EVE Fiction

So taking into consideration Sisters of EVE and their preference towards armor based ships, would It be correct to surmise that armor tanks are "safer" in terms of damage towards critical life support systems and in the aftermath of defeat?

Armor preferred races put a lot of research towards making sure the bulk heads have the most sophisticated technology in order to ensure they can properly defend a vessel. Thicker metal sheets, better resistant based metals and such help ensure than when a ship does come under heavy siege, the most crucial parts of the ship, which are protected more by the armor than the shield system in any ship setup, are less damaged by the impact force.

In short, shield ships don't put a lot of focus into armor and therefore, when the shield deplete, their armor crumbles away and the critical components are more prone to damage. Armor ships have better armor types, generally, and when the ship does explode, it would theoretically still be able to protect some of the critical systems so that crew/items have a better chance of living.

Hope that question makes sense.

I think the armor thing doesn't have much fluff backing; it's rather that they already had Gal/Min and Gal/Cal pirate hulls, so even though shields make more sense from a regenerative perspective, armor's the way of it.

Perhaps the idea is that with an armor-tanked ship, you have the additional buffer of the shield? Which is terrible in-game but may be semi-fluffy. :x

One needs to think a little more imaginatively on what is really representative by one's ship's armor and shield bars.

A starship's armor in the EVE universe is much more than simple plates that protect the hull. First one must imagine that the armor has multiple layers over the hull. Damage that penetrates one layer, still leaves multiple layers intact beneath it. Between and embedded within the armor are also multiple means of mitigating damage done to it. Hardeners, membranes and the like. Adding plates to the hull is simply adding more layers than already exist. Nano tech and smart materials give the armor layers its regenerative quality. One could imagine as soon as a layer of armor is penetrated, nanites are working furiously to rebuild the afflicted section. Only when one can damage the armor faster than it can be rebuilt will you get to the hull. Getting to the hull doesn't mean that "all armor has been destroyed" but rather that it has been perforated enough that it can't protect it effectively anymore. One will always note that the armor re-generator can still rebuild armor from a fully depleted bar.

That said, the only thing lacking in the game is where does the armor re-generator regain materials to rebuild armor from? One could say that the ship probably has a large enough store of matter to tap into for all its normal regenerative uses. Most EVE ships are sufficiently advanced that one could probably assume that they have substantial self regenerative qualities for their normal operation. Adding more mass to the armor certainly helps this quality. It may be even advanced enough that the mechanisms can strip armor from elsewhere when needed (or other mass) to re-purpose as armor when the need arises.

Sleeper Lore postulates that their tech is so advanced that it can manipulate molecular structure quickly and on the fly, to provide armor so effective that they don't bother with shields. This opens up another small hint in the EVE lore - avoiding the use of shields could have what advantage? Remember Jamyl's super weapon?

On the topic of shields vs armor, the idea that shields resist explosive and kinetic damage better is because the shield's main job is to protect the ship during spaceflight. Shields are good at deflecting things and the tech stems from the need to deflect the little bits floating in space when the ship travels at sub warp speeds. Should something penetrate the shield, all ships have some armor as back up protection. Shields on the other hand aren't good at deflecting Thermal and EM damage - and ships have armor to back themselves up for this as well. Ships are armored to additionally withstand all the bad energy related things encountered in space.

One might postulate that SOE ships are armor tankers both since their main backers seem to be the Amarr and Gallente (which seem to share some theories in ship design) but also because layers of dense material is the best protection against all sorts of energy type hazards which might be encountered in space exploration. Added to that the EM types of hazards which might be encountered around Relic and Data sites. Not to mention in the depths of wormholes, spewed forth by Magnetars, Pulsars, Red Giants and black holes.