Means of enduring, reducing and / or repairing damage in order to increase the survivability of a ship in battle.
Modules to be used in tanking:
In general a ship will only need one of the two types of tank setups, shield or armor, and this choice is dictated by several factors:
- Mid Slots: A ship with more mid slots than low is best Shield Tanked, as shield type modules are exclusively mid slots, active items.
- Low Slots: A ship with more low slots than mid is best Armor Tanked, for similar reasons.
- CPU: Shield tanking favours ships with abundant CPU
- Power Grid: Armor Tanking modules tend to be more Grid intensive than CPU.
For the above reasons, most Caldari ships are ideally suited to Shield Tanking, wheras Amarr ships are better at Armor Tanking. Gallente and Minmatar ships are less obvious candidates for one or the other, and must be assessed on a ship by ship basis.
A bare minimum tank setup will incorporate one or more 'heal' modules (Repairer/Booster), and at least two 'hardeners', chosen for specific resistances based on the anticipated enemy's damage type(s). The hardners are best if active, but capacitor useage is a factor. A good tank setup employs the use of extra capacitor recharging modules and skills, to provide a sustainable regeneration cycle that can run for tens of minutes, and in some extreme cases, indefinitely. Spare slots can be filled with extra hit point modules (extenders/plates), additional hardener damage types, and more capacitor charging.
Since the sustainability of the regeneration is the key factor in a good tank setup, such fitting often incorporate weapons a class below the normal fitting for that ship type (i.e. Frigate weapons on Cruisers, Crusier weapons on Battleships), allowing more of the Grid/CPU to be given over to tank modules, and a signficantly lower weapon capacitor use.
This in turn means a much longer time-to-kill, but the tank setup allows the ship to survive a similarly longer time in close combat assault.
Unfortunately, a lack of hardeners, and an across-the-board 0% damage resistance, means that Structure Tanking is not a realistic proposition...