The problem is in Freelancer there is no "hull tank" or "shield tank" or "evasion tank". Everyone is a so-called "Omni-tank". Personally I wouldn't even call it tanking at all. Tanking denotes drawing attacks towards yourself and absorbing the hits so that your weaker party members can DPS. NPCs target people at random, and players are more likely to kill the easier opponents first. This makes so-called 'tanking' in Freelancer irrelevant. Freelancer is not an MMORPG, we don't have "Tanks, Mages, DPS and Healers." The best method of defense is evasion, but when that fails you have your shield, and when that fails you have your hull. Every ship in the game, including battleships, fly on the same game mechanic. Battleships are basically over-glorified fighters, and even they are capable of evasion to a certain extent.