Damage types

In New Eden, raw damage may come from countless varieties of weapons, but it always comes in one of four main damage types or any mix of those four types.

Overview

Usually damage from weapons come in combination of two damage types. Depending what kind of weapons you are using, you can change the damage type(s) you deliver by changing ammunition. As lasers do not use ammunition, they can only make electromagnetic and thermal damage. Some attack forms do only single type of damage (missiles and combat drones) but usually make good ammount of it.

Electromagnetic

Least resisted by shields, but most restied by armour.

Usually referred to as EM damage.

Thermal

Less resisted by shields, but more resisted by armour.

Not to be confused with heat damage when overloading modules.

Kinetic

Less resisted by armours, but more resisted by shields.

Explosive

Least resisted by armour, but most resisted by shields.

Racial preferences

Each of the four major races has a specific preferred damage type. Although most restrictions can be easily negated through unorthodox ship setups, the preferred damage type can be noticed in ship or fitting bonuses, such as in stealth bombers or doomsday devices.

Amarr

Being a heavy user of laser turrets usually do EM and thermal damage, with a strong emphasis on EM. All Amarr related single damage type weapons (such as combat drones) usually do EM damage.

Gallente

Prefer thermal damage. But due to heavy usage of hybrid turrets, kinetic damage comes as a close second.

Caldari

Prefer kinetic damage above all else, but due to the emphasis on the forementioned hybrid turrets, thermal also plays a strong part. It also must be noted that Caldari have a very unrestricted access to damage types through their strong emphasis on missile warfare.

Minmatar

The least restricted race when it comes to damage types. Their racial damage is explosive, but heavy emphasis on projectile turrets and missile warfare (where damage types can be chosen by selecting different ammo types) negates most limitations.