Armor/Shield compensation skills

[Mechanic category]
EM Armor Compensation / Explosive Armor Compensation / Kinetic Armor Compensation / Thermic Armor Compensation

[Engineering category]
EM Shield Compensation / Explosive Shield Compensation / Kinetic Shield Compensation / Thermic Shield Compensation

Note: Shield Compensation is not part of this group of skills; it affects shield boosters, as should be clear from it’s description.

All compensation skills work the same, only the resistance type varies per skill and whether it affects armor or shield resistances.

Explanation:
These skills affect two different types of modules, confusingly called ‘active hardeners’ and ‘passive hardeners’.
Usually when talking about resistance modules, all things referred to as ‘hardeners’ are active modules – meaning that these modules have to be activated ause capacitor to run. It are the modules in the categories Armor Hardeners and Shield Hardeners on the market (see how they are called ‘hardeners’ ingame too?).
‘Passive hardeners’ are resistance modules which do not use capacitor and do not have to be activated; they always have an effect when fitted, but their effect is smaller than the effect of hardeners. The passive modules are called Resistance Plating and Energized Plating for armor and Shield Resistance Amplifiers for shield.

Now that we’ve established which modules the skills have an effect on, let’s have a look at what effect they have exactly. Here the confusion only grows…

The “3% bonus per skill level” to hardeners only applies when the module is NOT active. It has no effect at all on the resistances when the module is actually doing what you’ve fitted it for – actively strengthening your resists; therefor this effect is generally regarded as pretty worthless except in cases where you’ve run out of capacitor or when you’re trying to use Invulnerability Fields as a (pretty weak) passive omni-tank.

So when your hardener is not active, you get a small increase (3% at level 1, 15% at level 5) in your resistances. The increase works the same as all increases to your resistances: it’s not simply added to your current resist but it’s substracted from the unresisted part. A couple of examples will explain that further.

WRONG: 30% resist before, put module with 15% effect on, 45% resist after
RIGHT: 30% + ( 70% * 0.15) = 30% + 10.5% = 40.5%
Formula: resistance + ((100 – resistance) * resistance added) = new resistance

(Note there’s also a stacking penalty when you’re using the same module more than once, but it goes too far to explain that here.)

You might think that you now know how the skill will work with passive modules too, unfortunately that’s not the case. The “5% bonus per skill level” for passive modules isn’t applied directly to the resistances, but to the effect of the modules! And again they’re not simply added, but they actually are percentage increase to the effect. So for example an explosion dampening amplifier ii which has a normal effect of 37.5% will have an effect of 37.5 * 1.25 = 46.88% if you have Explosive Shield Compensation at level 5. The 46.88% is then applied to the resistance as described above.

Some notes:
# These skills also affect modules which affect more than one resistance, such as invulnerability fields and energized adaptive nano membranes. Each skill will only affect the corresponding resistance effect of those modules.
# Tech 2 passive modules can get an effect which approaches the effect of hardeners, without using any capacitor.
# In my examples I have used level 5 of the skills to calculate new resists. It may or may not be worth to train these skills to level 5, depending on how much you rely on passive modules. Personally, I kept these skills at level 4 since I think I have more useful skills to train instead of taking these all the way up to 5.

Tactical Shield Manipulation

[Engineering category] Tactical Shield Manipulation

Skill description:

Quote:Skill at preventing damage from penetrating the shield, including the use of shield hardeners and other advanced shield modules. Reduces the chance of damage penetrating the shield when it falls below 25% by 5% per skill level, with 0% chance at level 5.

 
Tactical Shield Manipulation skill
Without that skill, if your shields are below 25%, some damage will leak past your shields and hit armour.
With that skill at level 5, your armour will not take any damage until your shields are completely down.

Explanation:
Whenever you get hit while your shields are below 25%, there is a chance your armor will take damage too. Some people think the damage gets spread between your shields and armor, but this armor damage is extra damage – for example if you take 100 damage while your shields are low, you might take the full 100 damage to your shields and a 50 extra damage to your armor.
What Tactical Shield Manipulation does is lowering the point where you can get damage bleeding through. At level 1 it’s at 20%, level 2 15%, level 3 10%, level 4 5%, and level 5 0% - meaning you’ll never get armor damage before your shields are completely down.

Some notes:
# No you will not be invulnerable if you train this skill to level 5 (as you now should understand).
# Generally this skill is considered pretty worthless since shield tankers usually keep their shields above 30% and armor tankers lose their shields very quickly and thus aren’t in the danger zone very long.
# A good reason to train this skill to level 4 is getting access to Tech 2 shield hardeners. The only reason to train this skill to level 5 is to be able train Capital Shield Operation.

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