Tanking: Difference between revisions

Resistances (or "resists) on a ship reduce the damage taken. A resist figure is 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.

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 same as with normal resists explained above where the percentage change is applied to vulnerability (100% - resist) instead of resist.

The math is simply:

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.

"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 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]].

|'''{{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.

|'''{{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.

|'''{{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.

|'''{{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.

* Anti-damage type rigs increase damage resist to single damage type, 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.

|'''{{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.

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 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.

|'''{{co|wheat|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.

|'''{{co|wheat|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.

|'''{{co|wheat|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.

* 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.

|'''{{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 which recently took a little too much heat.