EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm clueless: In Kinetic defenses, which gives the most defense - hardeners, plating, shields.... I understand that each probably has their own specific uses, I have a little Merlin, which if any would be best?

Your question doesn't really make sense.

Kinetic is just 1 of the 4 types of resistances, and they all work the same. Each ship has 4 resist values (EM, Kinetic, Thermal and Explosive) for armor, for shield and for structure (just to be clear, the resistance values are distinct for the 3). This, coupled with your armor, shield and structure hitpoints, define your ship EHP (Effective Hitpoints).

When you fit modules to tank your ship, you should focus on either Armor or Shield (never both, and never structure). There are basically three kind of modules you can fit : modules that will increase your resistances, modules that will increase your hitpoints, or modules that will allow you to actively regenerate hitpoints. Your tank should be a balance of these modules (for example, you can fit a lot of extra hitpoints coupled with some resistances, or a lot of active tanking coupled with high resistances).

So, back to your question. Your Merlin is a caldari ship, and like 99% of caldari ships (just not to say 100%), it's best tanked on shields. It means that you should ignore every module that increases your armor resistance or hitpoints, and focus on tanking your shield (with the notable exception of a Damage Control, which is the only module that will increase resistances all across the board : armor, shield and structure, and is useful in every kind of tanking). If you want to increase your hitpoints, look at small or medium shield extenders. For resistances, you can either have active modules or passive modules. Browse the items via the market ingame to see what's available. Passive modules do not require to be activated in space and don't use capacitor. They're cheaper to fit aswell, but they give a much smaller resistance boost. In active modules, you can either strongly boost a single resistance (for example EM - Caldari ships always have 0% base EM resist on shields), or boost all of them at once with an Invulnerability Field module. You can also add an active tank with a shield booster module, but that'll be very costly on your capacitor.

I suggest you download EFT (Eve Fitting Tool), an external tool used by pretty much every single player, which will allow you to design ship fittings for your character (you can give EFT your API key so it's aware of your skills), learn about the existing modules and how to fit ships, without having to spend ISK to test things out ingame.

Edit : if you have more questions feel free to ask, I didn't want to go in too much details since your question wasn't very precise to start with :)

SlapChop, the string analogy was good! :) I guess i'm just trying to get a feel of the waters. When ya only got 3 mil. ya want to invest wisely! I think I'm almost finished with all the tutorial missions, if I decide to buy a plex I'll pick your brain some more.