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Tanking on shields, armor and hull
Usually a ship will only tank with it's either its shields or armour. Tanking with both duplicates modules such as repairers hence wasting slots, and is therefore rarely done. Tanking with hull is uncommon because hull repairers have low repair rates and tanking on structure leaves little room for error.
Hitpoint buffer tanking
Hitpoint buffer tanking utilizes a ship's hitpoints to absorb damage before a hostile is destroyed or until it is possible to warp out. A hitpoint buffer tank can be improved by either fitting hitpoint boosting modules or by increasing the resistance of the ship to damage.
This technique is common in situations where the hostiles do a high amount of damage, but are not themselves heavily tanked. Thus it is possible to destroy enough hostiles to reduce damage to a sustainable level before the tank is broken.
It is also commonly used in situations where a high amount of damage is expected in a short time, for example when doomsdayed.
Active tanking
Active tanking refers to the use of shield boosters, armor repairers, and hull repairers to actively replace hitpoints that have been destroyed by damage. Resistance modules can also be used in active tanking arrangements. This reduces the amount of damage taken and thus the amount of hitpoints that needs to be repaired.
As active modules consume capacitor, and this makes them susceptible to loss of capacitor. Some arrangements minimize exposure to damage, by warping to safety for example. This allows damage to be repaired over a long time. Other arrangements seek to permanently run repairers by providing sufficient capacitors. This may involve the use of modules which increase capacitor recharge rate. Other arrangements require the temporary use of a repairer.
Remote repairing
Remote repairing is a special example of active repairing. It uses remote repairing modules fitted to other ships to repair damage. Logistics ships and carriers both receive bonuses that improve their ability to remote repair other ships.
The use of large numbers of remote repairing ships in a gang is known as spider tanking. Using this method it is possible to obtain repair rates far in excess of what is possible with self repair. Spider tanking is also highly resistant to being countered, for example by energy neutralizing or by jamming.
Passive tanking
Passive tanking refers to the use of passive shield recharge to resist damage. As the shields recharge automatically, no intervention is required to tank. This lowers pilot workload.
Passive tanks can be improved by increasing shield hitpoints (e.g. by fitting shield extenders, or power diagnostic systems), or by fitting modules which increase the rate of recharge (e.g. shield power relays).
Although all ships passive tank to some extent, only a small number of ships are suited to the exploitation of passive tanking. Examples of such ships include the Drake and Onyx.
Meta tanking techniques
Meta tanking techniques involve avoiding damage all together.
Speed tanking involves using a ship's speed to avoid damage. In extreme cases, fast ships such as interceptors can avoid damage from most ships. Although, even ships at conventional speeds can reach speeds sufficient to exceed the tracking of battleship guns, capital guns and pos guns.
Range tanking involves staying out of range of hostile weapons systems.
EW tanking refers to the use of various weapon systems to jam other ships targeting systems, reduce their targeting range or speed, or reduce the tracking of their guns in combination with speed tanking.
Cloak tanking involves the use of a cloak to avoid being detected all together.
