Ships & Modules

Didn't know the best place to post this.

Anyway, I have heard that shields have some particular weakness to EM, and that armor has some particular weakness to explosive. I presumed that this somehow shows up in resists for these systems (please correct me if I am wrong).

The question is, how do I 'see' the weaknesses in these systems? For instance, if I get info on my ship that shows 50% across the board resistances for both shield and armor (just some made-up number), does that 50% resist figure account for the inherent weaknesses of shield to EM and armor to explosive? In other words, do these numbers represent 'holes already plugged?' Or is there some 'further hole' I need to plug?

How exactly does this work?

Thanks.

The weakness is shown right there in the % resistance to the relevant damage type.
All Tech 1 shields have a base 0% resistance to EM damage (a rather big hole), and for Tech 1 Armour tanks almost all of them only 10% resistance to explosive (Amarr being the exception with base 20%).

In the Tech 2 hulls there's far more variation in base resistance due to their hidden hull bonusses, but generally a ship of a given race will have elevated resistances to the main damage type of their "nemesis."
(Amarr <> Minmatar & Gallente <> Caldari).

The "resistance hole" then, is the lowest base resistance value on a given hull, assuming you need that resistance value for the task at hand.
For PvP most people prefer as high resistance as possible to all damage types, meaning that EM or Explosive is generally your "resistance hole" depending on the type of tank you're using.

Again Tech 2 ships vary this up immense, for Amarr ships for instance the armour resistance hole generally is Thermal damage, EM resistance is high anyway, and Explosive and Kinetic are boosted considerably (as that is the primary damage output for Minmatar ships).
And Minmatar Tech 2 shield tanking ships usually have extremely high EM resistance by default, because EM/Thermal is the main damage output of Amarr ships, their lore nemesis.

Press alt f and in the defence section there will be your resists. If it says 0% next to the lightning bolt icon then you most definitely have a em hole.