Shield Tanking modules

New Citizens Q&A
1

I tried Google, but now I am more confused. I’m trying to decide whether to train my ability with shield amplifiers. I like shield tanking, but am a bit confused by the different modules. If I understand correctly, Shield extenders and shield amplifiers are both passive. So what’s the difference between them? And shield hardeners and shield boosters are both active. So what’s the difference between them? And someone mentioned shield buffer, which I can’t figure out what that is either.

What I’m working on currently is getting PI alts doing PI in dangerous places. The first priority is survival, however many SP are needed, but since they are alts, I’d like to minimize skill point expenditure if possible.

2

Shield Amplifiers will increase your resistance to one of the 4 main damage types. Passively.

Shield Extenders will increase the total amount of shield HP. These are passive as well.

Shield Hardeners will either increase your resistance to one of the 4 main damage types, or, all of them at the same time, but to a lesser degree. These need to be activated.

Shield Boosters are a module that will generate shield hp while they are active. These use the most capacitor amount when active.

You can learn more here about the types of shield tanking, like Shield Buffer, etc.
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Tanking#Shield_tanking

The above link also has all the info for Armor Tanking if you scroll up. Enjoy! See you out there! S!

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3

Playing as an alpha as I do, shields are very important to me.

I don’t use shield boost as much as I do shield extenders. The way I see it, I need 2 or more free slots to make use of the amps. The overall payout versus cost I prefer to use extenders.

One Medium Clarity Ward Enduring Shield Booster = +90 HP replenished every 3 second ( 1800 HP recovered per minute )

One Medium Shield Extender I = +800 HP

One Shield Boost Amplifier I = +30% applied to the booster ( +120 HP per second / 2400 per minute recovered )

A lot of the deciding factor is the application and the ship.
If I come under attack in a mining venture, it is toast unless it can warp away. Shield boosters are pointless on this vessel. I put one extender at most to absorb the first hit. The venture is one of the few ships that can reap the reward of the Warp Core Stabilizer I and get away to safety. I am not going to stand and fight a cruiser in a venture rigged for mining.

If I am hauling in a Miasmos I load it with 4 Medium Shield Extender’s giving it 2400 extra HPs. More than a few times, I have seen it get damage by gate campers, it still manages to jump the gate. I dock up for my shield and hit the road. Again the hauler isn’t going to use a booster as it is not a warrior.

Recently I have been doing filaments in destroyers. For those who don’t know, filaments are the keys for space dungeon runs. Destroyers can indeed benefit from shield boosters inside a space dungeon. I can see using an amplifier in this venue over mining and hauling. PI or ( planetary industry ) is more akin to mining and hauling.

Have fun!

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4

Getting a ship with decent agility (alignment times, time to go into warp) is key for that, combined with a cloak if you use a blockade runner. If dealing with skyhooks, the NPC’s are not that fast in starting to lock you. So if you have your stuff in place (in your customs office by transferring before warping to it, and have your cargo hold inventory already open, you can reduce exposure time to a minimum. The remaining issue is of course to get there in one piece :smiley:

There are, broadly, three types of tanking. Well, there are more but they “avoid” tanking (sig and speed tanking).

In (very) short, for the modules:

  • shield extenders are passive modules that only add more hit points to the shield
  • shield resistance amplifiers are passive modules that add resistance (of the type chosen !) to the shield, raising the effective hit points (i.e., if your shield has a higher resistance to a particular damage type you have less damage of that type affecting your shield, as if the shield now has more hit points).
  • shield boosters are active modules that replenish the hit points of your shield (they repair it)
  • shield boost amplifiers are passive modules that affect the shield booster performance (you tend to see these only on ships with large numbers of mid slots)
  • shield hardeners are active modules that increase the resistance against damage types of your shield (of type chosen or all types using a multispectrum shield hardener).
  • there are shield flux coils (passive low slot mods) that lower the shield HP but increase its regen rate
  • a whole set of shield rigs that work with the above

Active modules (boosters, hardeners) have a larger bonus than passive modules, but at the cost of cap charge.

Fast overview of classic tanking types:

  1. Passive shield tanking: makes use of your ship’s automatic regeneration of shield hitpoints. This regen speed is based on the listed regen time for the basic shield (total shield HP divided by regen time → HP/s shield regenerated. For that purpose pilots increase the HP of their shield by using shield extenders (and corresponding rigs) and pump up the regen rate with flux coils. Few hulls have a low enough shield regen time to be good at passive shield tanking.

  2. Active shield tanking: makes use of shield boosters. Generally this will require good resists and excellent capacitor regen/stability.

  3. Buffer shield tanking: as the name implies, a large shield HP pool with shield extenders creating the “buffer”, and usually in combination with high overall resists to increase the effective hit points. The idea here is to last long enough to either kill what’s attacking you, or long enough to get to safety, or relying on friendly logi pilots repairing your ship.

The choice of tank is dependent on the situation (solo or not, pvp or pve, hull type if going for passive, etc etc)

Overall remark: effective hit points are far more important than simply “hit points”, which means that you should aim for high overall resists. If your capacitor situation allows it, active hardeners are an excellent option, shield resistance amplifiers are less efficient but can be quite useful to plug smaller resistance holes in your fit.

I recommend using the Pyfa fitting tool to see how it all works and compare the outcomes.

In conclusion, should you train for resistance amplifiers ? It never hurts to have more options for fitting your ships for your chosen style of flying (and tanking), so rather sooner than later. But for your stated purpose of PI, there are as I mentioned other options.

o7

5

‘Passive’ means the module is always giving it’s bonuses, cannot be turned off or on and doesn’t use capacitor.

‘Active’ means you turn it to get the bonuses, either at the right time or just all the time while in combat if your capacitor allows.

While both shield extenders and shield amplifiers are passive they’re very different modules.

A better comparison for shield amplifiers is shield hardeners; both module types give your ship shield resistances. Amplifiers do so automatically/passively, while hardeners have the downside that they use capacitor (and cannot be used when your capacitor is empty). Hardeners also have some upsides:

  • they give you more resistances than amplifiers
  • like many other active modules they can be overheated for even stronger bonuses
  • they come in a ‘multispectrum’ variant that gives you resistances to all types instead of just one

So how do shield resistances compare to shield hitpoints from a shield extender?

Resistances reduce the damage you take. Say you have 50% thermal resistances and you get hit by a thermal missile: you only take half damage.

A shield extender won’t reduce damage, instead it increases how many shield hitpoints your ship has.

A better comparison for the shield extender is the shield booster. Both of these modules add hitpoints to your ship, while the extender does so passively and the shield booster does it actively: a shield booster repairs some missing shield hitpoints any time you activate it.

Shields in EVE will automatically repair over time, which is ‘passive shield regeneration’. Shield extenders will improve how much you repair, but likely not as much as shield boosters.

These two modules each have their up and downsides:

Shield Extenders:

  • passive, so they need no capacitor
  • increases your total hitpoints (your 'shield buffer’) so you can survive short high bursts of damage well
  • increases passive shield regeneration
  • increases your ship’s size, which is a downside as it allows enemy ships to hit you more easily

Shield boosters:

  • requires a lot of capacitor each cycle
  • no increased shield buffer, you can get one-shot
  • heals more than extenders
  • doesn’t make you easier to hit like extenders

Sometimes one is better than the other, depends on the circumstances.

Hopefully some of the differences are clear.

Now your question: you want to know if you should train shield amplifiers for your PI alts?

I would skip it.

My own ships for PI are fit with shield extenders and multispectrum shield hardeners as shield modules. Extenders because you want some buffer, multispectrum hardeners because they give resistances to everything and also more than amplifiers.

Amplifiers can sometimes be worth it, but usually hardeners are better.

6

This is not correct: The first priority is to keep your products.
So get cheap Epithals, and always make sure you can drop your stuff to the closest POCO each time you are caught.
Fighting most times is futile, some you should rather fit your ship agile and fast.

1 Like
7

I agree that agility and speed contribute to survivability, but shield modules do so too.

Here’s what I use for PI:

[Squall, Squall fit]

‘Halcyon’ Core Equalizer I
Inertial Stabilizers II
Inertial Stabilizers II

50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Large Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II

Improved Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Nullifier I
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

Features:

  • MWD + cloak trick, just in case you take a gate and see threats
  • Warp core stabilizer, it won’t help against everyone but can let you ignore some fits
  • Good agility (<6s align) to warp to the next planet before rats can catch you
  • Good warp speed so hostiles cannot easily warp to the planet they see you align to and arrive before you
  • Some shield tank in the leftover mid slots to take some damage in case you need to burn back to gate
  • Affordable. The ship and fit are about 20M each for 40M ISK total

If you want you could put missiles in the high slots, but I didn’t bother training missile skills on most of my characters so I didn’t.

8

If you are in a dangerous place, one thing I have done, seek out a friendly player’s station. When you undock hold the minus key to stop your ship. A cyan tether will appear. Now any player attacking you, is actually attacking the station.

No player station available? No problem, set a safe bookmark or two and warp to the location. Then cloak using a cloaking device. Alphas can’t cloak, but since you are doing PI you must be omega. I never did any PI, but here is a video by a content provider for additional information.

Fly safe o7