EVE New Citizens Q&A

We have tanks on our ships but the "Tank" role that exists in other MMOs does not really exist here.

Eve is a totally different game. If you want to do well here you will need to let go of pretty much everything that you were progammed to expect from all of the WoW clones.

Hum yeah I know there's no tanking like in other mmos,

What I meant to say that I badly expressed was this basically:

Any ship is a bit more sturdy than the other.
Like not to "tank" but just to be able to get shot without blowing up too much.

(like a moa would sustain more damage then a caracal because of it's passive I guess)

I'm looking for that sort of thing.

And the answer is; it depends on the way you fit it.

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to your question.

We can say X ship has more armor or shields than the other... but that will not help you much as a ship is more than just one aspect.

For example... the Moa may be tankier than a Caracal (on paper), but because the latter is faster and more mobile, it can avoid damage outright (see: speed tank).

A Maller may be tankier than an Omen, but it has crappy capacitor power and a limited slot layout... making it subpar for anything beyond fleet work in general.

From one newbro to another.

You have shields and armor.

Your race and ship determines bonuses for
either (maybe both).

As a Caldari myself I would benefit to go all
out on shields. Skills should be trained acordingly.

Check what fittings, and riggs gets most value to the ship.

A good site to explore: https://o.smium.org/

I know, before you pros attack me. This game is still
overwhelming and we have to start somewhere.

Tanks in other MMO's have 2 jobs:

- hold the target focused on them and absorb its damage so it doesn't hit other players
- lead the group

EVE has some (a lot, actually) ships that have bonuses to armor or shield resistances, or to repairs, and these can be fitted as "tanks" if you wish. But regular NPC pirates don't have the aggro and threat mechanics that you see in other games; here they go for whichever target first. Only wormhole-space Sleepers have advanced AI that uses threat and aggro switching.

Unlike other games, your ship is your class/role here, and you can switch ships whenever you feel like it. And the modules that you install in your ship give you your abilities, so to speak. However, there are no modules that can directly influence aggro or threat, because again aggro and threat don't quite exist like in other games.

So what we do is "deal with it" as you would in a party with no tanks: everybody puts on their best damage resist armor, and use self-healing and plenty of healers. In this game pretty much every ship can increase its resistances and hitpoints for either shields or armor, and can install a self-repair module (for shields or armor). And we have dedicated remote-repair ships in the logistics lines of ships, from frigates to various types of cruisers.

So, a fleet's logistics group will just switch to whomever is taking damage at any second, and repair them, then switch to the next ship and repair them too. The fleet interface offers the ability to "call" (pop-up messages) when you need repairs, and logistics ships can maintain 10+ targets at the same time. The fleet interface also allows ships to be "monitored" (see their health bars). And otherwise, each fight is about disrupting the enemy logistics chain (using electronic jamming), or killing them first.

As far as leading the group, you can try / train to / become an FC (fleet commander). You kinda need to know the game / know PVP pretty well, to be successful, but the fleet system and the voice comms do support the role. There are even "command ships", they perform a fleet buffing role, which is somewhat fire and forget, so that the FC can focus on directing the fleet and ordering targets, coordinating with the scouts, etc.

EDIT: As far as races / ship lines, each race tries to have equivalent ships to other races. First decision is whether the fleet composition will have armor ships or shield ships, because the logistics has to be one type or the other. And then once that's decided, there are plenty of choices for the actual ships to bring, because, again, all can tank.

So you're looking at racial preferences for shields vs. armor:

Amarr, Gallente = armor
Caldari = shields
Minmatar = either, versatile

PVE activities use the easy-mode weapons, typically missiles or drones, but mostly missiles, so you'll see mostly shield fleets for PVE incursions. PVP activities depend on the fleet composition used; a lot of times it's armor, but very often it's shields. If you want to train logistics, you will likely have to train all 4 races of cruisers, just to cover all options.

If you look at the ship bonuses it can give you somewhat of an idea of this. However that is not everything.

As you have noticed the Moa does have a tanking bonus of 4% per level to shield resists. That is a shield tanking bonus which works the same for active or passive tanks. A reduction of incoming damage by 20% ( at level 5 ) for example is a reduction in damage that you take by a flat amount, that being 20%. How you repair the damage that is applied matters not.

The Moa and Caracal both have a 5% per level damage bonus. In the Moa it's strait damage amount and in the Caracal it is RoF but essentially it winds up being the same thing.

Now on the Caracal you have 10% per level to Missile velocity. Which at level 5 is essentially a 50% range increase. Range can be a much better tank than resists. You can actually get to a range that you are taking no damage at all in some cases. Further if a range increase can allow you to use higher DPS weapons like HAMs where you would normally need heavies then it can also be a defacto damage boost.

When I was new I used to focus on tank because I did not want to loose ships. After a lot of struggle I found out that in many cases the best defense is a great offense. First off you don't have to tank incoming damage from dead NPCs. Second the increased rate at which you can make isk with higher DPS can often offset any increased risks of loosing a ship. But honestly I am not so sure that sacrificing tank for DPS does that.

Further due to exponential increases in training times with each level of a skill this game definitely encourages keeping your skills even in most cases or at least spread out. My typical advice is train tank only until you can use T2 mods. At that point focus more on: DPS, fitting and support skills.