Confer with Arthur: Shield Tanking

Arthur Asimov, Caldari Scientist

Howdy fellas! Due to a recently enacted State mandate declaring that regulated printed materials must now contain educational material, I will be here once a week to help you survive in space!

Today we'll be talkin' about one of our most famous, and be-loved tactics in warfare. Shields! Passed down from us generations ago by Ancient Jovians.

Yes shields! Love 'em, or hate 'em, you can't ignore 'em, so regardless of whether or not you use a nice shield defense, I'm going to explain how it works so you'll know what you're dealing with. I'll be using a combination of good ole' experience, and the works of Friedrick Psitalon, a defensive systems expert.

To start off with, there are two kinds of ways to use a shield tank.

Active Shield Tanking

A Cyclone, despite being Minmatar, can make a good AST ship

You'll want to be sure you know how to work energy systems for this one! Knowing how shield compensation and upgrades work is absolutely essential for it!

Active shield tanking (AST) relies heavily on two items – shield boosters, and shield boost amplifiers. The AST name comes from the nature of the defensive style – you use your shields as your main source of damage absorption, and you actively reinforce them as they take damage. Both a shield booster and a shield boost amplifier use mid-slots on your ship; active shield tanking does not utilize low slots.

Shield boosters grant a very quick boost in shields for (usually) a similar amount of capacitor energy. Boost amplifiers increase that amount gained by a percentage, thereby allowing you to regenerate more per boost – considerably more energy efficient than using two boosters. While the overall healing rate may not be as fast as two boosters, the energy usage makes it mighty superior in efficiency.

Your advantages: Defensive regeneration “on demand". Boosters are very quick reacting. Their regeneration speed as a result is very customizable; on precisely when you need it, off precisely when you don’t. Unlike armor tanking, it is very difficult to overestimate or underestimate your needs, and it responds much more quickly than armor tanking to a “panic” situation (since armor repair systems take a long time).

Of the three major types of tanking, AST is the most micro-manageable. AST grants much faster regeneration, on average, than the same number of modules allocated to Passive Shield Tanking. As a rule, a good AST can use as few as three modules, all of them middle slots; making it far superior than a PST in this regard, which can use several mids and lows when really optimized.

Your drawbacks: You pay a price for your on demand shield regenration. Active Shield Tanking is inherently less damage-efficient than Armor Tanking, as armor has much higher resistances to weaponry. It also uses a LOT more capacitor power than armor tanks, so you'll need a big cap to run this puppy! Since Passive Shield Tanking uses no capacitor at all, it is vastly superior in this regard.

Passive Shield Tanking

The Drake battlecruiser, the king of PST

You'll want to be skilled in all your shield knowledge, and have a good engineering and electronics background to get a good tank here!


Passive Shield Tanking is a rather unorthodox strategy, but is very noteworthy. PST works on a rather bizarre principle of starship shield technology: no matter how much shields (or capacitor) you have, it always regenerates in exactly the same amount of time, unless you have modified your regen rate. A Vexor’s shields will always regenerate in 900 seconds, no matter if it has 900 shields, or 9,000,000 shields. In the first situation the regeneration of the ship is unimpressive – 900 shields in 900 seconds is merely 1 shield per second regenerated. In the second situation, though, the rate of regeneration is staggering – 10,000 shields per second! Whoo doggy!

Here's some stuff you'll typically want to fit on your PST ship:

Shield Extenders: these use a lot of CPU (at any size) and grid (the amount of grid used depends on the extender size), but grant you a great deal more shield points, thereby raising your total shields, and increasing your regen rate. These are mid-slot items.

Shield Rechargers: these use a lot of CPU, but very little power grid. Their purpose is very simple: they increase shield recharge rates. These are also mid-slot items, and good for increasing regen when you can’t afford the grid drain of an extender.

Shield Flux Coils: these use a moderate amount of CPU, and no grid, but actually take AWAY from your maximum shield total. In exchange, they provide a larger recharge rate. These are low-slot items.

Shield Power Relays: Relays use a very small amount of CPU and no grid, but have very serious impacts on your capacitor recharge rates. These, too, are low slot items. 

Mid slots, then, give you more regen for CPU and Grid, and the low slots give you more regen in exchange for max shields or capacitor regen. How does one decide which to use when?

The Mids: Extenders vs. Rechargers: Generally, it’s never a bad idea to have at least one significant extender anyhow, because a passive shield tanker will not be able to control his regeneration rate, and so will want some extra “padding.”

After that first extender, though, some (gulp) math comes into play. For a ship that has 1000 shields regenerating in 500 seconds, an extender that adds 500 more effectively increases the shield regen rate by 50%. (1000 in 500 seconds = average of 2 per second; 1500 in 500 seconds = average of 3 per second.) There aren’t any Shield Recharge Units that can add anywhere near that amount of recharge; the best commonly available only adds 15%. Adding a shield extender to a ship that only increases that 1000 shields by 100, though, is not as good as simply adding a recharger.

Unfortunately, very few ships (realistically, probably none) can afford to slot as many Shield Extenders as they might like, so Shield Rechargers become a very good option for those lacking grid but having CPU, and wanting a faster regeneration rate, rather than using a smaller-size extender. 

The Lows: Flux Coils vs. Relays: Frankly, neither of these modules are for folks with weak hearts. If you’re using these, you’re robbing some part of your ship’s total abilities in order to improve another part; too much of this can leave you in a bad place. Judiciously used, though, both of these devices can be quite potent. Both of these devices require knowing what your ship is good at, and where it is weak.

Shield Power Relays strip a large chunk of your capacitor regeneration for shield regeneration (35% Cap Regen for 20% Shield in the biggest ones), but if your ship doesn’t use much in the way of capacitor, this may not be a big deal. Ships that use no shield boosters, little/no propulsion boosters (Afterburner/Microwarp Drive), and few other cap requiring devices can usually get away with slotting as many as two of these, lowering their cap regen by a frightening 70% - but if you’re a missile firer or projectile user, it may very well be that your only cap uses are warping in and out and the occasional shield boost or web. If that’s the case, Shield Power Relays may be for you.

Flux Coils, on the other hand, are for pilots who are very confident that they have enough shields to get them through (maybe you have 3+ extenders onboard) and don’t mind crippling that to increase their regeneration rate. A Flux coil usually pulls 10% out of your maximum shield capacity, and in exchange gives you 25% more regeneration; a net benefit for you of 15% regen, in exchange for 10% of your total shield. Again, using these is a question of judgment – experiment carefully. 

Your advantages: Passive Shield Tanking is very, very easy on the brain when in combat: when the shield goes under 10%, initiate warp and leave. Simple! No boosting, no capacitor to worry about, nada. Speaking of which, PST means your capacitor isn’t being hurt at all. You can use your cap for much more intensive activities; afterburners, microwarps, high energy-usage weapons, etc. This isn’t suggesting you throw lasers on your favorite non-Amarr ship, but you can be a lot more free with the juice. If your PST has very high resists (say, on a Ferox, or if you’ve done a hybrid PST/AST-tank and put extenders/resist modules in your mids and fluxes in your lows) the regen rate can be pretty darn impressive. (20 shield per second is unimpressive in most cases, but if you’ve got 80% resist to Electromagnetic, it would require 100 damage/second to equal the regen rate your 20/per is pulling in.) For attention-monitoring purposes and capacitor-using purposes, nothing beats a Passive Shield Tank. I've personally been in a fight using a Drake against a few heavy-offensive fitted ships, and my tank held on its own while I worried about the actual combat!
  
Your drawbacks: Your regeneration rate is absolutely out of your control . . . and that can be mighty scary. It means you can’t pour on the juice if you’re getting clobbered, and it means you can’t divert energy elsewhere if you’re not being hammered. That regeneration rate can be quite swift, but generally is not as fast as a Shield Booster or Armor Repairer would be. Passive Shield Tanking usually requires more slots to do effectively than AST or Armor Tanking, or cross-level slots. (AST requires all mid, Armor all low, but Passive dips into both.) As a rule, the fact that you can’t heal as quickly, and that the healing is uncontrolled, means that PST is more a tactic for those who fight regular faction ships, and not pod pilots.

Now I bet your head's hurtin' mighty good and you reckon that you just might try out a shield tank of your own! Or maybe you're just thinking that you're gonna stick with your Amarrian or Gallente armor tank. Either way you'll get your turn, as next week we'll be talking about the joys and sorrows of Armor Tanking!

'Till next time fellas! Fly safe! Fly smart!