Greedy Goblin

Friday, November 13, 2015

Guide: tanking and EHP

Everything can be killed in EVE, but it's very different how much effort is needed to do it. While gankers boast that they can gank anything, they are lying. I was never ganked, exactly because it was too hard while morons and slackers provided enough triple-antitanked 10B Charons to be ganked instead.

The first thing you need to avoid ganks is understanding "effective hit points" or "EHP". Obviously, the more is the better. Well, HP is simple, all ships have basic HP and you can increase it with shield extenders, armor plates, reinforced bulkheads, skills and rigs. But what is this "effective" thing? It's about resistances. With modules, you can increase the resistances of your ship greatly. Having 10000 HP with 90% damage resistance, your ship is just as strong as a 100000 HP ship with no resistances.

If you click on the fitting icon (the little Rifter), you can bring up the resistances and HP of your ship. You can see that despite using top of the line HP increasing modules, my Tengu has only 48K EHP, killable by 5 Tornadoes, something the gankers can easily muster:

3 rigs, 1 subsystem and 4 medium slots only provided me such paltry defense. Now let's add one passive EM hardener to the mid slot:
My effective HP almost doubled! This is because the original ship had zero EM shield resistance. Gankers aren't stupid to use anything but EM ammo. Now that this "EM hole" is plugged, they need to send 9 Tornadoes.


Two (pretty expensive) adaptive hardeners and a Damage Control II module are turned on (they need to be activated every jump) and the EHP of the ship further tripled, now needing 22 Tornadoes to work together to destroy it. The point is that a few hardeners turned a pretty easy mark into something that travel daily in the Uedama and the Niarja ganker nests and seen not even an attempt in its 3 years of service.

This ship is shield tanked, most of its EHP comes from its shields and (besides the Damage Control module), each tanking module is focused on shields. It's important to focus your tanking on one kind of defense (shield, armor or hull) instead of spreading between many. It's also important to focus it on the one that is supported by your ship, typically the strongest on the ship while unfit. Here is an example for an armor fit ship:

The Armor tank is generally stronger than the shield tank of a similar ship, but at the cost of lower agility (more about aligning here).

You can increase your defenses with skills (shield management, "compensation" skills, mechanics, hull upgrades) and implants ("SM-" for shields, "HG-" and "Slave" for armor and "MC-" for hull). As a general rule "Damage Control" module should be on every ship you fly. You can use "Siege" warfare links for shields and "Armor" for armor, but that needs another ship to escort you and a specialist pilot. This edge is usually not needed.

You can repair damaged shields automatically when you dock or in space with an alt or supporter flying a logistic ship with remote shield boosters. You can repair damaged armor and hull when you select "repair" while docked or in space with an alt or supporter flying a logistic ship with remote armor or hull repairers.

12 comments:

mugg said...

You should mention about the Covert Ops Cloak, that's what really makes these "ungankable". Why did you go with those low slot modules on the Tengu?

Gevlon said...

Those will have their own post

Unknown said...

"tanking and ehp" occupies much wider field of eve knowledge than presented here. This article is closer to anti-gank buffering tips, not even close to being a guide.
People could come here to read some write-ups about duo and triple rep fits, combinations of acr/asb+buffer, RR setups, overheating invulins, tinker setups or repair drone setups.

P.s.

Aruce said...

Gevlon will you post fits for other T3 cruisers if you have some. Or is the tengu somehow supoerior for Hi-Sec transport than others.
Just for the people that have one of the others trained and dont want to train for the Tengu atm.

Gevlon said...

@Pashko Zpc: I understand it's surprising to have anti-gank tips in an anti-gank guide

@Aruce: yes, the Tengu is special and will have its own post.

Hamlyn Medley said...

Gevlon, can you make an "index" post?
For the last year I saw you post allot of good information regarding anti gank, ship fittings and stuff
But they are all over your blog... I still remember searching on google:"Greedy Goblin Thukker " so i could find your mining guide...
that would be helpfull
Another thing: are you not worried about goons using your guide "against you"?

Anonymous said...

" I understand it's surprising to have anti-gank tips in an anti-gank guide"

but your guide is called "Guide: tanking and EHP"

Gevlon said...

@Hamlyn: All guides will be indexed and all old business posts will be merged into guides.
On Goons using them against me: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2015/10/insecurity-through-obscurity.html

@Anon: and it's part of the page "Why was I ganked?" http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/p/why-was-i-ganked.html

Banedon said...

Hi Gevlon,

I have come to think that the transportation of goods is actually a matrix of sorts, where the best answer is not always the same answer. Think of it as Cargo Capacity vs. Tankability vs. Cost vs. Location

People can jam tremendous amounts of stuff into a Freighter or Iteron 5 if they use cargo-expanders and fit on a tank using whatever is leftover. These ships die quickly, regularly, and generate lots of tears.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's your transport Tengu. It's as close to unkillable as anything I've ever seen. But the hull, modules, and skillbooks to use it all, cost over a billion ISK and you're not able to carry much cargo. Plus the training time required to use that fit is considerable.

In between these extremes are tanked T1 Industrials and Transport/Blockade Runners.

In High-Sec, a tanked T1 Industrial I find is usually sufficient. For example, I've got an active shield-tanked Badger with 100K EHP. It costs about 70M all together, and carries a bit over 4K m3 of cargo. It can die to a fleet, but a loner or small gang is no threat. It's rather cheap, and quick to train for.

In Low-Sec, a Transport/Blockade Runner would be the better choice due to superior inherent resists and/or built-in warp core stabilizers. These ships can be further tanked for High-Sec use or tweaked for Low-Sec use, but then the cost is swelling to 250-300M ISK or more for the hull, the fit, and the skills. Plus the training can be lengthy, though not as long as your Tengu.

Just figured I'd give you another viewpoint and see what you thought.

Regards,

Banedon

Anonymous said...

"People can jam tremendous amounts of stuff into a Freighter or Iteron 5 if they use cargo-expanders and fit on a tank using whatever is leftover. These ships die quickly, regularly, and generate lots of tears."

But a significant % of them never get ganked.

I have been freightering/JFing 15+ jumps a day, up to 80, for the last 4 years, and running mining on a 2nd char at the same time.

Number of times ganked? 0. No. of times attempted gank? 0. And yes, I use routes through gank pipes.

If I lose a ship now...I suspect it has paid for itself several hundred times over.

However.. Gevlon uses "I have never been ganked" to mean "It is impossible to gank me"... "While gankers boast that they can gank anything, they are lying. I was never ganked, exactly because it was too hard"...I have never been ganked... an untanked obelisk or JF must be too hard.

"It is too much effort for random joe" is why he hasnt been ganked......whereas he implies there is absolutely no amount of ships that could kill his ship.

I havent been ganked for a range of reasons, partly luck, partly not hitting systems when I know there is gank activity, partly never autopiloting.

Anonymous said...

Another dimension for choosing the ship & fit is the amount of attention one has to put while travelling.
This ranges from auto-piloting all the way to 'align, cloak, microwarp, activate 9 different active modules & use bookmarks on every station & gate for extra safety'

Guess someone could try to make a study for practical purposes on what are the critical points which increase safety over some limit thus decreasing the needed attention vs risk to minimum.

Anonymous said...

Banedon Just figured I'd give you another viewpoint and see what you thought.

There is no ganker that doesn't look at ISK ratio. Meaning his investment in DMG isk to kill your EHP isk. As long as there is the casual concord mechanic in highsec. You need to tank long enough that a ganker will not bother to put more isk into the gank than you are worth. (yes you will survive any burn event with this in mind)

to determine risk: hull + fit + cargo (+ implants) : gank investment

gank investment. the best dmg/isk is a t1 cata. worst-case all 5, implants and links ~3800 isk per dmg point. anything better that hits harder is also more expensive per dmg point. So it's a good baseline to see if you are a loot pinata.

Yes sure, you have to weight m3 and overall isk to haul it, but low m3 doesn't mean that you should fly it in a shuttle or max align frigate. Sure smartbombs are not used that often in highsec YMMV. Anyway that's why Gevlon showcases his implant hauling in max EHP covop align tengus. that cloak and align as the first line of defense and if caught have a huge EHP tank. So ridiculous huge that even if the ganker bump team do a 100% perfect job (which they will not!!), so no warp out is possible, Gevlon could casually login one of his accounts and warp a logistics to the scene and some shield links.

Only one time in my highsec hauling I had to mwd overheat my Occator. They fucked up the bumping big time, I got easily away.
Also I watched some of the Goon "burn" events in the last years. No bump team has the skill to bump someone so that the ship spins and doesn't get momentum. until that day "enough" EHP and a good mwd will get you out. At some point you will get 75% speed and enough alignment to warp out. Since then I have tactical bookmarks in the typical gank systems so even if the day arrives that a good bump team will tackle me they have no clue what I can align and warp to.