Resistance is Futile

Granger of Agony Unleashed had an excellent post on our internal forums last week regarding base ship resistances by race/class. This is one of those topics that I knew some of the details for, but never really dug in to fully understand the various impacts in detail. With permission I include below the complete post:

Well actually, resistance is anything but futile.

Simply described - resists reduce the amount of damage your ship actually takes compared to what is delivered. Example:

A Drake shoots a Kinetic missile at you for 100 damage. You have shield resist of 75% to Kinetic, so you only take 25 damage.

The knock-on effect is that increased resists also makes self-reps (Armor Repairers, or Shield Boosters) more effective, as well as remote reps from logistics, due to the reduction in received damage. Thus, increased resists not only increases your base EHP but also results in more effective repairing, unlike adding hitpoints through plates/trimarks or extenders/field extenders (unless of course you don't have enough buffer to allow the reps to land, but that is another topic).


One thing that seems to be frequently misinterpreted is how the various ship classes compare in terms of resists. Well, they all follow the same pattern. I am going to concentrate on armor here to try and keep it simple, but will list shield base stats too. All profiles are listed EM-The-Kin-Exp just like in EFT

BASE
Shield 0-20-40-50
Armor 50-35-25-10

Now - the way armor works through the classes is that all hulls have some level of improved defence against the primary damage type of their natural enemy. So, the natural enemy of the Caldari are the Gallente. Gallente primary damage type is Thermal (think drones). So, all Caldari ships have some extent of improved resist against Thermal. Likewise vice-versa, and of course for Minmatar-Amarr. Each race also has a secondary damage type. The primary and secondary damage types are listed below.

Race - Primary - Secondary
Amarr - EM - The
Caldari - Kin - The
Gallente - The - Kin
Minmatar - Exp - Kin

So - how does this improved defence apply across the ship classes?

Vanilla T1
NB this rule applies to all T1 hulls, from Frigates to Titans. Each race gets a 10% modifier in Armor to the primary damage type of their natural enemy. Thus, the T1 hulls get for armor:

Amarr 50-35-25-20
Caldari 50-45-25-10
Gallente 50-35-35-10
Minmatar 60-35-25-10

That's the easy part out of the way, as for the T2 ship hulls, both shield and armor get a buff, in both primary and secondary damage types. It depends on ship class, though thankfully makes sense in that light fast ships (Inty, Dictor, EAF) get slightly less bonus compared to those we usually associate with massive tank (HIC, Command Ship). As there are so many combinations, I am going to concentrate on Amarr Armor only from now on.


Interceptor / Covert Ops / Interdictor
These receive the smallest of all the T2 ship class buffs, an additional 10% in primary damage type only over the T1 hulls:
Amarr 50-35-25-30 (NB EFT will tell you different for the Malediction, but that is because it gets 5% resist bonus per level of Amarr Frigate skill)

Black Ops
Oddly, receives a smaller bonus to primary damage type than an Inty, but also a small bonus to secondary:
Amarr 50-35-28.75-28

Stealth Bomber / Marauder
Receive a bigger bonus to primary damage type and also a small bonus to secondary:
Amarr 50-35-34.4-40

Electronic Attack Frigate / Force Recon
As above, but now a bigger bonus to primary damage type and also a small bonus to secondary:
Amarr 50-35-43.8-60

Combat Recon / Field Command Ship
Amarr 50-35-53.1-70
(Similar to Malediction, EFT will tell you the Absolution does better, but again it's due to the 5% resist bonus per level)

AF / HAC / HIC / Logistics Cruiser / Tech 3 / Fleet Command
Amarr 50-35-62.5-80
(Again EFT will tell you the Damnation/Devoter does better due to the 5% resist bonus per level. You can also fit the resist Sub to the T3)


As I say the same traits are applied to shield as well as Armor, making it easier to make balanced Armor tankers from Amarr T2, whereas Minnie T2 make balanced shield tankers. Caldari/Gallente are a bit oddball in that given they are strong to The/Kin and Kin/The respectively, it means they have a huge hole left. However, once plugged, it does mean they can fit very strong tanks with good resist across the board, simply by fitting an EM Screen on a shield fit or an Explosive Hardener on an armor fit.


Hope that was worthwhile.