EVE Online Damage Types - Read about four types of Damage

There are four different damage types and damage resistances in EVE Online: Electromagnetic (EM), Kinetic, Thermal, and Explosives. All ammunition in EVE Online (as it’s ammunition that is responsible for the type of damage your weapon deals) can deal one (or two) of this damage types (in various proportion). Every ship in EVE has different resistances against each of them (and every defensive layer has a weakness against certain types of damage, for example, shields are usually weak against electromagnetic damage).

If you know what kind of ship your enemy flies and what weapons it will use, you can prepare yourself beforehand to best use your strength and your enemies weaknesses to your advantage.

Different types of turrets can deal different types of damage (only Projectile Turrets and Missiles can use ammunition for all kinds of damage).

Laser (Beam/Pulse): EM and Thermal damage
Hybrid (Rail/Blaster): Thermal and Kinetic damage
Projectile: All kinds of damage
Drones: All kinds of damage, Amarr drones deal EM, Gallente drones deal Thermal, Caldari drones deal Kinetic and Minmatar drones deal Explosive damage
Missiles: All kinds of damage

Just like player ships, NPC vessels have individual damage types and resistances. Planning for this is crucial for higher level mission running or asteroid belt “ratting”. Maximizing your effectiveness will not only make missions easy but also you will be able to complete them faster.

Angel Cartel: Angel Cartel ships are most susceptible to both explosive and kinetic damage while dealing mostly explosive damage (62%) with a little bit of kinetic (22%)
​​​​​​Blood Raiders: Bloods are best to shoot at with EM and thermal rounds. Raiders deal even spread of EM and thermal damage.
Guristas Pirates: Focus on hitting them with kinetic or thermal slugs and resist mostly kinetic (with a tiny mix of thermal)
Mordu’s Legion: Pretty similar to Guristas with one exception: instead of kinetic/thermal focus on kinetic/em damage type.
Rogue Drones: Those pilotless robots are best to be disposed of using EM and thermal ammo but its hard to properly prepare resistances against them as Rogue Drones deal all kinds of damage.
Sansha Nation: Kill with EM and thermal and set your resistances to the same
Serpentis: Weak against kinetic and thermal damage while dealing the same type spread evenly.

CONCORD: Weak against kinetic and thermal while dealing omni damage (omni damage type is all types of damage at the same time
Equilibrium Of Mankind: this rare type of rats has only one weakness: kinetic damage while also dealing mostly (74%) kinetic.
Sleepers: Shoot them with anything and resist everything as much as you can, those guys deal omni damage and have omni resistances.
Sansha’s Nation (Incursion Version): Same as above: omni damage, omni resistances.
Amarr Empire: Kill those holy guys with EM thermal damage while resisting the same
Caldari State: Weak to kinetic/thermal dealing kinetic/thermal damage
Gallente Federations: exactly the same as Caldari State
Minmatar Republic: Susceptible to explosive and kinetic damage while dealing mostly explosive damage (and 31% kinetic)

If you want all this in a neat little chart go here (http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/damage_types.php)

There you have it folks, all you need to know about damage types in EVE Online PVE. For PVP it varies, you mostly want to play to your strengths as it is hard to predict enemy resistances, you will need extensive knowledge of EVE Online ships. Always carry various types of ammo to adjust to the situation on the battlefields. Keep your D-scans running and fly safe o7