Can someone explain to me the benefits/advantages/pros-cons of armor (and hull) tanking over shield tankng?
I understand if a particular class of ship has a bonus for armor. But otherwise, why limit shields in favor of armor?
Seems to me shields are your first line of defense, especially in ships up to cruiser classes.
Thanks.
Assuming a theoretical ship that could tank equally on armor or shield, one reason to favor the armor tank would be if you wanted to use E-War. Shield tank modules generally use mid slots, where your E-War would go, but armor tanking uses low slots. Warp disruptors and scrams for instance, if you intend to use them, could end up being fit to a ship at the cost of its shield tanking ability.
I’m no expert, though, and I’m sure someone else could give a much more thorough answer as to the pros and cons of each.
That’s a good point: Ewar and other tools use a lot of power and CPU. Armor uses little. Save the power and CPU for weapons and tools.
Thanks.
Bonuses aside.
Some ships naturally favour armour tanks - proportionately more low slots where armour modules fit, fewer mid-slits. A naturally larger base armour amount - just flavour/biases in the hulls.
The natural resists of Armour Tanks are better at handling EM/Thermal type damage than Shield tanks. This makes them desirable against some types of NPC, as well as against some opponents - if you face an Omen, then he’ll be using energy turrets and locked to EM/Thermal damage.
Active shield tanks are more capacitor hungry to sustain - it uses about a quarter or a third less cap for the same amount repaired. Armour repair rate is a little slower, and at the end of cycle, but that’s s good cap saving.
Fitting an armour tank frees mid-slits for e-war and tackle modules - as well as capacitor boosters and similar. Yes, you don’t get a passive armour repair, but lower cap usage evens it up. On the down side, armour modules compete with damage mods for space.
Shield extender tanks increase the signature, which helps weapons apply damage to you - armour ships are likely to keep a smaller Sig. but armour plate and rigs add mass making you slower.
There are exceptions and variations. And some is personal preference and skill levels. But as with all things in Eve there’s never one answer or solution.
How much % armor/hull is considered “tanked”?
Or is it based on raw armor/hull HP ?
Tank is calculated per damage type and in effective hp (ehp), which is resists calculated on base hp. The resists level tells you how much damage of that kind is reflected.
If you have 1000 base HP in armor for example, and 60% resists in EM damage, means your ship tank on EM damage like it would have 2500 ehp.
Hence even a simple module like a damage control gives a huge boost to your overall tank. There are a few cases where this module is not optimal, in some shield configurations, and in some armor fleet fits with reactive armor.
Can you run through the calculation on that pls.
Can’t add much, just summing it up:
Armor tanking is very PvP oriented.
Working skills and fit (ie. spend some money on the better prop mods) you can work a very decent speed/sig tank here. You don’t have to tank the damage of a missed shot…it didn’t hit lol.
Shield tank are much prefered in PVE. Armor tank are much prefered in PVP.
OP
google “eve tanking”
click on : Tanking - EVE University Wiki
read " Armor 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 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."
you’re welcome
edit: Tipa riot had already linked it, my bad
You are correct, but I prefer to just stay in the basics, people can read more on internet and go make their own choices.
Since we know EVE training takes time.
I think most reasons have been answered already. But in case they haven’t:
Armour tank takes low slot items, which leaves mid slots free for EWAR, propulsion, capacitor or application modules.
Shield tank takes mid slots, which leaves low slots open for damage, speed and agility modules.
Armour passive tank makes your ship slower and therefore easier to hit, while shield passive tank makes your ship signature bigger and therefore easier to hit.
Active tanking for either shield or armour is heavy on the capacitor, but doesn’t make the ship bigger or slower.
And it depends on ship stats, bonuses and slot layout too. A ship with few mid slots and a lot of low slots can get much more effective health points (EHP) with an armour tank rather than with a shield tank.
I recommend you download Pyfa (or use the ingame fitting window although it offers less insight) to see how much EHP you can get out of a ship depending on whether you fit armour or shield. You can see massive differences!
Real men hull tank.
I hull tank quite often. Many ships make great hull tankers. It’s a great tool in the toolbox as long as you understand the benefits and disadvantages.
Well with hull you get several advantages:
No signature bloom from hull modules.
No loss of speed,
Even resist profile. With single module slot (damage control) as way to buff resists.
They stack better.
Use less power grid.
Element of surprise.
Some ships have more natural base hull than shield or armor so you can capitalize on that.
Uses low slots so you get utility mids.
There are also disadvantages:
Loss of agility
Lower cargo space
Can’t get resists as high as armor or shield
Hull repairers use mid slots but repair very slow and not much hull so no real active tank option and not as good with logi.
No real PvE use.
Psychology of fighting in hull with ship on fire half the time.
Thats the best part, lol
Of course you can also dual-rep with Shield Boosters but you tend to do it with smaller reppers to make sure that you can manage the cap consumption. I have seen some interesting faction cruiser fits with dual deadspace shield boosters. The lower cap usage on the boosters combined with the (usually) greater rep amount can make for a strong active tank.
OF course you can always fall victim to neuting - the bane of many an active tank be it shield or armor.
ASBs, baby!
I love myself some capless shield tank, but it eats boosters like there is no tomorrow… :/.
Really real men passive shield tank their solo pvp faction cruisers.
Depends on a lot of factors, a couple off the top of my hat:
Hull tank is sort of like buffor armor tank, but with no agility penalty, no resist mods to turn on (or forget to turn on). It also gives uniform resists. Gallente ships are especially suited towards hull tank since they got high base hull, but it can be used elsewhere, for example on squishy ships to get more rep cycles out during pvp.
What kind of fits would you use for hull tanking?