EVE New Citizens Q&A

A.

1. Tanking = dealing with incoming damage. Be it active (repairing damage) or passive (soaking it up in huge amounts of HP).

Breaking tank means incoming DPS is higher then your tank can sustain.

2.

There are MANY types of tanking:

2 basic categories are indeed Shield and Armor:

Shield:

* Uses mid-slots (keeps low-slots open for damage enhancing)
* Does passively regen.
* Some module increase your signature radius (easier to lock / hit)
* Benefit that both armor + structure are behind it (can mean you have a couple seconds extra to get safe).

Armor:

* Uses low-slots (keeps mid-slots open for E-war modules)
* Does not passively regen.
* Some modules add mass to your ship (making it slower and thus easier to hit)
* Benefit that a good armor tanked ship is like a flying brick (both in speed as well as HP).

Then there are other forms of tanking:

* Signature / speed tanking - Small ships, in fast close orbit are very hard to hit by bigger ships
* Hull tanking - Tanking in structure, not many ships do this (or can pull it off).

There is also multiple forms of shield/armor tank.

A. Passive shield tank. You use the shield's natural recharge rate to tank the incoming DPS. Usually done by putting up high resists to negate some incoming damage and thus give the natural regen of the shield time to keep up.

B. Buffer tank. Seen in both shield and armor. It means, high resists + large amount of HP. This basically is, survive long enough to: Kill the enemy before he kills me OR used when you have external repairs through logi (stay alive long enough so they can repair me).

C. Active tank. Resist modules (to negate incoming damage a bit) + repair module. Any damage you get, is repaired by yourself.

3.

The damage type doesn't directly dictate what type of tank you choose. The ship kind of gives that away. A Drake is a great Passive shield tank ship. Amarr ships generally are great armor tanked ships.

Look at a ship, look at their base HP stats + bonuses + slot layout and it is most of the time obvious what would work best.

You can match your resists in a tank though, to match incoming DPS. If you know you are up against lasers, you fit for EM/Thermal resists. If you know that you are up against Hybrids: KIn/Therm resists should be high.

4. In PvE: Google. All NPC damage profiles are known and listed.

In PvP: Experience and knowledge. Know how ships are typcally fitted and you will understand what type of damage he likely will deal.

Amarr ships > usually lasers so that is EM/Thermal
Gallente > Hybrids, Therm/Kinetic
MInmatar > Projectiles, selectable damage, usually Explosive or EM though.
Caldari > Missiles, selectable but usually Kinetic.

Drones, just look at Drone type.

That is, though, if people stick with the common fits, there is always that case of an exception etc.



B.

1. Damage formula's aswel as the chance to hit formula's are on the EVE wiki and E-Uni wiki.

2. In general, Yes.

Keep in mind, speed alone against guns isn't good enough, it's angular velocity you want.
Going in 500 m/s straight into the barrel of a gun, makes you a very easy target...doing 500 m/s around someone in a close orbit makes it hard for the gun to keep you in sight.

3. Yes you could, if you do it properly. However, usually speed tanking is matched with a small armor or shield tank too.
It also depends on your ship vs your enemy's ship. Given you deal with the drones, speed tanking a battleship in a frigate is much easier then speed tanking a cruiser.

4. Depends if you are up against guns or missiles.

Guns: You want to maximize your angular velocity to outrun their tracking.
Missiles: You want to maximize your actual speed as missies look at raw speed.



C.

1. Pick 1 weapon type and use it. Don't ever mix weapons. Which, that depends on ship (usually due to ship bonuses) and personal preference.

2. It can be useful to pick some different ammo, but never pick huge amounts as usually you can restock well before you use up more then 5 reloads. In PvE it is not uncommon to reload different ammo. In PvP, it can happen but isn't as common (as you want to fight on YOUR terms... (post 1/2)

what does it means to be "tanking"? You manage to have more defense regen then the damage you take

Exactly, the opposite would be "breaking"

What are the different types of tanking (shield and armor..anything else?) And what are their pro/con?

Lot's of different ways, the two main ones will be shield or armour and one less used type would be hull (structure) tanking.

As subsets to shield, armour and hull there is active, passive and buffer tanking as well.

active tanking uses some kind of active repair module that uses capacitor or some kind of ammunition (ancillary repairers use cap booster chargers for shield and nanite paste for armour)

passive tanking is only available to shield, makes use of the mechanic of shields naturally regenerating and augmenting that with modules and rigs

buffer tanking is just getting the most amount of ehp you possibly can, as a side effect for shields this also increases your passive tanking ability.

what tank types goes vs what damage type?

Typically shields are strong against kinetic and explosive damage and armour is better against em and thermal. A lot of tech 2 and 3 ships will have different resist profiles though, mostly aimed at countering their nemesis race (for example tech 2 minmatar combat ships will have high EM/thermal resistance)

how can I determine the type of damage I am getting? Can you scan your opponent or add information to the combat damage report pop-up that, for now, just says the amount of damage I am getting


For NPCs it's pretty easy, there are databases that document this kind of stuff.

For players, it's a little harder but you can almost always figure it out. Lasers will only ever do em/thermal and hybrids will only ever do kinetic/thermal (albeit in different proportions depending on ammo).

For missiles and projectiles they can choose specific damage types so figuring those out can be done with the ingame combat logger

so in the eve necom:

EVE>
accessories>
log and messages


is there a measure of how hard to hit/target you are due to speed/small signature?

You can simulate this in EFT, though it will always be down to the ingame RNG to determine the last word.

speed makes you hard to hit (generating "miss" results) and small signature hard to target lock?

speed itself does not make you hard to hit, you need to be going fast relative to the guns that are trying to track you.

For example, you could be going at 10km/s but flying directly at something and they would hit you perfectly. If you fly perpendicular to someone, your TRANSVERSAL velocity increases and then it starts becoming hard for turrets to track you.

Your signature radius and signature resolution of the ship trying to target you are factored into targeting speed. This can also be simulated in eft.

How prevalent is "hard to hit" tanking vs typical shield/armor? Can one survive only being fast?

Some ship's complete tank is just speed, they work around not taking damage at all and do this with a combination of fast speed, low sig, range control and sometimes a bit of ewar.


To maximize your dodging should you maximize speed (straight line away) or perpendicular speed (lower full speed, but orbit)?

Against turrets you want to be getting as much transversal as possible, missiles can actually be outrun so flying directly away from those at max speed is good practice if you're trying to mitigate as much damage as possible.

is it a good strategy to have long and short range weapons?

Yes, but probably not in the way you are thinking. It's a BAD idea, for example, to fit 3 autocannons and 3 artillery. Your short range defence on a long range platform should be drones with a combination of scram/web or just superior speed.

Never mix your gun types to try and deal with short/long range at the same time. This is a valuable lesson you should learn early: fit a ship for a sole purpose and it will be excellent at it, fit a ship to multitask and you just get a heap of junk that can do nothing well.

i play Minmatar. How useful is it to carry multiple tyoes of ammo? Is it practical to change ammo during a fight?

For pvp, it's almost a requirement. Changing projectile ammo takes 10 seconds, so that's something you have to judge during that time. An easy example would be someone trying to kite you, you would switch to barrage ammo to increase your range otherwise you would do no damage at all.

how do you evaluate your opponents defense?

This is a fine art that can only be mastered after years of playing. The best of the best can evaluate your fit within 5 seconds of looking at your ship.

This a combination of deep knowledge of thousands of fits, understanding of game mechanics and analysis of your opponents behaviour.

Are medium weapons still good vs Frigates and Destroyers?

They will have a hard time applying their damage, but if you do manage to, they obviously will hit hard as their base damage is higher. So if you have something stationary to shoot at it's good but if someone is orbiting you at 1km/s you will have a hard time hitting them

when comparing weapons, what attributes should i consider?

Always start with: "What is this ship going to do?"

Drones...

How effective are they for a newbie with a Cruiser (getting there shortly)...?

There are a LOT of skills involved to be a serious drone operator, seems even more then a turret weapon specialist, is it justified? Are drone that powerful or convenient (i guess you can afk anf they still do their thing)?

Is it frequent to lose combat drone?

How hard are they to control?

At what range can they attack?


What are the interesting frigates - destroyers - cruisers for someone wanting to try drones?


Thanks

Oh and on ships - the Tristan, Algos and Vexor are the introductory droneboats.

Fair warning - the Vexor will perform poorly for a cruiser at low character skills. It is, however, the best tech 1 cruiser by far once you have high skills (although not the best at every single thing, just the best overall).

The Ishkur, Myrmidon, Dominix and Worm suit medium skilled characters, and the Ishtar, Eos, Gila and Rattlesnake are high skilled droneboats (carriers can also be put in this category).

Tanking depends on the number of slots you have, and not just "do I shield or do I armor"? Frigates often don't have the number of slots for a full tank (repairer, extender, 2 resists), so smaller ships are more prone to not having a full tank. Cruisers can have the slots, but you have to make a choice between installing a full tank or installing DPS upgrades, PVP tackle, capacitor energy modules, or other useful stuff.

Tanking strategy is different between PVP and PVE.

For PVE, you can look up what damage the NPCs will dish out, and match your resistances accordingly. PVE also consists of prolonged battles where you have to deal with multiple waves, and there's very little jamming / electronic warfare. As a result, you can often install a full tank with matched resists, and use capacitor rechargers to ensure that you are cap-stable (never run out of juice).

PVP battles, on the other hand, are quick affairs; you win or you die, typically very fast. Or the enemy retreats and you can recharge while you pursue. So tanks are more about lasting long enough to kill the enemy (often involves overheating the modules to get maximum performance during the short fight), and the capacitor energy strategy is more about putting everything into maximizing the tank, and recharging it if the enemy has energy neutralizers. Or, you decide to make a strategy out of maximum DPS modules, target jamming (to prevent damage), and buddies with logistics who can repair you, and forget about the tank altogether.

You can't really learn PVP from doing PVE; you only get basic training on how the game mechanics work (weapons tracking, activating your repair module on time, etc). PVP is a lot more about getting a feel for what the various ships can do to you, and whether you can take them on or not. Start with a ships list.

Drones are a backup system for a lot of the bigger ships, providing defense against small frigate attacks. As such, it's likely that you'll have to train them. The Gallente and Amarr have some drone boats that are popular for the same reason that missiles are popular - you can choose the damage type, and you can apply damage without having to worry about tracking.

Am I the only one that thinks that Pod Panik is a CCP dev alt that was tasked with revamping the tutorial system and came to the forums to get us to do all of his leg work?

I mean seriously these questions are just too well thought out to elicit large flows of information. I don't get the newbro feeling from this guy.

Don't give the Devs crazy ideas.


On second thought...please do, this way WE, the players, can fix the problem once and for all.

How is the concept of "aggro" working in Eve?

Would my drone be targetted first if they do most of the damage? This could become costly...

Keep in mind though, agression CAN switch to your drones occasionally.

The exact algorithms used are secret and vary between different kinds of rats.

Sleepers for example take into account such things as your tank, your distance from them, who does most dps, who uses EWAR against them, who remote repairs other targets and so on. They generally seem to hate EWAR the most with remote repairers as the second priority. Additionally, they often test the tank of the most recent arrival on grid.