Tanking

Tanking is the art of staying alive while other people try to kill you.

Shield Tanking
Shield Tanking comes in two varieties, active and passive.

Shield tanking modules are mid slot items, and ships that have more mid slots than low slots are typically shield tanked. Other mid-slot items include ECM, warp scramblers and webifiers, so shield tankers need to find a balance between tank effectiveness and ECM/propulsion jamming, etc.

Shield Tanking skills:
 * EM/Explosive/Kinetic/Thermal Shield Compensation
 * Shield Compensation
 * Shield Management
 * Shield Operation
 * Shield Upgrades
 * Tactical Shield Manipulation

Active Shield Tanking
Active tanking relies on shield boosters to repair your shields in exchange for using capacitor. Active tanking requires the use of various sizes of shield boosters. Because shield boosters often require large amounts of capacitor to function properly, it is also common to see active shield tankers to employ cap boosters. Another module often used in conjunction with active shield tanking is Shield Booster Amplifier. This mod increases the amount of shield HP is restored each time a shield booster is activated, at the cost of increased heat damage dealt to your shield booster when overheating.

Passive Shield Tanking
Passive tanking relies on the fact that the natural recharge rate of your shield is a percentage of its maximum value, not a flat increase, and uses modules that decrease the recharge time. Both active and passive shield hardeners may also be used. The overarching principal behind passive shield tanking is increasing shield resistance so less damage is taken, increasing the amount of shield HP the ship has (more HP = faster recharge), and increasing the shield recharge rate. Modules commonly used for passive shield tanking include various shield hardeners, shield extender mods, shield rechargers, and shield power relays. Core Defense Field Purger is a rig that increases the recharge rate of shields.

One of the greatest benefits of passive tanking is that it can tank a huge amount of damage without ever having to rely on the capacitor. Passive shield tanking also requires less micromanaging than active shield tanking. The downside to this is that passive shield tankers will often have slow cap recharge rates. Furthermore, because passive shield tanking requires many low and mid slots to be effective, it is rarely used in PvP except in special niche situations.

Popular ships that use passive shield tanks: Drake, Myrmidon, Gila, Rattlesnake, basically any ship that has bonuses to shield resistances is a perfect passive shield tanker

Armor Tanking
Armor Tanking ignores your ship's shields and focuses on its armor for defence. Armor tanking comes in two varieties, active and buffer tanking.

Armor tanking modules are low slot items, and ships that have more low slots than mid slots are typically armor tanked. Other low-slot items include Ballistic Control Systems, Heat Sinks, and Gyro-/Magnetic Field Stabilizers, so an armor tanked ship has to balance an effective tank with increased damage. A sniper fit may forgo tanking entirely and fit one or more remote repair (high-slot) modules and spider tank instead.

Armor Tanking skills:
 * Hull Upgrades
 * EM/Explosive/Kinetic/Thermal Armor Compensation

Active Armor Tanking
Active tanking relies on using one or more armor repair modules, which repair your armor and consume capacitor.

Relevant skills are:
 * Repair Systems
 * Mechanic

Relevant Modules:
 * Small/Medium/Large Armor Repairer

Relevant Rigs:
 * Small/Medium/Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I/II
 * Small/Medium/Large Nanobot Accelerator I/II

Buffer Tanking
This is fitting for as much effective HP as you can manage, and hoping to kill your enemy before he kills you. It may also rely on remote repair.

Modules
Armor tanking has more fitting options when compared to shields, but since they are very similarly named it can be confusing.

Static Amount
Armor plates increase hitpoints by a fixed amount. For example a 400mm Reinforced Steel Plates II will add 1200 hitpoints. The penalty for these modules is additional mass for the ship, making it slower and less responsive.

Percentage Amount
The percentage based hitpoints come in two flavors. The Layered Plating category has a smaller bonus (8% at Tech II) with very minimal fitting requirements. The Energized Armor Layering Membrane gives a better percentage (15% at Tech II) but requires CPU to compensate.

Active
Armor Hardeners are active modules, but have the best bonus to resistances. Unlike shields there is no equivalent to Adaptive Invulnerability Fields that give an active hardener to all four resists. The bonus is 55% at Tech II and since it's active it can be overheated.

Passive
There's a strong version and a weak version of these both for the specific resists and the omni-resists. The specific ones are named resistance Plating for the weaker (26.4% at Tech II) and Energized resistance Membrane for the stronger (37.5% at Tech II). The stronger one requires CPU to fit.

The omni-resists are named Adaptive Nano Plating for the weaker one (15.4% to all resists at Tech II) and Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane for the stronger (20% to all resists at Tech II). The stronger one requires CPU to fit.

Dynamic
The Reactive Armor Hardener starts out with 60% distributed as 15% resist to all four damage types. As it cycles it will redistribute the 60% to reflect the incoming damage types. This is an active module.

Repairing
Unlike shields, armor doesn't regenerate. Armor "reppers" will repair armor damage at the end of each cycle. They come in small, medium, large and capital sizes.

Hull Tanking
Eve has a certificate for Hull Tanking. This is what it says:
 * This certificate represents an elite level of competence in the infamous practice of "hull tanking". It certifies that the holder can fully use all modules relating to hull tanking. The holder is aware that "real men hull tank", and also that hull tanking is really dumb. With this certificate, you've maximised your ability to rely on your structural systems to absorb damage, although hopefully you're smart enough to know what a daft idea that is.

Enough said.

Spider Tanking
Spider Tanking is the reliance on remote repair, either shield or armor, depending on your group makeup. It gets its name from the way the network of remote repair beams resembles a spider's web. A remote repair battleship (RR BS) fleet is an example of spider tanking. One of the major pros of spider tanking is the lack of a dedicated logistic shield that must be fielded. In fleet fights, the logistic ships are almost always shot first and after they're destroyed, the rest of the fleet is left with no logistic support. Spider tanking solves this problem by getting rid of the logistic ship all together and giving each individual ship one or more remote reps. While a single ship with remote reps may not make much of a dent, the combination of many remote repping ships is a force to be reckoned with. Also, there is no dedicated logistic ship that turns into the linchpin of the fleet.

The major drawback to spider tanking is the amount of practice and micromanaging required to make it work properly. In fleets with a dedicated logistic ship, anyone who is not a logistic pilot concentrates on killing enemy ships and broadcasting for reps whenever their shields/armor hp gets low. The dedicated logistic ships only have to focus on repping the ships who need reps. With a spider tanking fleet, all pilots must broadcast for reps when they get primaried, target people who have broadcasted for reps, set armor repair drones onto teammates, and target enemy ships. Without a very well coordinated fleet, spider tanking simply cannot work.

Remote Repair skills:
 * Shield Emission Systems
 * Remote Armor Repair Systems
 * Remote Armor Hull Systems

Speed Tanking
Speed tanking is a tactic that emphasizes speed and agility of the ship to protect it from damage. This tactic is most often combined with some amount of shield or armor tanking, as speed alone is most often insufficient. Speed tanks can also be very useful when one needs to disengage a fight.

Against missiles, speed prevents some amount of damage due to explosion calculations. The lower the missile's explosion velocity, the less of the total damage is applied to the ship.

Particularly against direct damage turrets (lasers, projectile turrets, and hybrid turrets), this most often attempts to evade the turret's tracking speed, allowing the weapon fewer and less accurate shots.

A big reason why speed tanking is useful is because one person can go in and take the aggression from a lot of targets without getting hit allowing the rest of the fleet to safely take down the enemies.

Equipment
The most common (and obvious) modules slotted for speed tanking are:


 * Afterburners


 * Microwarpdrives

Other modules increase a ship's agility (turning ability), allowing it to orbit closer to its target, and thus at a higher angular change rate.