People seem to mean different things when they give a lable tanky or mix up different characteristics. I tend to think of how damage resistant a ship is (stopping the damage from happening) as separate from how much damage it can actually sustain before blowing up. this is important as damage resistance is very situational and suffers from significant levels of special cause variation, where as a ships ability to absorb damage is far less variable.

So what makes a ship damage resistant:

Brace defence token: special cause variation from, multiple attacks, intel officer, accuracy. ECM mitigated special cause variation on accuracy. Some ships have two, tokens mitigating some special cause variation of all types

Evade defence token: special cause variation as above + range. MM mitigates some range based special cause variation, suffers from wide levels of common cause variation at some ranges, MC30 title increases effectiveness, does not reduce SC variation.

A card that causes you to be obscured, special cause variation, anything that stops the card effect making you obscured.

Admonition...... Special cause variation: multiple attacks..... Mitigations against variation: the guy who gives you back a defence token.

Scramblers.... Suffers from wide levels of common cause variation, special cause variation: range, multiple attacks.

Lando same as scramblers without the range issue.

As we can see damage resistance can be effected by lots of issues so a ship may be almost immune to a specific pattern of damage, if you are at long range you can shot two red dice once a round at a titled mc30 all day and you will never damage it, you need to create a special cause ( as in shoot multiple times or close the range if you wish to damage it). Where as a ISD will have less damage resistance in this case (only its brace) so it will take some damage.

This is where tankiness comes in, or how much damage you can take.

Total shields available: this figure suffers from special cause variation: availability and number of redirects ( which suffers from the same special cause variation as brace tokens + xi7), and number of arcs being attacked.

Total hull, very little special cause variation on this, just motti.

Ability to manage crit effects, special cause variation: avalibility and numbers of contains ( suffers same special causes as brace token + crit effects caused by card effects)

Ability to self heal, special cause variation, some card effects, station, command dials, command tokens, some crit effect.

so the ability to take damage via hull in general suffers fare less from special cause variation than the ability to take damage from total Shields or healing.

From this we can conclude that when it works the ability to resist damage if far more potent that the ability to take or tank damage but it suffers from far more special cause variation. Also of the abilities that allow you to take damage hull is the most reliable with total shields and self healing both suffering from special cause variation. Therefore the most reliable tank in the game ( most resistant to someone hitting you with special cause variation) is an ISD with motti...... Surprise. This also shows why rebel ships with low hull, high shields and lots of damage resistance will either live through hell or die like a mayfly.

Although I would say I think the ISD2 is the more tankie Than the ISD1, ECM matters, and two blue fighter dice also matter to longevity.

Agreed. I didn't try to rank ships by tankiness, I was only comparing them with Interdictor and either variant of ISD wins (from my experience).

With Targeting Scramblers (that get consistent use) I rate it tankier than an ISD in situations where it's not being ganged up on by numerous ships.

Yes, exactly. Against a single ship it may be as good as ISD, however in a real life scenario its usually multiple ships concentrating on a same target.

MAYBE if you are talking about a game full of purely naked ships (Sounds kinky!)

In my local meta, people put upgrades on their ships, and XI7's are common, rendering that extra redirect somewhat useless. Dodonna is also extremely common, lending a ton of use to the two contains.

Considering You can give an Interdictor targeting scrambler (and the title if it's only 1), and people like Wulf Yularen, you've got far more tanky potential.

I'm talking real world tournamnets, real world fleets, real world experience. And even with XI7 and Dodonna ISD will survive longer than Interdictor with Scramblers.

Agree to disagree. Targetting scramblers are indeed only good for 1, (or 2 if Interdictor title) uses, but lets be honest you aren't going to have 3+ range 1 ships shooting at you most of the time, there are physical limitations on just how many ships can all be range 1 of you at once, and more often than not you face a staggered placement of ships.

Still, whatever works for you. ISDs are great either way.

I ran into this super tank issue last night. Liberty vs interdictor turn six no more liberty. The interdictor just sounded engineering it was sad....

I feel that the Interdictor has a few drawbacks that hurt it's ability to absorb damage. It's defence tokens aren't ideal; I'd much rather have double brace or double redirect over double contain. You aren't going to be taking criticals any time soon but I tend to worry more about raw damage taken than the odd critical hit. The biggest problem of the Interdictor, IMHO, is the fact that it doesn't get access to those defensive upgrades.

Use Captain Needa to change one of those contains into an evade.

Use Captain Needa to change one of those contains into an evade.

Pretty much SOP in my book.

I think the Double Contain is ripe for a certain Wave 5 Officer Rumour... because that is going to make a big difference if it does what has been speculated.

I think the Double Contain is ripe for a certain Wave 5 Officer Rumour... because that is going to make a big difference if it does what has been speculated.

Details, oh mysterious one?

Who cares how tanky it is?

With scrambles, projection experts and dat engineering, all your ships are tanky!

I think the Double Contain is ripe for a certain Wave 5 Officer Rumour... because that is going to make a big difference if it does what has been speculated.

Details, oh mysterious one?

The Very Left Most card has been speculated to allow you to use your Contain Tokens to prevent the Critical Effects of Upgrade Cards, rather than just the Default Critical.

Who cares how tanky it is?

With scrambles, projection experts and dat engineering, all your ships are tanky!

I agree with this to an extent. To make your ships "tanky", you have to spend ~100 points. Scramblers is good under the right conditions. It can make blanks appear, but I've also seen it increase the damage off red dice ever so slightly (1 damage). I like the idea of scramblers, but I am still meh on it. Granted it feels great to re-roll 4 hit/crit blacks to blanks and hits.

Projection experts aren't as good as I had hoped, because you are only moving 2 shields, which could keep your ships alive longer. But now you are using 1/4 of your points to prevent 2 damage per round instead of killing your opponent. My personal preference is to increase my damage output so I receive less damage later. And the Interdoctor isn't the best at dishing damage out unless you get a double arc.

I think the Interdoctor is really cool, but it doesn't quite feel right in a 6 round game. If there was no round restriction, you would get more mileage out of projection experts and scramblers.

The control Interdicter is different however. I feel it can be very powerful if utilized correctly (I have yet to do this...).