EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey

The difference is that each type of plating absorbs a different kind of damage, eg. reactive plating gives a bonus to explosive resistance, reflective plating to EM resistance etc.

The kind of damage dealt to you depends on the weapon system and ammo type that your opponent uses. In PvE, it's easy to figure out what they deal, there are websites about that. Thus if you do PvE, people tend to optimize their tank for their mission-specific opponents. For PvP, you can't really tell what the other guy is going to shoot at you, therefore you might want to close your ship-specific resistance hole, eg. an Incursus only has 10% explosive resistance on its armor – if you armor tank it, you might want to consider using plating that increases your explosive resistance.

First will answer the difference between the modules.

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane (mostly called EANM) = All round hardener, it adds 15% too all resists (if you only use one) and is passive (so it always works and doesn't need capacitor to operate).
Adaptive Nano Plating = All round hardener, it adds 8% too all resists (if you only use one) and is passive (works all the time, no capacitor usage).
Energized Reactive Membrane = Specific hardener, this adds 32.5% resists to Explosive resistance. Passive so no cap use.
Energized Regenerative Membrane = Armour enhancer, this doesn't add resistance to your ship, but it increases your armour HP with 12.5%. Also passive, so again no cap use.
Energized Reflective Membrane = Specific hardener, this adds 32.5% resists to EM resistance. Passive, no cap usage.

* Keep in mind that these percentages are given base stats, you can increase their stats with skills and ship bonuses. *
** Also keep in mind that modules have a stacking penalty, for each item you add on top of the first their effective usage decreases, more info found here: http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Stacking_penalty

And you will see different ships as each ship will be fitted to do a specific role in EVE, and each pilot fits a ship to suit their play style. For instance a PvE fitted ship will likely have resistance hardener to counter the damage types dealt by the rats he faces, while in PvP you likely see people either tank a buffer (meaning they have large amount of EHP and try too kill the enemy before it kills them / try to keep alive long enough for remote repairs to given to them (logistics ships) or they try to get most resistance up to about the same point (fill up resistance holes, in T1 resists there is an EM hole in shield and a Explosive hole in armour) so that no matter what damage type they face their tank is about the same.

To review the fits you posted:

1st: It will get a 12.5% and 8% resist bonus, going from base stats on a T1 hull the resists will be: 60/40/36/48 (this is standardized EM/Kinetic/Explosive/Heat)
2nd: It will get bonuses from both, but due to stacking penalty the 2nd EANM won't work at 100%. Again base stats + T1 hull the resists will be: 62/43/40/51
3rd: It will get the 12.5% bonus to resists from the EANM and the 12.5% bonus to armour hitpoints, resulting in a resist of 57/36/31/44 and then 12.5% bonus to armour HP (this value is different from each ship as each ship has different base armour amount).

Also, keep in mind that the difference between ANPs and EANMs is that ANPs use 0 CPU, EANMs use 24-36 CPU.

Another thing to note is the use of DED ANPs instead of EANMs. The best T1 EANM requires 24 CPU and provides 15% to all armor resists (before skills). A C-Type ANP will use 0 CPU and provide 19.56% resists and only costs ~10-15M. And a T2 EANM will use 36 CPU and provide 20% resists, but it requires Hull Upgrades 5 (about 1-1.5 weeks of training for that one skill). So, C-Type ANPs are pretty much the same bonus as T2 EANMs, but for 36 less CPU and 1-1.5 weeks less training time and a bit more ISK. Something to keep in mind if you have low skills or a tight fit.