When I try to fit my ship (ant of my starting ships) with a Shield Booster and an Armor Repairer, I get a Fitting Notice and Fitting Advisory saying that’s not normal Huh? Why not? Ships have both shields and armor. Why is this ill advised?
And very noob question, when I’m undocked, what are the green bars at the tops of the fittings icons to the right of the capacitor wheel? What do those indicate? So far I’ve not seen them move while doing tutorial or agent missions.
Mostly because new players don’t understand how to properly balance the capacitor useage between the two.
Those point towards Cosmic Anomalies that are located in space. You can spin you camera around to see which one it’s pointing to and you’ll see it out in space.
Under most circumstances, you’ll want to pick one kind of tank or the other, and use the rest of your slots for damage and utility modules. As a general rule, Caldari ships are shield tank, Amarr and Gallente are armor tank, while Minmatar can be either depending on the ship.
There are several aspects or strengths to any ship:
Tank
Weapons
Speed
Utility and Electronic Warfare
Generally speaking one can only fit a ship to perform about 2.5 of these and perform well.
This is because a ship only has so many fitting slots, Powergrid, CPU, and capacitor power.
If one “overfits” (see: tries to do too many things at the same time) then all aspects of the ship will be “mediocre” and be outperformed by other ships that invested in fewer aspects.
Very rarely does “jack-of-all-trades” work well as a ship fit.
The same paradigm hold true for tanking styles.
Again; a ship only has so many slots, CPU, Powergrid, and capacitor power. So it is in your interest to choose one tanking style and reinforce it with the ship resources you have available.
There are even some ships that have more native HP in shields or armor… some even have bonuses to help enhance a certain tank over another.
Generally speaking:
Ships with more low slots = armor tanker
Ships with more medium slots = shield tanker
Caldari ships are typically shield tankers
Gallente and Amarr ships are typically armor tankers
Minmatar ships can be tanked with either shields or armor (depends on the ship and preference)
Now… I hear the bright spark in the back saying, “well, why do all ships have shields, armor, and hull? Why not remove a layer and reduce complexity and confusion?”
Ahh… see… for that you will get a very “EVE” answer: There are exceptions to every rule and context will always be more important than any guideline.
You, as a player, have the option to fit your ship however you want. And there will be situations where you have to create a more… umm… “special” fit for your needs.
Does this mean that such fits will be optimal?
No.
We can only give guidelines and reasons why you should do things a certain way.
So if you want to create a passive-shield tanking LAZOR Myrmidon… go for it!
I’ll tell ya this; I certainly had fun with it
CCP recently added warning messages if the fitting tool detected common mistakes. As others have said, dual tanking is rarely effective - it’s better to combine resistance, buffer and repair modules for one or the other. Most ships are designed for shield or armor - you can see which on the traits tab of their info sheet.
Shield and armor repairs take a fairly large amount of cap and fitting room. If you choose one of the two you’ll probably have room left for better weapons.
Shield and armor tanks have drawbacks. A shield tank makes your signature radius larger (you’re bigger) an armor tank makes you slower. These two effects synergize in a nasty way, a big slow target is far easier to hit and will take more damage.
Resistances are a huge part of tanking. If you fit both shield and armor reps, any resistance mods you fit will only aid half your tank, this is not very efficient.
Your fitting questions have been answered very well above.
This question refers (I think) to the green curved bars on the top of the module icons. This is the over-heat indicator. You can (with the skill Thermodynamics) choose to over-heat many types of module which increases their performance for a short while.
However, over-heating also burns the modules out, eventually breaking them. It is this green bar turning red that shows you how close your module is to burning out completely and becoming useless.
The Thermodynamics skill helps lengthen the time you can over-heat a module per level. Heated modules will need to be repaired if they are not ruined.
This is usually (but not exclusively) used in PvP where a little extra advantage in damage or tank might be the difference between oblivion or glory.
To clarify, partially burned modules can be repaired in space by using nanite paste if you have any in your cargo. Fully burnt modules will be forcefully offlined (turned off) providing ZERO benefits to your ship even if that module had passive bonuses and can only be repaired when you are docked in station.
This is a very informative thread, every new player wonders why mixed tank isn’t better than just one kind of tank.
Nice capacitor lesson: Put them both into your simulated ship and look top right, there’s an indicator how long your capacitor will work. New players barely can use one of them without being out of cap within a minute, if you fit both, I reckon you’ll have perhaps 20 seconds or even less.
No Cap means your active modules are off, including railguns and lasers, and of course all your repairers and boosters won’t work anymore. If you’re just ratting, warp away (you won’t get to your warp desto because of the lack of cap, but earn enough distance to save your ship), but if you are pointed (=warp disrupted) or even scrambled, you most likely lose your ship.
Pick one tank and stick to it. Jack of all trades, master of none yadda yadda…
Just because a ship has shields, armour and hull HP doesn’t mean you have to tank all of them. The same goes with the guns in EVE.
Pick the one that suits the ship best, and stick to that.
So it will be either shield tank or armour tank (there are also some special cases, but let’s not overload you for now). A good general rule with any ship in EVE: Look at the stats, bonuses and slot layout and build from those.