Fitting has never been something well documented in EVE, and you probably run across more people criticizing your fits, instead of helping you make it better. So in this article I'm going to try to go over everything I can offer in terms of learning to fit. Everything from different types of tanks, to optimizing your fits for the best functionality. I will mention that this guide was made over the course of several writing sessions due to continuously coming back to it wanting to add more to it, and might add more later if any of it turns out to be lacking in a certain area.
Introduction
First off let's go over some simple aspects behind fitting. First off a good portion of skills effect your fitting. Such skills include Engineering, Electronics, Electronic Upgrades, Weapon Upgrades, Advanced Weapon Upgrades, and more. The reason I bring this up is if you use a fitting tool like EFT, or Pyfa, make sure to import your character so that you know what your character can actually fly. After your fitting skills reach level 5, you might using the "All 5" template on the fitting tool, and might find that some ships still don't fit like expected. The reason is because of a skill we all overlook, Shield Upgrades V. There is no real reason to spend the time to level this to 5, aside from certain fits requiring it, but most of the time it's a waste of time. I would suggest to continue using your character's API to fit with, or change the "Sheild Upgrades" to 4 in the "All 5" profile.
Fitting Skills
Just to get it out of the way, I'll list the skills that effect your CPU and PowerGrid. These are the skills that you want to at least get to a decent level in order to fit ships more efficiently.
Electronics: Max CPU
Engineering: Max PG
Weapon Upgrades: Turret CPU use
Advanced Weapon Upgrades: Turret PG use
Shield Upgrades: PG (Shield Upgrade Modules)
Electronic Upgrades: CPU (Electronic Upgrade Modules)
Energy Grid Upgrades: CPU (Energy Grid Upgrade Modules)
Fitting Tools
Before we go any further I would suggest you grab a fitting tool if you do not already. Such tools include Pyfa, and EFT. This is going to be your best friend for learning to fit ships in EVE. I do want to point out that the EHP shown in EVE, and shown in a fitting tool are completely different. In the game itself EHP is calculated for the lowest resist, while the fitting tool shows "Overall EHP".
PvE vs PvP
As you may already know you need to fit the ship how you plan to use it. If you plan to do ratting you want to fit your ship a certain way, and if you plan to PvP you want to fit it another. Basically you need to know what you plan to use your ship for, and never try to fit for both PvE and PvP. Doing so will hinder your fit, making it weak compared to a optimized fit.
Slot Layout
As we look at the ship we plan to fit, we always need to get a mental picture of what the fit could accommodate. We do this by looking at the slot layout of the ship. Depending on the purpose of the ship we need to remember what each slot type uses.
High Slots: Weapons, Drone Range, Energy Weapons, Bombs, Warfare Links
Medium Slots: Shield Modules, Electronic Warfare Modules, Sensor Upgrades, Propulsion Modules, Cap Boosters
Low Slots: Armor Modules, Damage Modules, Drone Damage Modules, Tracking Modules, Hull Modules
With the lists above we can see what we can use, and depending on the number of slots allocated for each determines where our strong points are. When looking at the slot list the medium and low slots will help determine the type of tank. Generally with cruisers and larger, four slots is the minimum for a tank, and even then you may want more depending on the ship's function. If the ship has significantly more low slots than medium it may be an obvious armor tank, and vice verse for shield. Frigates are an exception, and will be covered on their own later.
Tank Types
Now we need to decide the type of tank we want to use in the fit. Let me first go over the types of tanks we can use.
Active Tank
An Active Tank consists of a ship using modules to replenish a certain type of hit points. We use active tanks in PvE and Solo PvP.
Buffer Tank
Buffer Tanks are ships used with passive modules giving the best EHP possible on the ship. These are used for PvP, allowing the ship to withstand damage even when the capacitor is dead. These are usually paired with resistance modules to allow for easy logistics repairs.
HP Tank Types
Shield Tank
Shield Tanking is used with many different ships with a high medium slot count. Doing such is done with using shield extenders, shield hardeners, and shield boosters to allowing for fast paced shield regeneration. Using such allows for long-range weapon use, and very high DPS, paired with high speed.
This is one of the more popular types of fits for PvE and PvP. The reason being is that an active shield tank can do great against NPCs, and with PvP allows a ship to be filled with damage mods, and tracking enhancers in the lows giving long range with high DPS. The down-side is that the total EHP is low compared to an armor tank.
Armor Tank
Armor Tanking is used usually paired with ships with high low slot counts making them as strong as a brick wall. Doing such allows the pilot to give their armor HP extreme resists, but with slow recovery. Such tanking is used for short-ranged, medium DPS, extremely high EHP, but lacks in speed.
Armor tanking really shows such issues in the way that mass in increased with modules, and repair modules have a much longer activation delay. Using low slots for armor modules also keeps a ship from filling up with weapon mods. On the good side it provides a great tank, especially for solo PvP.
Hull Tank
Hull Tanking is what separates the men from the criminally insane. This is a highly deceptive type of tank, allowing the pilot to put the tank on their structure HP. There is not much reason to use this over other tanks aside from bragging rights.
Speed Tank
Speed Tanking is the main tank for most frigates, and assault ships. Usually these are accompanied by buffer tanks to give some sort of EHP, but use their base speed to their advantage disallowing other ships to ever hit them.
Speed Tanking is great for solo PvP, but requires a great deal of understanding of the mechanics. A pilot unable to manually maneuver their ship might not find this to be a beneficial type of fit.
Fitting Rules
There are a few things to keep in mind when fitting ships. The most important thing is to understand the diminishing returns that modules have. When you use two or more of the same module the module effect will quickly decrease. Normally modules like weapon upgrades, and active tank modules you only want to put in pairs, and very rarely more of the same type. The reason being is that they 3rd module will only have about 30% of it's actual effect. This is easy to remedy when fitting tanks. The reason being is that there are so many different types of modules to use.
PvE Rules
In PvE you want to be able to have an active tank that can last as much as possible, while still able to push out DPS. Not only that, you want range. Obviously this has "shield tank" written all over it, and armor tanks can work as well (Cruise Typhoon), but to make it simple we will stick with the previous. The reason for this is that we want the quick booster time, lots of room for damage mods, a semi-stable capacitor, and maybe a damage control. The whole point of PvE is trying to last through a constant barrage of incoming damage, while turning it right back around. Range does not have to be turrets, but can be missiles, or drones. We also want to make sure we reserve a medium slot for a propulsion module as well.
PvP Rules
With PvP the fit needs to change quite a bit. Most of the time the fit needs to cater to some sort of electronic warfare; like a warp scram and web. To add, a propulsion mod is mandatory.
Pairing Rules
Even though many modules do not stack giving diminishing returns, there are still modules that do not. For instance the Adaptive Invulnerability Field, and damage specific hardeners do not cause penalties. Armor hardeners, and armor resistance plating do not as well. On the other end, there are things that do stack like damage rigs, and weapon upgrades.
HP Modules
Shield Extenders and Armor Plates do not have effect penalties at all, so you can use several at once. Unfortunately you can get more EHP combining them with hardeners. The reason being is that the EHP that is created from resists is multiplied from the passive EHP the ship has. The HP mods add to this allowing you to get even more out of your hardeners. In your fitting tool pick a cruiser, and add a Medium Shield Extender II, and record the EHP increase. Next, remove the extender, and add a Adaptive Invulnerability Field II, and record the EHP increase. Now add the extender with the invuln, add the two recorded values together, and notice as your total EHP on the fitting tool is about 2k more than what they do separately.
Gun Groups
First and foremost for guns is to always match your meta levels, and gun types on any ship. The reason for this is that if you don't, you're taking away from the maximum potential of the ship you're dealing with. If you use mismatched meta level guns, you're going to be stuck with multiple groups of guns. While many may think that multiple groups are fine, you need to remember that the collective burst damage critical hits are based off the group, meaning the more there are the more you'll hit for.
Gun Types
Basically dealing with the same principle as the gun meta levels, matching the type of gun (long range, short range), will also come into play. If you find yourself fitting both short and long range, and it's not a ship where there aren't enough turret hardpoints (like a typhoon), you need to decide what role your ship is going to take. Long range burst damage, or short range continuous damage.
Fitting Practices
Resist Fitting
Now that we've covered the types of tanks, we should go over some basic fitting procedures. First off if you're fitting for PvE specifically for missions or ratting, you are going to want to fit an active shield tank. The reason being is that a shield tank can offer quick and easy boosts of HP, usually every 3 seconds. Not only that you can then fit the ship with several damage mods, and tracking enhancers to increase range and DPS.
One more term we want to cover is a Nano Fit. A nano fit is when you setup resists for all types of damage. Usually when doing something like missions, you want to setup a nano fit since you never know what type of NPC you will be up against. If you are ratting in asteroid belts, or anomalies, you might consider covering resists against the type of NPCs in the area. Regardless our damage type holes need to be filled (low resist).
Fit Testing
Now that we have an idea of how we want to fit, we can then jump into the fitting tool to start trying out some different fits. First we pick an ship, and fit as much as we can that compliments the bonuses of that ship. For instance, a combat ship with bonus to weapon damage, and range. We want to first fit the guns, and weapon upgrades to get the desired outcome from that ship. Once this is done we can start adding the tank, and see what might be changed to make it fit better. Basically start with the bonuses which are the most important first. Doing this will give you an idea of how a ship actually fits.
Gun Types
Sometimes you may find yourself going back to the guns to downgrade; this is fine. If you find yourself in this situation, keep in mind the powergrid use and watch the amount of PG on the ships you choose. By doing such you can then look for certain amounts of PG for certain gun layouts.
Optimized Fitting
Like we said earlier we also want to fit around the ship's slots. If a ship has more low slots than medium, we generally want to do an armor tank, but if it has more medium we go for an armor. This isn't always the case, but one thing to keep in mind is that the best tank will consist of two HP mods, two active hardeners, and two nano hardeners. With fits we save a medium slot for a prop mod, and a low slot for a damage control; this gives the most EHP. With ships that have seven or eight slots we do not want to stray away from using more than two of the same mods for the tank. Only with weapon modules do you want to use up to 3 modules, and rarely a fourth. Play around with this concept in your fitting tool to see just how much tank you get, or how much more DPS.
Applied Optimization
To give an idea of an optimized fit, I setup a Rorqual for massive EHP. The tank consists of two Adaptive Invulnerability Field II's, two EM Ward Field II's, one Kinetic Deflection Field II, one Thermic Deflection Field II, and one Damage Control II. Go ahead and switch hardeners around, and see how the tank changes only switching out the modules listed.
CPU and Powergrid
It's almost an unwritten rule that if you have all of your fitting skills taken care of that you should never use powergrid and CPU upgrades on cruisers or larger that are not using artillery, or are not logistics. The reason behind this is that the majority of the time you are wasting slots for minimal return. Every now and then you may find yourself using a Power Diagnostic System (for shield tank), or Reactor Control Unit for artillery fits. Most any other fit you should be able to do without these, or with a small CPU/PG implant. If it's a frigate a Auxiliary Power Control will probably be mandatory anyways.
Low Capacitor Fits
For ships like logistics fits, and some various others (*cough* phantasm), some sort of capacitor regeneration is mandatory. For logistics, using Capacitor Control Circuit rigs are a huge must to allow the ship to run all remote repair modules constantly. While filling the ship full of cap batteries, and relays may seem ok, it's best to use Reactor Control Units to add to the cap regen, powergrid, and shield recharge to help justify the slot use. If you are fitting logi for PvE it's best to fit the logi as close to stable as possible, or at least stable for a pilot with level 5 skills. For PvP you will want to sacrifice stability for tank. Generally a 25k-35k+ tank for shield fleets, and ~45k for armor is what you are aiming for when fitting for PvP.
For other ships like solo PvP active tanked ships, you want to use a single cap booster, paired with Ancillary shield/armor repairers to reduce your capacitor use. If you are fitting for PvE like an AFK rattlesnake mission runner, you will want to use whatever you can to become cap stable with your tank repping constantly. At this time you may look into CCC rigs, and cap relays/batteries/rechargers.
Ranged Fits
With ranged fits you are usually looking at shield tanks. The reason being is that ranged ships want the low slots for tracking enhancers to increase the optimal and falloff range, while using damage upgrades, with a damage control to increase resist. The same goes for sentry drone ships. A lot of the time you may also want to allocate another medium slot for a sensor booster.
Speed Fits
This is the solution for those annoying kiting ships. Unless it's a missile driven boat (and even then at times), a speed/buffer tanked ship will easily give the kiter much grief. Generally frigates using this fit can easily fit a light armor buffer, ewar, and a little rate of fire with rigs to make a great speed tanked ship. Cruiser sized ships may want to use nanofibers to give it the speed tank paired with a light shield buffer, paired with rate of fire and tracking mods. Assault Ships and Heavy Assault Cruisers make up the majority of these ships, making T3 BC's cry when dealing with a pilot that watches transversal.
Fitting Frigates
Fitting frigates is a completely different process. Most every frigate you will want to use a Auxiliary Power Control Unit to boost the PG/CPU high enough to accommodate better modules. Another thing to note is that most of the time you will want to use armor/speed tanks do to the lack of slots. If it's a PvP ship, you will want to have at least one prop mod, a point, and maybe a web. This leaves nothing for a shield tank at all.
Fitting Everything Else
The majority of the time you're going to want to setup a fairly basic "cookie cutter" layout to start, and from there you can tweak your fit to your liking. Always do this in your fitting tool, and if you go over the max CPU/PG just continue on until you're done with the following steps:
Step 1. Add your guns
Step 2. Add your prop mod
Step 3. Add The main part of the tank. Shield Extenders/Armor Plates, Shield Booster/Armor Repairer
Step 4. Add any resistance modules needed. Shield/armor hardeners, Adaptive Invulnerability Field/Adaptive Nano Membranes
Step 5. Add your damage/rate of fire/electronic warfare modules
This is just a basic way to start fits. It gives you a fairly good outlook on what part of your fit may need to be sacrificed. We start with the guns since they are what makes the ship what it is in the finished product. The prop mod shows you what you have left for tank in terms of powergrid. Once you setup your tank it's fairly obvious what is left, and what you might need to do in order to make your fit work.
Group Fits
It may not seem like much, but you would be surprised how much of a difference a fit can be when dealing with a solo ship, versus a large group fit. Generally any large group is going to fit one way for large fights; huge buffer/resist tank, high DPS, or burst DPS. While that may seem extremely simple, there are a few things that change versus your usual solo/small group fits. The one example that sticks out in my mind the most is a long range armor tanking fit. Basically HUGE tank, with lots of burst DPS, but slow. The group is anticipating to take in lots of damage, but leave room for the logistics to cover. The long range DPS gives the group the ability to have large burst damage numbers, without damage modules; only leaving medium slots for anything related to guns. The whole point of group fits is that they are made for exactly that, large amounts of people. If you find yourself doing such fits don't look at the ships as individuals, but look at each ship fit as it's number multiplied by the amount of people you plan to have. Oddly enough a lot of people, including myself have been guilty of looking at ships as if they were all individual roles. Think of the group as one entity, or even consider a group a single dreadnought/carrier that can hit smaller ships easily.
Summary
One thing I've always thought was missing from various guides was why we fit what we did, how we did. Now that we've covered that, I will start posting fits, and why I fit it the way that I fit the ship being presented. If you still have questions about fitting after this article, please let me know so that I can update the article. After years of fitting, I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the questions I asked myself when I started, or even a year ago. I hope that the wait for this article has been worth it, and await your comments. Enjoy, and fit safe. o7
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