Shield tanks have a lower maximum EHP than armor tanks. Shield tanking allows you to fit more damage mods to your tank while increasing its EHP. This allows you to build 'Sniper Tanks' - tanks with very high Alpha damage that can break other vehicles very quickly. However, they are softer than armor tanks, and will be brought down by AV weapons faster.

Armor tanks have a much higher EHP, and benefit from repairing modules that restore armor much faster than their shield variants. These tanks are very durable, but they are slow, and easy pickings for a shield tank fitting. Hope this helps,

PS

when you aim at a armor tank with a swarm launcher you get 129% efficency, on shields only 69%. You can find out how effective the weapon is against certain vehicles when you look at them. Not to hard to do.

Though something's up with how the swarm's damage is calculated. I have some experience flying dropships and a volley of swarms deals only some 400 damage to the shields, whereas it should deal 1200*0.69=828. Forgeguns deal their damage as designed, as far as I have experienced.

That's why armor dropships are in a much better place than shield dropships right now.

Dropships are a whole other lvl. Swarms have a efficency of around ~59% which is equal with the bolas. Then you have to consider if the dropship has resistance modules on it.

Interesting...my tanking corpmates have pretty much said the opposite in terms of overall effectiveness...that Armor Tanks rip apart Shield Tanks, but Shield Tanks are better against AV (need flux [EM] to take them out).

Dropships are a whole other lvl. Swarms have a efficency of around ~59% which is equal with the bolas. Then you have to consider if the dropship has resistance modules on it.

Interesting...my tanking corpmates have pretty much said the opposite in terms of overall effectiveness...that Armor Tanks rip apart Shield Tanks, but Shield Tanks are better against AV (need flux [EM] to take them out).

What I wish we had were the resistances and damage types listed...they make a world of difference in how effective certain builds are. Example: if armor is weak to explosive damage, AV being mostly explosive damage, but shields resist explosives...We need this data IMO

At close range, a blaster armor tank (the ideal AI tank) will shred a shield tank because blasters wreck shields.

Blasters do 100% damage against both shields and armor. If it's wrecking, it's because of higher EHP...

Just sayin'.

rails beat blaster at range / blaster beats rail up close

Guys, you have to look at the damage types vs. the inherant resistances of the tanks defense. in new eden we deal in 4 damage types:

EM (Electromagnetic)
Thermal
Kinetic
Explosive

Shields have increased resistance to kinetic and explosive damage while armor has increased resistances to EM and Thermal. Now take a look at the current ingame weapons and their ascociated damage types based upon the stated tech they use.

Laser Rifles - EM and Therm (yes, people use them to great effect vs shield tanks for this reason)
Forgegun - Kin and Therm (based on it being a railgun type weapon thus placing it in the hybrid class)
Blaster turret - Kin and Therm (also placed in the hybrid weapon class)
Railgun - Kin and Therm (hybrid still xD)
Swarmlauncher / missile turrets - Kin and Exp damage
AV Grenades - Kin and Exp
Flux Grenades - EM (possibly Them?)

that being said, look into the damage type your using vs what your trying to combat. in all reality, armor vs shield doesnt really mean anything as a well thought out AV assault using the proper damage types and tactics will take out anything. yes, armor tanks are much tankier, but their also much slower, while shield tanks cant absorb as much punishment, but have a bit more agility to compensate allowing them to "dance". also, shields regen, armor doesnt. its these balancing factors that make no one tank type superior to another, it just depends on the skill of the tanker vs the skill of the infantry hes facing.

another thing on weapon types vs other weapon types, if we look at the way new eden weapon systems work, all weapon groups have a longrange and short range variations.

long / short
Rail /blaster
beam laser / pulse laser (laser rifle / scrambler pistol)
artillery / autocannon

long range weapon types generally have high alpha damage, but poor DPS, where short range weapon systems require you to get closer, but have much better DPS in general (balanced by their short range nature) so basically:

armor tanks more hits, shield is more agile and has natural regen
rails beat blaster at range / blaster beats rail up close
missiles are just funky like that

EDIT: im sure my grammar and spelling is just plain absurd, please be nice :)

I'm going to have to disagree with this one, the rail will out alpha a blaster tank at close range

Like I said before we need the damage and resistance values displayed somewhere in the Neocom, for weapons, vehicles and dropsuits. I do agree with the damage types you've stated for the guns except for the swarms and AV...I would think they're doing explosive or kinetic rather than explo/kin...missiles could be any damage, but I'd guess they're either doing explosive or kinetic damage in Dust (definitely not EM, though). And based on what others say, we may have forge guns doing EM damage primarily or secondarily...I would hope not, since they are technically hybrid turrets and I don't know of any hybrid ammo that does EM damage (or explosive, for that matter...actually makes me wonder why they're AV when they shouldn't do either damage that's generally great against armor or shield, pure damage aside)...

I would really like ammo types, even if its just one for each damage type for the weapons that can have all of them, and resistance values displayed. Makes the game a little more complex...but those who are serious will figure it out if they don't know already and just make the game better...

again, ur right on rails havign much higher alpha, but they also have a much higher heat build up and a decent cooldown period, so if a blaster tank manages to survive the initial onslaught from a rail tank, its liable to be game over for the rail do to the blaster sheer DPS potential

again, ur right on rails havign much higher alpha, but they also have a much higher heat build up and a decent cooldown period, so if a blaster tank manages to survive the initial onslaught from a rail tank, its liable to be game over for the rail do to the blaster sheer DPS potential

This used to be true, a few builds ago prior to introducing damage mods and damage skills.

I will tell you as of right now with shield tanks a rail will beat the blaster every time, as long as both drivers have the same sp and whatnot

now that i think back, your right in that missiles are "most likely" only one damage type. thank you for pointing that out :)

i would assume that the missiles fire kinetic damage due to their prevailance on caldari tanks and caldari styled launchers, and mechanics wise, it would make more sense if they were kinetic, that way, their still less effective vs shields, but not completely useless like they would be if they were explosive

EDIT: on the forgegun note, the description states that its based on rail tech, so id be REALLY surprised if it was doing EM damage... especially since the only weapons that do EM/KIN dam are projectiles.... at least as far as EVE is concerned. i would imagine that they would not mix up their formula for damage types now. hence my assumption that forgeguns are Therm/Kin

2nd EDIT: Hybrids have always been a nice middleground weapon, being relatively effective vs armor AND shield, but not proficient vs either one or the other, hence their KIN/Therm dam

Missiles do explosive damage so yes they are more effective against armor. But it has just to many drawbacks like slower rate of fire then railguns, less accuracy, very slow flight time and with that easy to evade (well at least the large missiles). Personally when you really insist on using a shield tank with a large blaster turret then put 2 cyclic small missile launchers on it aswell. Some extra firepower against armor tanks is allways usefull.

Are you sure they do explosive damage? Missiles can do pure Kinetic, Thermal, EM or Explosive in EVE, no reason they won't do any one of them here. Without testing, though, we can't be sure what they do, and we can pretty safely rule out Therm and EM...

If you did the testing, please say so and then ignore what I said here...

I dont tank but id say listen to him. Few times ive grouped w/ slap its always entertaining. The nastiest event was when the we were in ambush last build, the other team took out 3 tanks right away (sag, mad, soma). Slap called in his rail tank, i jumped in gunner and w/in one minute there was only one tank left on the field.

A skilled rail user is deadly even in cqb areas