship is bonused for using these modules.
	Transverse bulkheads give a large percentage bonus to hull HP. No other rig gives any bonuses to hull.

Hull tanking is improved by only a single skill:

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

Remote repairing

Main article: Logistics

Remote repairing means that the main fleet outsources the repair duty to dedicated logistic wing. This allows the main fleet to fit large buffer tank that makes them able to survive the alpha of enemy fleet. 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 logistic wing spider tanking shares the repairing and combat duty between the whole fleet.

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.

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.