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

Electromagnetic damage refers to damage caused by the induction of high-voltage electrical currents, usually resulting from intense radiation of coherent wavelengths. Very effective against standard shield technology, but largely ineffective against the metal composites used in ship armour.

Usually referred to as EM damage.

Thermal

Thermal damage is caused when the energy states of the particles making up a ship's structure are increased to an unsustainable level, causing them to break the bonds that hold them in place. In layman's terms, you heat it up till it melts, explodes, or catches fire. Fairly effective against the loosely held particles in shields, less effective against the more compact solids that form a ship's armour.

Not to be confused with heat damage when overloading modules.

Kinetic

The oldest method of causing damage: smack it with something. In spaceship combat, "something" is typically a reasonably dense lump of matter, accelerated to near-light speeds by a mass driver of some sort. Shields are designed to repel micrometeorites, so they tend to be reasonably effective at resisting kinetic damage, with armour a close second.

Explosive

Explosive damage results from shock waves released by the sudden, violent dispersal of a quantity of matter, usually the result of a chemical or atomic reaction. The "solar wind" poured out by the stars at the center of every solar system is a low-intensity type of explosive damage, which shields naturally resist very well, though they can be overloaded with sufficient additional pressure. Armour, on the other hand, tends to shatter and occasionally even spald from explosive damage.

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.