The russ is not advance. It's rustic rugged and reliable, but not advance. Though you could still argue it's best.

 Archonate wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Imperial Warp technology is to the Tau what Eldar Warp technology is to the Imperium.

Fair to say. But it can be argued that without Navigators or the Astronomican, the Imperium would have no Warp travel period... Whereas the Tau have engineered ways around such dependencies.

Humans had warp travel before the astronomicon, and still have to rely on the less precise (and thus slower and more careful) method out where the signal is weak. The Tau tech is like a primitive version of the earliest human warp technology.

Imperial laser technology is also superior.

I assume you have a source to back this claim up? I mean, laser technology is pretty simple. As I understand it, Tau have decided that their use of plasma and electromagnetic weaponry yields better results and requires less power. I think if the Imperium had better laser tech, then they would be the ones with Markerlights... But the concept of laser guidance is too advanced for them. They only know how to produce simple hot lasers.

Imperial plasma tech is both more compact and more powerful than Tau (fluffwise, it only blows up if you start it generating plasma and then *don't* fire it, so it's not really all that unstable either) and the Imperium uses railguns on ships, where their disordinately large power requirements aren't an issue. The lasgun is simply a marvel of engineering, being powerful, compact, cheap, and logistically trivial to operate en mass.

Most Imperial technology is actually superior to Tau technology.

I hear this a lot, but in all the fluff studying I've done on the subject, I find this claim completely untenable, except by the rabid anti-Tau movement who's justifications wander down strange paths, far outside the established canon.

Tau tech is bulkier than its Imperial equivalent, and suffers in any number of other ways too, as the individual case may be. Since the fluff doesn't concern itself with logistics, we don't know how sustainable the Tau military is in an engagement where they're not basically just defending an ammo dump, but unless the new codex brings them some magical new handwavium, we can assume it's nowhere near as much so as tanks that can run on anything that will burn, and infantry weapons that can be reloaded by exposing them to sunlight.

I have heard the two techs compared to Miscrosoft and Apple.
The Imperium gets things done with lots of power cords and clutter.
The Tau get the same job done without all the mess.
Which would just make it mostly a matter of aesthetics. Tau getting the same jobs done with neater, more compact devices.
I can't decide whether that's an accurate parallel or not though.

The Imperium gets things done with a messy but compact package, while the Tau get parts of it done, and shove all the mess into a larger, more expensive package. Since the only difference between Apple and every other manufacturer out there is that Apple products cost more and have shinier chassis, it's not a very good comparison all around.

The Russ's most defining Characteristics....

1) Can probably take a beating and still fight back...
2) Expendable
3) Numbers and Production ease

Its designed to be robust and rugged, it can fight without problem in whatever enviroment and whatever world you care to put it on. Sure it has some glaring design problems, but who cares... Its expendable. Sure it has design features reminiscent of obsolete ww1 tanks... but who cares, it can kick out more fire power than almost any other tank its size.
And if it does come up against Superior opposition.... its not just 1 on 1, its 2 or 3 Russ to 1 Hammerhead etc

Lives, manpower and material... inconsequential... Just as long as lts capable of getting the job done.
And thats what the Russ excels at. Throwing enough firepower out to drop whatever it has to deal with in whatever environment you care to fight in, and if you lose 4 of them out of a Squadron of 8 to accomplish the objective... Mission is complete.

nomotog wrote:
The russ is not advance. It's rustic rugged and reliable, but not advance. Though you could still argue it's best.

It's a tall, flat box with fairly thin armor yet it's ridiculously hard to kill. That speaks a great deal to how advanced its armor is, and to how well designed its internals are. Fluffwise, it also boasts rather sophisticated communication, targeting, and navigation tech, not to mention the ubiquitous soft ai ("machine spirit") that's in any large Imperial machine, and systems in place to allow self-repair under the guidance of a tech-priest. Can Tau vehicles and battlesuits fix themselves by being talked through it by an engineer?


Which comes around to the AdMech in general: there you can see the limits of Imperial tech more clearly, with things like the noosphere and direct data interfacing with machines, to say nothing of the high-end augmetics and armies of supersoldiers with integrated heavy weapons, or the ridiculously inefficient engines, that despite all their inherent conceptual drawbacks amount to the toughest and most powerful land-based war machines in the entire setting.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

nomotog wrote:
The russ is not advance. It's rustic rugged and reliable, but not advance. Though you could still argue it's best.

It's a tall, flat box with fairly thin armor yet it's ridiculously hard to kill. That speaks a great deal to how advanced its armor is, and to how well designed its internals are. Fluffwise, it also boasts rather sophisticated communication, targeting, and navigation tech, not to mention the ubiquitous soft ai ("machine spirit") that's in any large Imperial machine, and systems in place to allow self-repair under the guidance of a tech-priest. Can Tau vehicles and battlesuits fix themselves by being talked through it by an engineer?


Which comes around to the AdMech in general: there you can see the limits of Imperial tech more clearly, with things like the noosphere and direct data interfacing with machines, to say nothing of the high-end augmetics and armies of supersoldiers with integrated heavy weapons, or the ridiculously inefficient engines, that despite all their inherent conceptual drawbacks amount to the toughest and most powerful land-based war machines in the entire setting.

The books say it's not advanced. You can insist that must be, but it still says that it's not.

The Greater Good is a magnet for people with low self esteem. It lets them feel like they're special, they're on the right side, and they're part of something bigger than themselves.

nomotog wrote:

The books say it's not advanced. You can insist that must be, but it still says that it's not.

The taglines say the Imperium is crude and primitive, when the fluff and stats say otherwise. The taglines say the Tau are advanced, when the fluff and stats say otherwise. It's almost as if flavorful one-liners aren't indicative of the details of the setting...

 LoneLictor wrote:
The Greater Good is a magnet for people with low self esteem. It lets them feel like they're special, they're on the right side, and they're part of something bigger than themselves.

So it takes strong, proud people with high self esteem to think they are nothing special, on the wrong side and not part of anything.
BTW members of the Inquisition also feel like they're special, they're on the right side, and they're part of something bigger than themselves.

 1hadhq wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

The Tau got astropaths out of the deal, giving them something they had lacked, real time ftl communication. It also gave them access to an Imperial Forge world (much to the absolute horror of the tech magi in command) and close up examinations of IN starships. So it does make sense.

When and how did this happen? I can't imagine the Mechanicus taking the loss of any Forgeworld lightly.

Only in "baronIveagh40k" ...

You might want to pick up The Greater Good by Sandy Mitchell then. and I never said they took it. I said they got access to it.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

The taglines say the Imperium is crude and primitive, when the fluff and stats say otherwise. The taglines say the Tau are advanced, when the fluff and stats say otherwise. It's almost as if flavorful one-liners aren't indicative of the details of the setting...

And fluff has it that a squad of Space Marines can jump from Space Ship to Space Ship with nothing but their boots across thousands of km of empty space, and kill gigantic hive ships wit ha single well placed meltabomb. Stats say soemthing else entirely.

 Eetion wrote:
And if it does come up against Superior opposition.... its not just 1 on 1, its 2 or 3 Russ to 1 Hammerhead etc

Which still doesn't help much. The Hammerhead is faster and has a longer-ranged weapon, so all a Leman Russ squadron can do in an open-field battle is throw up a wall of shells and hope to get lucky. Meanwhile the Hammerhead has full control over the engagement. If it can snipe on the move it will do so and win effortlessly. If there are too many Leman Russes it can simply fall back while a nearby (and completely invisible) Remora drone marks the tanks for an over-the-horizon seeker missile strike.

"Quantity over quality" only works if you still have rough parity with your enemy. If, instead, you're completely outclasses it just means you take huge losses until the enemy runs out of ammunition and has to disengage to reload.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
It's a tall, flat box with fairly thin armor yet it's ridiculously hard to kill.

Not really. It might be hard to kill on the tabletop, but fluff-wise a shot from a Hammerhead's railgun can go in one side and out the other, turning the crew into a bloody mist in the process.

Fluffwise, it also boasts rather sophisticated communication, targeting, and navigation tech, not to mention the ubiquitous soft ai ("machine spirit") that's in any large Imperial machine, and systems in place to allow self-repair under the guidance of a tech-priest.

So they have all this sophisticated technology and yet they didn't bother to put even a crude suspension on the tank so that it could fire on the move or go into rough terrain without immediately immobilizing itself? Of course not. The more likely answer is that a few Leman Russes produced on the most advanced worlds and assigned to the best units have some of those things bolted into the standard hull, but the standard tank is a crude barely-mobile WWI-era mess.

Can Tau vehicles and battlesuits fix themselves by being talked through it by an engineer?

Depends on the repair. And having a user manual that allows the crew to make minor field repairs is not really all that impressive.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

nomotog wrote:

The books say it's not advanced. You can insist that must be, but it still says that it's not.

The taglines say the Imperium is crude and primitive, when the fluff and stats say otherwise. The taglines say the Tau are advanced, when the fluff and stats say otherwise. It's almost as if flavorful one-liners aren't indicative of the details of the setting...

Taglines are fluff. The IoM is crude & primitive. Tau are advanced. Some people conjecture that it's the other way around, but fluff is fairly constant on this issue.

 Kroothawk wrote:

 LoneLictor wrote:
The Greater Good is a magnet for people with low self esteem. It lets them feel like they're special, they're on the right side, and they're part of something bigger than themselves.

So it takes strong, proud people with high self esteem to think they are nothing special, on the wrong side and not part of anything.
BTW members of the Inquisition also feel like they're special, they're on the right side, and they're part of something bigger than themselves.

Exactly, you got it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Eetion wrote:
And if it does come up against Superior opposition.... its not just 1 on 1, its 2 or 3 Russ to 1 Hammerhead etc

Which still doesn't help much. The Hammerhead is faster and has a longer-ranged weapon, so all a Leman Russ squadron can do in an open-field battle is throw up a wall of shells and hope to get lucky. Meanwhile the Hammerhead has full control over the engagement. If it can snipe on the move it will do so and win effortlessly. If there are too many Leman Russes it can simply fall back while a nearby (and completely invisible) Remora drone marks the tanks for an over-the-horizon seeker missile strike.

"Quantity over quality" only works if you still have rough parity with your enemy. If, instead, you're completely outclasses it just means you take huge losses until the enemy runs out of ammunition and has to disengage to reload.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
It's a tall, flat box with fairly thin armor yet it's ridiculously hard to kill.

Not really. It might be hard to kill on the tabletop, but fluff-wise a shot from a Hammerhead's railgun can go in one side and out the other, turning the crew into a bloody mist in the process.

Fluffwise, it also boasts rather sophisticated communication, targeting, and navigation tech, not to mention the ubiquitous soft ai ("machine spirit") that's in any large Imperial machine, and systems in place to allow self-repair under the guidance of a tech-priest.

So they have all this sophisticated technology and yet they didn't bother to put even a crude suspension on the tank so that it could fire on the move or go into rough terrain without immediately immobilizing itself? Of course not. The more likely answer is that a few Leman Russes produced on the most advanced worlds and assigned to the best units have some of those things bolted into the standard hull, but the standard tank is a crude barely-mobile WWI-era mess.

Can Tau vehicles and battlesuits fix themselves by being talked through it by an engineer?

Depends on the repair. And having a user manual that allows the crew to make minor field repairs is not really all that impressive.

Numbers tend closer to 10 to 1.

I was actually musing on the weapon myst quote. I makes little sense because it's not a hammer head. It's a light walker. They don't have hard ammo.

I wonder if a suit can fix itself? It has fingers. Farsight might be able to. One bit mentions how he insisted his warriors fixed there own gear.

nomotog wrote:
Numbers tend closer to 10 to 1.

And it could be 10,000 to 1. Once the margin of superiority becomes high enough the only limiting factor is ammunition supply, and even then all the inferior side can do is force the enemy to spend all of their ammunition and then disengage to reload.

I was actually musing on the weapon myst quote. I makes little sense because it's not a hammer head. It's a light walker. They don't have hard ammo.

It was about railgun vs. Leman Russ. Fluff is a railgun shot goes in one side and out the other, leaving the remains of the crew painted across the landscape.

I wonder if a suit can fix itself? It has fingers. Farsight might be able to. One bit mentions how he insisted his warriors fixed there own gear.

Depends on what you mean by "fix".

Fixing things like reconnecting a broken wire (the kind of minor field repairs you can make on a Leman Russ)? Maybe, depending on the level of fine control the fingers have.

Fixing things like a destroyed weapon? No, you'd have to take it back to a repair facility and replace it with a new gun. Of course you're not going to be doing that with a Leman Russ either.

I know the quote your talking about. It dosen't say railgun. It say a shot from a light walker.

nomotog wrote:
I know the quote your talking about. It dosen't say railgun. It say a shot from a light walker.

Broadside suits are essentialy light walkers.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Humans had warp travel before the astronomicon, and still have to rely on the less precise (and thus slower and more careful) method out where the signal is weak. The Tau tech is like a primitive version of the earliest human warp technology.

Indeed, and the imperium will stay ahead in this department unless the Tau figure out the webway or something.

Imperial plasma tech is both more compact and more powerful than Tau (fluffwise, it only blows up if you start it generating plasma and then *don't* fire it, so it's not really all that unstable either)

Simply (and obviously) untrue. (Though they are more powerful) If the Pulse Rifle is lighter and better balanced than a lasgun, then it's definitely lighter and more compact than a plasma gun. Fluffwise, the Plasma Gun blows up because it is unstable and prone to malfunction. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Plasma_Gun
Sounds a lot like Ork teknology, imo...

and the Imperium uses railguns on ships, where their disordinately large power requirements aren't an issue.

If true, this would be news to me. Either way, it sounds like their power supply tech, as well as Railgun tech is inferior.

The lasgun is simply a marvel of engineering, being powerful, compact, cheap, and logistically trivial to operate en mass.

Yes I'm sure the Tau are just insanely jealous...

Tau tech is bulkier than its Imperial equivalent, and suffers in any number of other ways too, as the individual case may be.

Also simply and obviously untrue.

XV15 stealth suit offers the same protection as power armor, is more compact, less bulky, and has a built in stealth field generator. It can be fitted with hard-wired upgrades such as shield generators. Power Armor, on the other hand, is bulky, clumpy, noisy and crude in comparison and lacks upgradability because the tech marines can only repair damaged armor, because they lack rudimentary understanding of their own tech.
XV8 Crisis suits/XV88 Broadsides. Tau equivalent of a Dreadnought, only more compact and a lot less bulky in favor of increased mobility.
Piranhas are equivalent to Land Speeders, only they are more compact and less bulky.
Tetras are equivalent to Bikes, only more compact and less bulky.
Pathfinders equivalent to Scouts, plus compact, minus bulk.
Imperial vehicles have nothing on Tau vehicles... except (you guessed it) bulkiness.
Pulse Rifle is nearly as powerful as a Heavy Bolter, only much, much more compact, and considerably less bulky.
Imperium has no Drone equivalent on the battlefield, but if they did I'm pretty sure it would stick to Imperial tradition of being bulky.

Since the fluff doesn't concern itself with logistics, we don't know how sustainable the Tau military is in an engagement where they're not basically just defending an ammo dump, but unless the new codex brings them some magical new handwavium, we can assume it's nowhere near as much so as tanks that can run on anything that will burn, and infantry weapons that can be reloaded by exposing them to sunlight.

In battles of attrition the Imperium is much better equipped to dig in and prepare for the long fight. For many players, this is an attractive attribute.
To players like myself, the ideology that considers such engagements unnecessarily wasteful, is more attractive. I like the way the Tau say "Meh, this isn't going well, let's ditch this fight."

Can Tau vehicles and battlesuits fix themselves by being talked through it by an engineer?

Tau Nano repair tech eliminates the need to verbally goad their machines into repairing themselves.

Where did you see tau nano tech?

 Archonate wrote:

and the Imperium uses railguns on ships, where their disordinately large power requirements aren't an issue.

If true, this would be news to me. Either way, it sounds like their power supply tech, as well as Railgun tech is inferior.

They're called macrocannons. They fire kiloton-grade metallic projectiles at relativistic speeds. Imperial/Chaos warships pack bank upon bank of these things along with laser/plasma/melta cannons in their Weapon Batteries. Compared to Tau vessels' ship-mounted Railguns, Imperial/Chaos Weapon Batteries pack a heavier punch.

And yes, I would argue large-scale Imperial energy sources are better than what the Tau have, considering that Imperial plasma reactors can power huge vessels and planet-sized cities. Or...the Imperials just build more reactors as needed.

The lasgun is simply a marvel of engineering, being powerful, compact, cheap, and logistically trivial to operate en mass.

Yes I'm sure the Tau are just insanely jealous...

Superior power or not, I'd take a Lasgun over a Pulse Rifle any day. It's light, reliable, and has infinite ammo (I can recharge the e-packs by simply leaving them in sunlight).

Since the fluff doesn't concern itself with logistics, we don't know how sustainable the Tau military is in an engagement where they're not basically just defending an ammo dump, but unless the new codex brings them some magical new handwavium, we can assume it's nowhere near as much so as tanks that can run on anything that will burn, and infantry weapons that can be reloaded by exposing them to sunlight.

In battles of attrition the Imperium is much better equipped to dig in and prepare for the long fight. For many players, this is an attractive attribute.
To players like myself, the ideology that considers such engagements unnecessarily wasteful, is more attractive. I like the way the Tau say "Meh, this isn't going well, let's ditch this fight."

Cowards! Stand and fight like men

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
They're called macrocannons. They fire kiloton-grade metallic projectiles at relativistic speeds. Imperial/Chaos warships pack bank upon bank of these things along with laser/plasma/melta cannons in their Weapon Batteries. Compared to Tau vessels' ship-mounted Railguns, Imperial/Chaos Weapon Batteries pack a heavier punch.

Well, only because Tau ships favor long-range torpedo and bomber attacks over crude cannon broadsides.

And yes, I would argue large-scale Imperial energy sources are better than what the Tau have, considering that Imperial plasma reactors can power huge vessels and planet-sized cities. Or...the Imperials just build more reactors as needed.

Err, you realize that the Tau also have large starships, right?

Superior power or not, I'd take a Lasgun over a Pulse Rifle any day. It's light, reliable, and has infinite ammo (I can recharge the e-packs by simply leaving them in sunlight).

Which only matters if the enemy survives long enough for ammunition supply for basic infantry weapons to become an issue. We all know the Imperium loves to have decades-long sieges and grinding the enemy down in a war of attrition is their default plan but not everyone is bound by those limits.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
They're called macrocannons. They fire kiloton-grade metallic projectiles at relativistic speeds. Imperial/Chaos warships pack bank upon bank of these things along with laser/plasma/melta cannons in their Weapon Batteries. Compared to Tau vessels' ship-mounted Railguns, Imperial/Chaos Weapon Batteries pack a heavier punch.

Well, only because Tau ships favor long-range torpedo and bomber attacks over crude cannon broadsides.

Which ends badly for them once Imperial ships get in range.

And yes, I would argue large-scale Imperial energy sources are better than what the Tau have, considering that Imperial plasma reactors can power huge vessels and planet-sized cities. Or...the Imperials just build more reactors as needed.

Err, you realize that the Tau also have large starships, right?

And those ships aren't as heavily armed as Imperial warships are.

Superior power or not, I'd take a Lasgun over a Pulse Rifle any day. It's light, reliable, and has infinite ammo (I can recharge the e-packs by simply leaving them in sunlight).

Which only matters if the enemy survives long enough for ammunition supply for basic infantry weapons to become an issue. We all know the Imperium loves to have decades-long sieges and grinding the enemy down in a war of attrition is their default plan but not everyone is bound by those limits.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Which ends badly for them once Imperial ships get in range.

IF they get in range. It's like saying an aircraft carrier is terrible because it will lose a close-range fight against a battleship.

And those ships aren't as heavily armed as Imperial warships are.

Which isn't a necessarily a bad thing. You could pretty easily argue that Imperial warships are overburdened with crude and ineffective guns and it would be better to build several smaller ships instead.

Then force the enemy to fight on your terms.

How? How do you force a more mobile and better-equipped force to fight trench warfare rather than just slaughtering you from a safe distance?

 Peregrine wrote:

Which still doesn't help much. The Hammerhead is faster and has a longer-ranged weapon, so all a Leman Russ squadron can do in an open-field battle is throw up a wall of shells and hope to get lucky. Meanwhile the Hammerhead has full control over the engagement. If it can snipe on the move it will do so and win effortlessly. If there are too many Leman Russes it can simply fall back while a nearby (and completely invisible) Remora drone marks the tanks for an over-the-horizon seeker missile strike.

"Quantity over quality" only works if you still have rough parity with your enemy. If, instead, you're completely outclasses it just means you take huge losses until the enemy runs out of ammunition and has to disengage to reload.

Hammerhead, meet Vendetta. Vendetta, meet... oh wait, the pricy, unmaneuverable pseudo-gunship's already a smoking wreck.

Also, seeker missiles barely scratch the paint of a leman russ, regardless of what the Taros "armored column forgets it's made of tanks mid-paragraph" Campaign says.

What does a hammerhead run on, anyways? Is it literally anything that can burn? How about it's ammo reserves, and the massive power requirements a railgun carries?

Not really. It might be hard to kill on the tabletop, but fluff-wise a shot from a Hammerhead's railgun can go in one side and out the other, turning the crew into a bloody mist in the process.

Fluffwise, it also boasts rather sophisticated communication, targeting, and navigation tech, not to mention the ubiquitous soft ai ("machine spirit") that's in any large Imperial machine, and systems in place to allow self-repair under the guidance of a tech-priest.

So they have all this sophisticated technology and yet they didn't bother to put even a crude suspension on the tank so that it could fire on the move or go into rough terrain without immediately immobilizing itself? Of course not. The more likely answer is that a few Leman Russes produced on the most advanced worlds and assigned to the best units have some of those things bolted into the standard hull, but the standard tank is a crude barely-mobile WWI-era mess.

Except that even on the board (where vehicles are heavily nerfed for balance reasons) they can fire while moving. The fluff involving the internals has them outfitted with rather sophisticated electronics.

Depends on the repair. And having a user manual that allows the crew to make minor field repairs is not really all that impressive.

Not the crew, the vehicle itself. Because that's a big part of tech-priest field repairs: telling the system to switch to backups, or alter such and such a piece, and so on.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Which ends badly for them once Imperial ships get in range.

IF they get in range. It's like saying an aircraft carrier is terrible because it will lose a close-range fight against a battleship.

Which they can and do, considering that Imperial warships are faster, and better protected than Tau ships. Not to mention, the Imperium also has it's own Attack Craft, and actually have more. The latest iteration of the Gal'leath-class, the primary Tau carrier, only fields four squadrons; the Imperial Emperor-class/Chaos Despoiler-class can field eight. The Lar'shi-class can field 2 squadrons; the Imperial Dictator-class/Chaos Devastation-class can field four.

Ork Terror Ships and Eldar Eclipse-class ships also field four squadrons each. And against Eldar Holo-fields, the highly precise nature of Tau ordnance is all but useless; the only reliable counter against Holo-fields are massed fire from Weapon Batteries. Considering the relatively weak
nature of Tau ship-mounted Railguns and their weak shields, the Tau are at a disadvantage against Eldar Pulsar Lances and Holo-fields.

And those ships aren't as heavily armed as Imperial warships are.

Which isn't a necessarily a bad thing. You could pretty easily argue that Imperial warships are overburdened with crude and ineffective guns and it would be better to build several smaller ships instead.

Oh really?

Then force the enemy to fight on your terms.

How? How do you force a more mobile and better-equipped force to fight trench warfare rather than just slaughtering you from a safe distance?

That's the Guard's problem. The Imperial Navy just has to get the cruisers close while our own fighters shoot down enemy ordnance. Then, the real work begins.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Hammerhead, meet Vendetta. Vendetta, meet... oh wait, the pricy, unmaneuverable pseudo-gunship's already a smoking wreck.

Vendetta, meet Barracuda. Barracuda, meet... oh wait, the transport with bolted-on heavy weapons just got shot down by a proper air superiority fighter.

Also, seeker missiles barely scratch the paint of a leman russ, regardless of what the Taros "armored column forgets it's made of tanks mid-paragraph" Campaign says.

Oh yes, let's just throw out fluff in favor of game mechanics. Should we also assume that a Leman Russ has such an inaccurate weapon that a shot at close range is likely to fly backwards and hit the firing tank, like the game mechanics say?

Except that even on the board (where vehicles are heavily nerfed for balance reasons) they can fire while moving. The fluff involving the internals has them outfitted with rather sophisticated electronics.

Which is ridiculous. The tank has no suspension which means that on anything other than a mathematical plane (IOW, any real terrain) the tank is going to be bouncing around so much that you'd be lucky to get a shot to hit within a mile of the target.

Not the crew, the vehicle itself. Because that's a big part of tech-priest field repairs: telling the system to switch to backups, or alter such and such a piece, and so on.

IOW, it can activate backup systems if the tech-priest presses the "activate backup systems" button. Not very impressive, and minor field repairs are still well short of, say, repairing a railgun shot through the engine.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The fluff involving the internals has them outfitted with rather sophisticated electronics.

Quite true. Dan Abnett showed this well in a Gaunt's Ghosts novel once. The horrible visual representation on the TT aside, the Leman Russ is fast, agile, and very maneuverable, and equipped with stabilizers, auto-loaders, auto-targeters (though the experienced crews treat this aspect with a grain of salt), heavy weapons, auspex guidance, and laser-rangefinders.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Which they can and do, considering that Imperial warships are faster, and better protected than Tau ships. Not to mention, the Imperium also has it's own Attack Craft, and actually have more. The latest iteration of the Gal'leath-class, the primary Tau carrier, only fields four squadrons; the Imperial Emperor-class/Chaos Despoiler-class can field eight. The Lar'shi-class can field 2 squadrons; the Imperial Dictator-class/Chaos Devastation-class can field four.

Remember, it's bombers and missiles. You can't just look at one attribute in isolation, Tau ships have weaker guns because they're stand-off bomber and missile platforms that want to attack from outside effective gun range, and adding heavier guns would make them worse in their primary role. It has nothing to do with whether or not the Tau are capable of producing equivalent guns.

Oh really?

Sorry, but any unguided shot that takes half an hour to reach its target is crude and worthless. No sane opponent is going to be where you aimed half an hour ago, so those guns are just a waste of space until/unless you get in close where they can actually hit something. Meanwhile if you get too close fixed broadsides become a suicidal liability and a smaller number of turrets would be more effective.

That's the Guard's problem. The Imperial Navy just has to get the cruisers close while our own fighters shoot down enemy ordnance. Then, the real work begins.

So what you're saying is that every single Tau vs. IN fight is a one-sided massacre where the Tau have no chance of winning and the Imperial ships automatically get to close range?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Quite true. Dan Abnett showed this well in a Gaunt's Ghosts novel once. The horrible visual representation on the TT aside, the Leman Russ is fast, agile, and very maneuverable, and equipped with stabilizers, auto-loaders, auto-targeters (though the experienced crews treat this aspect with a grain of salt), heavy weapons, auspex guidance, and laser-rangefinders.

Why does this representation take priority over all others which disagree with it?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Which they can and do, considering that Imperial warships are faster, and better protected than Tau ships. Not to mention, the Imperium also has it's own Attack Craft, and actually have more. The latest iteration of the Gal'leath-class, the primary Tau carrier, only fields four squadrons; the Imperial Emperor-class/Chaos Despoiler-class can field eight. The Lar'shi-class can field 2 squadrons; the Imperial Dictator-class/Chaos Devastation-class can field four.

Remember, it's bombers and missiles. You can't just look at one attribute in isolation, Tau ships have weaker guns because they're stand-off bomber and missile platforms that want to attack from outside effective gun range, and adding heavier guns would make them worse in their primary role. It has nothing to do with whether or not the Tau are capable of producing equivalent guns.

Fighters can shoot down Drone Missiles too.

Oh really?

Sorry, but any unguided shot that takes half an hour to reach its target is crude and worthless. No sane opponent is going to be where you aimed half an hour ago, so those guns are just a waste of space until/unless you get in close where they can actually hit something. Meanwhile if you get too close fixed broadsides become a suicidal liability and a smaller number of turrets would be more effective.

Apparently, the combat record of Weapon Batteries disagree. Especially against Eldar

That's the Guard's problem. The Imperial Navy just has to get the cruisers close while our own fighters shoot down enemy ordnance. Then, the real work begins.

So what you're saying is that every single Tau vs. IN fight is a one-sided massacre where the Tau have no chance of winning and the Imperial ships automatically get to close range?

Of course not. The Damocles Gulf is an obscure frontier sector, and the Tau a relative border threat, so the Imperial Navy doesn't field it's larger formations there. But in a fair fight, the Imperial Navy would beat the Tau because of their:

1) Larger numbers of Attack Craft
2) Heavier Guns
3) Boarding/Hit-and-Run

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Quite true. Dan Abnett showed this well in a Gaunt's Ghosts novel once. The horrible visual representation on the TT aside, the Leman Russ is fast, agile, and very maneuverable, and equipped with stabilizers, auto-loaders, auto-targeters (though the experienced crews treat this aspect with a grain of salt), heavy weapons, auspex guidance, and laser-rangefinders.

Why does this representation take priority over all others which disagree with it?

 Archonate wrote:
Simply (and obviously) untrue. (Though they are more powerful) If the Pulse Rifle is lighter and better balanced than a lasgun, then it's definitely lighter and more compact than a plasma gun. Fluffwise, the Plasma Gun blows up because it is unstable and prone to malfunction. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Plasma_Gun
Sounds a lot like Ork teknology, imo...

Since when is a pulse rifle smaller than a lasgun? Whereas plasma guns are somewhat smaller.

Yes I'm sure the Tau are just insanely jealous...

While the closest the Tau have are fancy laser pointers.

Also simply and obviously untrue.

XV15 stealth suit offers the same protection as power armor, is more compact, less bulky, and has a built in stealth field generator. It can be fitted with hard-wired upgrades such as shield generators. Power Armor, on the other hand, is bulky, clumpy, noisy and crude in comparison and lacks upgradability because the tech marines can only repair damaged armor, because they lack rudimentary understanding of their own tech.
XV8 Crisis suits/XV88 Broadsides. Tau equivalent of a Dreadnought, only more compact and a lot less bulky in favor of increased mobility.

Crisis suits, despite being the size of dreadnoughts, barely provide the protection of a suit of power armor, and if the xv15 is so tough, why don't they field equivalents as their standard infantry armor? All the battlesuits, further, rely on primitive neural interfacing technology that drives their users mad over time, in contrast to the control systems the Imperium has for power armor and augmetics, which notably don't (we only see negative ramifications in their neural interface technology when the link is with a massive, impossibly complex and powerful system, like an engine or ship).

Piranhas are equivalent to Land Speeders, only they are more compact and less bulky.
Tetras are equivalent to Bikes, only more compact and less bulky.
Pathfinders equivalent to Scouts, plus compact, minus bulk.

Space Marines field random trash. They're required by law (codex astartes) to be ineffectual and backwards, after half of them up and turned to chaos.

Imperial vehicles have nothing on Tau vehicles... except (you guessed it) bulkiness.

Easier to manufacture, logistically trivial to operate, self-repairing (under the instruction of tech-priests), and tough as nails. Also smaller and more compact than the comparable tau vehicles.

Imperium has no Drone equivalent on the battlefield, but if they did I'm pretty sure it would stick to Imperial tradition of being bulky.

Servo skulls.

In battles of attrition the Imperium is much better equipped to dig in and prepare for the long fight. For many players, this is an attractive attribute.
To players like myself, the ideology that considers such engagements unnecessarily wasteful, is more attractive. I like the way the Tau say "Meh, this isn't going well, let's ditch this fight."

Guerilla warfare works in two situations: when you have absolutely no stationary bases of operation nor supply lines, and have a massive army of untrained troops with rubbish equipment who, when fighting from ambush, can inflict somme casualties on the enemy while dying like flies in the process (see: vietnam, and the maoists fighting the nationalists); or you have superior firepower and mobility, and so can just up and decide what's worth killing and what's not (see: modern US doctrine).

How exactly are the Tau, with their inability to handle a straight up fight, supposed to take a fortified Imperial position, or hold a position against an Imperial army that doesn't split up because "well how else could the Tau win?"? If you abandon positions on the ground, you lose stationary assets and resources, and if you refuse to engage the superior force, eventually you're going to wind up with no local resources left to call upon, and your logistically inefficient extravagances are going to stop working, leaving you stranded or forcing an evac, where you'd be torn apart by the superior Imperial navy.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Fighters can shoot down Drone Missiles too.

Ok, so we're just going to declare that Imperial defenses are 100% effective at stopping all long-range attacks. That's fine. I'm going to make an equally reasonable decision that all Imperial ships self destruct when facing the Tau because the shame of not being part of the Greater Good is just too much to bear.

Apparently, the combat record of Weapon Batteries disagree. Especially against Eldar

They're useful at close range. They're a waste of space at long range.

Because Dan Abnett writes better than most others?

Oh yes, and it's just pure coincidence that it's the source that makes the Leman Russ look good...

Which they can and do, considering that Imperial warships are faster, and better protected than Tau ships. Not to mention, the Imperium also has it's own Attack Craft, and actually have more. The latest iteration of the Gal'leath-class, the primary Tau carrier, only fields four squadrons; the Imperial Emperor-class/Chaos Despoiler-class can field eight. The Lar'shi-class can field 2 squadrons; the Imperial Dictator-class/Chaos Devastation-class can field four.

Finally got out the rules and now I can point out how you're wrong.

The Emperor class carries eight squadrons and no torpedoes, the Custodian class (the "modern" Tau carrier) carries eight squadrons, three light escorts, and four torpedo launchers. The Tau carrier is also faster and somewhat cheaper, so an equal point value (representing fleets of equal size for each side) of Tau ships has a solid advantage in a long-range fight.

The Dictator class has an extra two squadrons, but the Protector has better torpedoes (pretty important when we're talking about dedicated torpedo ships) and is cheaper.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Archonate wrote:
Simply (and obviously) untrue. (Though they are more powerful) If the Pulse Rifle is lighter and better balanced than a lasgun, then it's definitely lighter and more compact than a plasma gun. Fluffwise, the Plasma Gun blows up because it is unstable and prone to malfunction. http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Plasma_Gun
Sounds a lot like Ork teknology, imo...

Since when is a pulse rifle smaller than a lasgun? Whereas plasma guns are somewhat smaller.

It's not. It's actually bulkier.

Yes I'm sure the Tau are just insanely jealous...

While the closest the Tau have are fancy laser pointers.

Lol

Imperial vehicles have nothing on Tau vehicles... except (you guessed it) bulkiness.

Easier to manufacture, logistically trivial to operate, self-repairing (under the instruction of tech-priests), and tough as nails. Also smaller and more compact than the comparable tau vehicles.

Not to mention deceptively well-equipped

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
How exactly are the Tau, with their inability to handle a straight up fight, supposed to take a fortified Imperial position

Bomb it to rubble from orbit and build a Tau city on the rubble. Or just park a Remora above it and guide in over-the-horizon seeker missile strikes on the gun emplacements/key structural elements in the walls/etc until the defenders are crippled.

or hold a position against an Imperial army that doesn't split up because "well how else could the Tau win?"?

Tau don't care about holding territory, and this isn't a tabletop battle where the world magically ends at the table edge. The Tau would simply fall back while launching long-range attacks, and a massive army would be extremely vulnerable to orbital bombardment/nuclear-armed seeker missiles/etc. Meanwhile Remora stealth drones/pathfinders/etc are attacking enemy supply lines, and the "quantity over quality" Imperial force just runs out of fuel/ammunition/etc.

If you abandon positions on the ground, you lose stationary assets and resources

That is why the only static assets the Tau use are expendable drone weapons.

and if you refuse to engage the superior force, eventually you're going to wind up with no local resources left to call upon, and your logistically inefficient extravagances are going to stop working, leaving you stranded or forcing an evac, where you'd be torn apart by the superior Imperial navy.

This is true in real war. This is not true when you can resupply directly from orbit, and the standard equipment for every unit in your army includes a transport ship capable of deploying from or returning to orbit.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Fighters can shoot down Drone Missiles too.

Ok, so we're just going to declare that Imperial defenses are 100% effective at stopping all long-range attacks. That's fine.

Only fighters. Turrets have a 50-50 chance of interception.

Apparently, the combat record of Weapon Batteries disagree. Especially against Eldar

They're useful at close range. They're a waste of space at long range.

That's what they all say. Until Imperial guns tear them to shreds. Or they go up against Eldar, only to find their bombs and Torpedoes keep missing because of Holo-fields

Imperial ships are balanced. Tau ships are over-specialized towards ordnance.

Because Dan Abnett writes better than most others?

Oh yes, and it's just pure coincidence that it's the source that makes the Leman Russ look good...

And your point is?

Which they can and do, considering that Imperial warships are faster, and better protected than Tau ships. Not to mention, the Imperium also has it's own Attack Craft, and actually have more. The latest iteration of the Gal'leath-class, the primary Tau carrier, only fields four squadrons; the Imperial Emperor-class/Chaos Despoiler-class can field eight. The Lar'shi-class can field 2 squadrons; the Imperial Dictator-class/Chaos Devastation-class can field four.

Finally got out the rules and now I can point out how you're wrong.

The Emperor class carries eight squadrons and no torpedoes, the Custodian class (the "modern" Tau carrier) carries eight squadrons, three light escorts, and four torpedo launchers. The Tau carrier is also faster and somewhat cheaper, so an equal point value (representing fleets of equal size for each side) of Tau ships has a solid advantage in a long-range fight.

Sorry, don't have the Imperial Armour source for that. I can only work with I have (the BFG rules). But then again, surround the Emperor-class with Swords and Cobras, and the advantage is lost.

The Dictator class has an extra two squadrons, but the Protector has better torpedoes (pretty important when we're talking about dedicated torpedo ships) and is cheaper.

Then bring in Cobras. That's what Escorts are for.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Only fighters. Turrets have a 50-50 chance of interception.

Fluff =/= game mechanics.

And your point is?

The point is there are lots of sources saying the Leman Russ sucks, but you've declared that the most important source is the one that says it doesn't. You aren't looking at it objectively, you're picking what is "most accurate" based on which gives your side the best chance of winning. If, instead, you don't start from a position of "the Imperium wins" the best answer is that the Leman Russ is a mediocre-at-best tank that depends on overwhelming superiority in numbers and complete lack of concern for losses.

Sorry, don't have the Imperial Armour source for that.

Too bad. Fluff-wise the IA3 list is explicitly the modern Tau ships replacing the obsolete original ones.

Then bring in Cobras. That's what Escorts are for.

Then we also bring in Tau escorts and/or more torpedo ships.

Maybe tau have a better power source and more effecient design processes, so that they can afford quality end products. For example, hand assembled lasguns more costly than machine assembled Pulse Rifles.

And before anyone says that in this universe, humans are expendable, AD Mech Priests probably have more important things to do with their time, like assemble bolters.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Only fighters. Turrets have a 50-50 chance of interception.

Fluff =/= game mechanics.

Fair enough. In which case, the Imperial Navy is at a disadvantage, because as I said, the Damocles Gulf and the Tau are on the frontier, and the Imperial Navy has more pressing concerns elsewhere. But if the Tau attempt to engage the Imperium in the 'inner' sectors of Ultima Segmentum, the Imperial Navy has the advantage.

And your point is?

The point is there are lots of sources saying the Leman Russ sucks, but you've declared that the most important source is the one that says it doesn't. You aren't looking at it objectively, you're picking what is "most accurate" based on which gives your side the best chance of winning. If, instead, you don't start from a position of "the Imperium wins" the best answer is that the Leman Russ is a mediocre-at-best tank that depends on overwhelming superiority in numbers and complete lack of concern for losses.

To each their own

Then bring in Cobras. That's what Escorts are for.

Then we also bring in Tau escorts and/or more torpedo ships.

 Peregrine wrote:

Vendetta, meet Barracuda. Barracuda, meet... oh wait, the transport with bolted-on heavy weapons just got shot down by a proper air superiority fighter.

I was going to keep up the escalating joke by introducing the Thunderbolt, but then I looked up Barracudas and laughed.

Oh yes, let's just throw out fluff in favor of game mechanics. Should we also assume that a Leman Russ has such an inaccurate weapon that a shot at close range is likely to fly backwards and hit the firing tank, like the game mechanics say?

The story in the Taros Campaign is almost Wardian in its flagrant departure from established fluff or even the mechanics that it, itself, contained.

Which is ridiculous. The tank has no suspension which means that on anything other than a mathematical plane (IOW, any real terrain) the tank is going to be bouncing around so much that you'd be lucky to get a shot to hit within a mile of the target.

How exactly did you come to the conclusion that the leman russ lacks a suspension?

IOW, it can activate backup systems if the tech-priest presses the "activate backup systems" button. Not very impressive, and minor field repairs are still well short of, say, repairing a railgun shot through the engine.

You don't seem to understand what tech-priests are or do. They interface directly with compatible machines, allowing access to detailed system status and any possible alterations it's capable of enacting. It would be like if a mechanic just stared at your car muttering for a second, and it proceeded to change its own oil.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
I was going to keep up the escalating joke by introducing the Thunderbolt, but then I looked up Barracudas and laughed.

Again, game mechanics =/= fluff. Fluff-wise the Barracuda is a bit better overall compared to the Thunderbolt, but the experience of the best veteran Thunderbolt pilots can make up for it.

The story in the Taros Campaign is almost Wardian in its flagrant departure from established fluff or even the mechanics that it, itself, contained.

Except in this case it makes perfect sense. The seeker missiles do about what we'd expect for a modern anti-tank missile against a modern tank, so the reasonable explanation is that the game mechanics are wrong.

How exactly did you come to the conclusion that the leman russ lacks a suspension?

By looking at the model.

You don't seem to understand what tech-priests are or do. They interface directly with compatible machines, allowing access to detailed system status and any possible alterations it's capable of enacting. It would be like if a mechanic just stared at your car muttering for a second, and it proceeded to change its own oil.

1) So what? I can interface with my computer and see "yep, needs a driver update". That's a pretty low standard of "self repair".

2) The tech-priest rituals are just religious decoration on top of "follow the user manual". "Recite the blessing of lubrication" is just a fancy way of saying "switch the oil tank selector from 'left' to 'right'", except with candles and purity seals and all that.

 Peregrine wrote:

Again, game mechanics =/= fluff. Fluff-wise the Barracuda is a bit better overall compared to the Thunderbolt, but the experience of the best veteran Thunderbolt pilots can make up for it.

The barracuda wouldn't even stand up to a vendetta with any reliabilty. And what fluff, the Taros "we gotta make up a bunch of rules to stack everything in favor of the Tau" Campaign?

Except in this case it makes perfect sense. The seeker missiles do about what we'd expect for a modern anti-tank missile against a modern tank, so the reasonable explanation is that the game mechanics are wrong.

That depends on what you think an anti-tank missile does to a modern tank. If you know it rarely manages anything but some drive damage, then yeah, pretty much. If you think it's a magic bullet, then lol.

By looking at the model.

Since when have lumps of plastic depicting the external chassis of something been anything but lumps of plastic?

1) So what? I can interface with my computer and see "yep, needs a driver update". That's a pretty low standard of "self repair".

2) The tech-priest rituals are just religious decoration on top of "follow the user manual". "Recite the blessing of lubrication" is just a fancy way of saying "switch the oil tank selector from 'left' to 'right'", except with candles and purity seals and all that.

You're still not getting it. Go read Titanicus.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The barracuda wouldn't even stand up to a vendetta with any reliabilty.

Game mechanics =/= fluff, especially since 40k doesn't account for little details like speed and maneuverability. Fluff-wise the Vendetta is a slow and clumsy transport aircraft with bolted-on heavy weapons, it's not bad for strafing ground targets but in a dogfight it is going to die horribly against ANY dedicated air superiority fighter.

And what fluff, the Taros "we gotta make up a bunch of rules to stack everything in favor of the Tau" Campaign?

And everywhere else the Barracuda has appeared.

That depends on what you think an anti-tank missile does to a modern tank. If you know it rarely manages anything but some drive damage, then yeah, pretty much. If you think it's a magic bullet, then lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHPVDRXKGfc

Yep, just some minor drive damage. Don't confuse proper anti-tank missiles like a hellfire (which is even smaller than a seeker missile) with infantry-scale RPGs.

Since when have lumps of plastic depicting the external chassis of something been anything but lumps of plastic?

The art agrees with the model: the tracks run directly along the lower edge of the side armor plates, and there is no room for a suspension.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
How exactly are the Tau, with their inability to handle a straight up fight, supposed to take a fortified Imperial position

Bomb it to rubble from orbit and build a Tau city on the rubble. Or just park a Remora above it and guide in over-the-horizon seeker missile strikes on the gun emplacements/key structural elements in the walls/etc until the defenders are crippled.

or hold a position against an Imperial army that doesn't split up because "well how else could the Tau win?"?

Tau don't care about holding territory, and this isn't a tabletop battle where the world magically ends at the table edge. The Tau would simply fall back while launching long-range attacks, and a massive army would be extremely vulnerable to orbital bombardment/nuclear-armed seeker missiles/etc. Meanwhile Remora stealth drones/pathfinders/etc are attacking enemy supply lines, and the "quantity over quality" Imperial force just runs out of fuel/ammunition/etc.

If you abandon positions on the ground, you lose stationary assets and resources

That is why the only static assets the Tau use are expendable drone weapons.

and if you refuse to engage the superior force, eventually you're going to wind up with no local resources left to call upon, and your logistically inefficient extravagances are going to stop working, leaving you stranded or forcing an evac, where you'd be torn apart by the superior Imperial navy.

This is true in real war. This is not true when you can resupply directly from orbit, and the standard equipment for every unit in your army includes a transport ship capable of deploying from or returning to orbit.

All of which requires naval superiority, which the Tau simply don't have. The Imperium has more warships than the Tau do Tau. If the Tau aren't sitting on fuel and ammo stockpiles, they'll wind up with no way to continue waging war.

By the way, fortified Imperial positions include massive void shields and usually anti-orbital batteries in hardened positions. How could the Tau take something that looked like Vraks, particularly if it was manned by proper guardsmen instead of chaos rabble? The Imperium can simply up and eradicate everything on a planet, or the planet itself to a large extent, if it deems it necessary; they refrain from doing so because planets are far more valuable than the materiel and manpower it takes to capture them.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
All of which requires naval superiority, which the Tau simply don't have. The Imperium has more warships than the Tau do Tau. If the Tau aren't sitting on fuel and ammo stockpiles, they'll wind up with no way to continue waging war.

So we're just magically assuming that the entire Imperial Navy goes to fight the Tau, rather than working with the constraints in real 40k where the Imperium is surrounded by enemies and can't just swarm the Tau with overwhelming naval power.

How could the Tau take something that looked like Vraks, particularly if it was manned by proper guardsmen instead of chaos rabble?

Easily. Land beyond the defenses like the IG did, launch over-the-horizon seeker missile strikes on key defensive positions (for example, the defense lasers preventing orbital bombardment) and then carpet bomb the trenches until everything is dead. Vraks was only a war because FW wanted to do WWI trench warfare in space and put complete idiots in charge of both sides.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
All of which requires naval superiority, which the Tau simply don't have. The Imperium has more warships than the Tau do Tau. If the Tau aren't sitting on fuel and ammo stockpiles, they'll wind up with no way to continue waging war.

So we're just magically assuming that the entire Imperial Navy goes to fight the Tau, rather than working with the constraints in real 40k where the Imperium is surrounded by enemies and can't just swarm the Tau with overwhelming naval power.

It was a comment of scale. The Imperium has more ships able to flatten continents than the Tau have soldiers. Were it an all-out conflict instead of a minor skirmish in the middle of nowhere, the Imperium could field thousands of leman russes for every firewarrior the Tau had.

How could the Tau take something that looked like Vraks, particularly if it was manned by proper guardsmen instead of chaos rabble?

Easily. Land beyond the defenses like the IG did, launch over-the-horizon seeker missile strikes on key defensive positions (for example, the defense lasers preventing orbital bombardment) and then carpet bomb the trenches until everything is dead. Vraks was only a war because FW wanted to do WWI trench warfare in space and put complete idiots in charge of both sides.

You're still operating on the assumption that seeker missiles are some sort magic, instead of crappy versions of the Imperial equivalents. You're forgetting, too, that Imperial artillery makes railguns look like a bad joke, outranging them and delivering effectively the same power to everything within ~15' of the impact. These weapons, far superior to seeker missiles, couldn't scratch the fortifications.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
You're still operating on the assumption that seeker missiles are some sort magic, instead of crappy versions of the Imperial equivalents.

No, I'm comparing them to their real-world equivalents. There's a reason nobody plans on having trench warfare anymore.

You're forgetting, too, that Imperial artillery makes railguns look like a bad joke, outranging them and delivering effectively the same power to everything within ~15' of the impact. These weapons, far superior to seeker missiles, couldn't scratch the fortifications.

Hint: there's a difference between artillery and precision laser-guided weapons. It's called accuracy. Artillery couldn't do the job because unguided artillery firing from 15 miles away doesn't have enough accuracy to hit vulnerable points. So the DKoK spent months shelling a target but just scattered random craters all over the battlefield (with maybe a few lucky shots hitting the wall somewhere near the target bunker). A precision guided weapon, on the other hand, hits directly on the gun emplacement and wrecks it with one shot.

This is the reason why artillery bombardments in WWI/WWII failed to silence fixed defenses, it wasn't about firepower, it was about accuracy. Now that weapons are so much more accurate fixed fortifications have gone away.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
You're still operating on the assumption that seeker missiles are some sort magic, instead of crappy versions of the Imperial equivalents.

No, I'm comparing them to their real-world equivalents. There's a reason nobody plans on having trench warfare anymore.

Right: mobile armor and air superiority. Not the existence of missiles that can effectively counter light armor assets.

You're forgetting, too, that Imperial artillery makes railguns look like a bad joke, outranging them and delivering effectively the same power to everything within ~15' of the impact. These weapons, far superior to seeker missiles, couldn't scratch the fortifications.

Hint: there's a difference between artillery and precision laser-guided weapons. It's called accuracy. Artillery couldn't do the job because unguided artillery firing from 15 miles away doesn't have enough accuracy to hit vulnerable points. So the DKoK spent months shelling a target but just scattered random craters all over the battlefield (with maybe a few lucky shots hitting the wall somewhere near the target bunker). A precision guided weapon, on the other hand, hits directly on the gun emplacement and wrecks it with one shot.

This is the reason why artillery bombardments in WWI/WWII failed to silence fixed defenses, it wasn't about firepower, it was about accuracy. Now that weapons are so much more accurate fixed fortifications have gone away.

Except in 40k, artillery is quite accurate. While those "precision laser-guided weapons" only hit an object the size of a tank 83% of the time, damaging it much less often. What, precisely, is that supposed to do against fortifications designed to ward off the heaviest firepower in existence?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Right: mobile armor and air superiority. Not the existence of missiles that can effectively counter light armor assets.

And the fact that precision guided weapons make fixed fortifications pointless.

Also, precision guided missiles do more than counter just light armor.

Except in 40k, artillery is quite accurate. While those "precision laser-guided weapons" only hit an object the size of a tank 83% of the time, damaging it much less often. What, precisely, is that supposed to do against fortifications designed to ward off the heaviest firepower in existence?

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

Seeker missiles are weak against tanks because realistic anti-tank missiles would not be fun at all. A pathfinder squad would call in off-table seeker missiles and destroy an entire tank army in a single shooting phase. A Vulture gunship (armed with six hunter-killer missiles) would pop out from behind a hill and one-shot six different Leman Russes. Etc. So in the interest of having games last for more than one exchange of fire weapons have been greatly reduced in effectiveness.

And yes, they would kill fortifications. Vraks had simple concrete bunkers and gun emplacements, IG artillery had no problem destroying them when it hit anything. The war only lasted so long because the people running it were utter morons so FW could have their "WWI in space" book.

Fluff kind of equals game mechanics. Not exact, but the basics match up.

This is all true. But you're popping in and out of the game world for your arguments.

Logic isn't set up a la carte

The Tau are using Tau weapons, not the real world equivalents. They are fire rail guns, not the real world equivalents. If anything at about the game were based on any kind of modern technology, than the game would cease to be a game. It would just be a quick blurb about how this empire pissed off that empire and got nuked into oblivion. Sounds like a great game.

 Peregrine wrote:

Also, precision guided missiles do more than counter just light armor.

Which seeker missiles, notably, do not.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

Seeker missiles are weak against tanks because realistic anti-tank missiles would not be fun at all. A pathfinder squad would call in off-table seeker missiles and destroy an entire tank army in a single shooting phase. A Vulture gunship (armed with six hunter-killer missiles) would pop out from behind a hill and one-shot six different Leman Russes. Etc. So in the interest of having games last for more than one exchange of fire weapons have been greatly reduced in effectiveness.

And yes, they would kill fortifications. Vraks had simple concrete bunkers and gun emplacements, IG artillery had no problem destroying them when it hit anything. The war only lasted so long because the people running it were utter morons so FW could have their "WWI in space" book.

Vraks had void shields on everything important, and thousands of years worth of construction on optimized fortifications. Now Vraks was a stupid war, but more because the Imperial armor and air assets should have rendered the trenches useless, not to mention the super-heavies and titans which should have been more than enough to wipe out anti-armor/anti-infantry positions to allow the storming of the anti-orbital defenses by infantry. The Imperial assets devoted to it, by the way, would have been more than enough to wipe out the whole of the Tau, at least were they deployed all at once, dwarfing the Damocles Gulf crusade which, had its legs not been pulled out from under it in reaction to the arrival of behemoth, would have ended the Tau right off the bat.

Believe or not I'm actually more on Valerians side for once....

The Tau have a far superior strategy and capabilities on planet. The only real advantage IoM had was Titans but Tau (actually capable of innovation) created a new titan-killer airship that sent the Titan Legion literally running away because it wasn't worth the cost of keeping them there. Which honestly sums up the Tau really well. The cost of fighting them from the Imperium's stand point almost always outweighs the benefit.

BUT the IoM still wins most of their straight up fights. Why? Two reasons..

1. Superior space fleets

2. Macro. Oh my god. The Macro.


The best IoM ships are considerably more advanced and their ability to pump ungodly amounts of men and armor unto a planets surface simply overwhelms the Tau. I was reminded of a game in Starcraft II where the world champion from starcraft one (which favors micro) went up against one of the worlds best starcraft 2 players (which favors macro). The micro player had some truly brilliant moves and fethed the gak out of the macro player for a long time but eventually the sheer numbers of the macro player outweighed the superior fighting style of the micro player. That's pretty much how it is for the Tau. Which is why they should thank god they are as good as they are because if they were even a little less badass the IoM would have obliterated them long ago.

It's one of the annoyances of 40k that you have a lot of disagreeing stories and no clear ranking. This leaves the door open to cheery picking bits to make what you want true. I have seen quite a few versos of the hammer head from so OP that I can't buy it, to so weak that I can't buy it. It's one of the reasons I go by the themes and tag lines. They don't change much.

En Excelsis wrote:
The Tau are using Tau weapons, not the real world equivalents. They are fire rail guns, not the real world equivalents. If anything at about the game were based on any kind of modern technology, than the game would cease to be a game. It would just be a quick blurb about how this empire pissed off that empire and got nuked into oblivion. Sounds like a great game.

Real weapons came in because Sir Pseudonymous refused to accept the fluff of seeker missiles effortlessly destroying Imperial tanks. I brought up real-world anti-tank missiles to prove that the fluff description is actually a very reasonable one.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Which seeker missiles, notably, do not.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

Seeker missiles in the tabletop game are weak for game balance reasons.

Seeker missiles in the fluff one-shot Leman Russes.

Vraks had void shields on everything important

No they didn't. The void shields only protected the inner citadel, the outer rings of defenses were just WWI-style walls and trenches.

 Shlazaor wrote:
Believe or not I'm actually more on Valerians side for once....

The Tau have a far superior strategy and capabilities on planet. The only real advantage IoM had was Titans but Tau (actually capable of innovation) created a new titan-killer airship that sent the Titan Legion literally running away because it wasn't worth the cost of keeping them there. Which honestly sums up the Tau really well. The cost of fighting them from the Imperium's stand point almost always outweighs the benefit.

That's from the Taros "of course a railgun can one-shot a titan, what are void-shields again?" Campaign, and its big thing is it has a railgun on it. It's like one broadside for the price of seven, and completely helpless against any kind of anti-air or air superiority fighter. A thunderbolt would tear it apart, as would a hydra battery.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
It's like one broadside for the price of seven

No, it carriers a pair of titan-scale weapons. That's WAY more than a mere broadside.

and completely helpless against any kind of anti-air or air superiority fighter.

No, just like Imperial bombers it carries gun turrets for self defense.

A thunderbolt would tear it apart, as would a hydra battery.

Of course a Thunderbolt would win against a heavy bomber, just like a Barracuda would tear apart a Marauder. That's why you have these things called escorts.

Seeker missiles are reportedly very good at taking down void shields.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Which seeker missiles, notably, do not.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

Seeker missiles in the tabletop game are weak for game balance reasons.

Seeker missiles in the fluff one-shot Leman Russes.

The Taros Campaign also has railguns oneshotting a titan, an armored column forgetting it's made of tanks mid-paragraph, and the IG making themselves as small and diffuse as possible so as to allow the Tau to gang up on isolated groups. It's a pile of lunacy that makes Ward look like a competent writer, and is transparently aimed at selling FW Tau resin kits.

No they didn't. The void shields only protected the inner citadel, the outer rings of defenses were just WWI-style walls and trenches.

I could have sworn the anti-orbital emplacements had them too, since they were hardened against artillery and orbital bombardments.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The Taros Campaign also has railguns oneshotting a titan

Too bad. I guess that's what happens when you have titan-scale railguns.

and the IG making themselves as small and diffuse as possible so as to allow the Tau to gang up on isolated groups.

An IG commander being a complete idiot? Shocking...

I could have sworn the anti-orbital emplacements had them too, since they were hardened against artillery and orbital bombardments.

They might have, but the defense lasers weren't a big factor in the ground battle. Even if they did have void shields making it harder to kill them (harder, not impossible, some of the defense lasers in the outer ring were destroyed by artillery) precision seeker missile strikes on the fortifications around them would quickly leave the defense lasers cut off and surrounded by Tau forces, at which point their destruction is inevitable.

The random walls/trench lines/gun bunkers/etc making up the outer rings did not have void shields, they were just WWI trench warfare with laser guns.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Which seeker missiles, notably, do not.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

Seeker missiles in the tabletop game are weak for game balance reasons.

Seeker missiles in the fluff one-shot Leman Russes.

The Taros Campaign also has railguns oneshotting a titan, an armored column forgetting it's made of tanks mid-paragraph, and the IG making themselves as small and diffuse as possible so as to allow the Tau to gang up on isolated groups. It's a pile of lunacy that makes Ward look like a competent writer, and is transparently aimed at selling FW Tau resin kits.

No they didn't. The void shields only protected the inner citadel, the outer rings of defenses were just WWI-style walls and trenches.

I could have sworn the anti-orbital emplacements had them too, since they were hardened against artillery and orbital bombardments.

The AX-0-1 Tigershark that killed the Warhound titan , did it with a titan killer rail cannon, not a standard railgun, and even by the rules of that edition its was possible, so sorry it happened, oh well.

I read the passage you constantly bring up about a armored column forgeting its tanks , yup bad writing, oh well, bad editing happens alot in gw books.

And the Tau were able to gang up on IG units DUE to the better manuver assets they have. Mantas, grav vehicles, jetpacked suits all can move without regard to terrain, ravines, canyons rocky terrain, do not even slow them down, most of the IG roll on the ground, I guess its hard to accept that the IG can actually be outmanuvered by anyone.

Every book printed by GW/FW are slated to sell the units factions inside, so you dislike the book who cares.

and there are alot of comments about seeker missles not being able to destroy a leman russ...last time I checked the sides of a Russ is only av 12, and a seeker is str 8, so maybe...just maybe some of these hits maybe..again wrap your head around this concept hit the Russ from the side.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
It's like one broadside for the price of seven

No, it carriers a pair of titan-scale weapons. That's WAY more than a mere broadside.

Wait, it's an S10 weapon with the destroyer rule? That doesn't make sense; if it has a strength other than "destroyer" it's not a destroyer weapon... ah, and it's recosted in IA Apocalypse, making it one marginally improved broadside for the price of nine and a half. Which would, ironically, be enough to potentially bring down a warhound in one salvo. It's still a little unlikely, but it's quite a bit more so than the entirely impossible one heavy railgun bringing down a titan in one shot.

No, just like Imperial bombers it carries gun turrets for self defense.

Which are significantly shorter range than either hydras or the imperial hunter-"we don't need no stinkin markerlights"-killer missiles.

Of course a Thunderbolt would win against a heavy bomber, just like a Barracuda would tear apart a Marauder. That's why you have these things called escorts.

A marauder would stand a better chance of winning against a barracuda than a tiger-shark would against a thunderbolt, however.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Wait, it's an S10 weapon with the destroyer rule? That doesn't make sense; if it has a strength other than "destroyer" it's not a destroyer weapon... ah, and it's recosted in IA Apocalypse, making it one marginally improved broadside for the price of nine and a half. Which would, ironically, be enough to potentially bring down a warhound in one salvo. It's still a little unlikely, but it's quite a bit more so than the entirely impossible one heavy railgun bringing down a titan in one shot.

GAME MECHANICS =/= FLUFF.

The Tigershark is armed with two titan-scale weapons. Essentially it's a flying Warhound.

Which are significantly shorter range than either hydras or the imperial hunter-"we don't need no stinkin markerlights"-killer missiles.

What does that have to do with a dogfight with a Thunderbolt (you know, the thing the defensive turrets on a Marauder or Tigershark are designed for)? The way you deal with Hydras is to stay above their maximum altitude and/or kill them with stand-off weapons, not strafe them with machine guns.

A marauder would stand a better chance of winning against a barracuda than a tiger-shark would against a thunderbolt, however.

Evidence for this?

And even if the Marauder has a marginally better chance, it's still pretty much zero. Pointing out that heavy bombers die if they're forced into a dogfight with air superiority fighters isn't really saying much, and it isn't a point against the Tigershark.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Shlazaor wrote:
Believe or not I'm actually more on Valerians side for once....

The Tau have a far superior strategy and capabilities on planet. The only real advantage IoM had was Titans but Tau (actually capable of innovation) created a new titan-killer airship that sent the Titan Legion literally running away because it wasn't worth the cost of keeping them there. Which honestly sums up the Tau really well. The cost of fighting them from the Imperium's stand point almost always outweighs the benefit.

That's from the Taros "of course a railgun can one-shot a titan, what are void-shields again?" Campaign, and its big thing is it has a railgun on it. It's like one broadside for the price of seven, and completely helpless against any kind of anti-air or air superiority fighter. A thunderbolt would tear it apart, as would a hydra battery.

It's a dedicated titan-killer not a dog fighter. That is like criticizing a spoon for not cutting like a knife. They are too completely different things.And it doesn't one-shot the titan. It blasts through the void shields with seeker-missiles and then blasts through the armor with the titan-level railgun. All of the fluff surrounding them continuously hammers home the idea that they are utterly out of their league against the IoM on a strategic level but tactically fighting them results in costs that simply far outweigh's any benefits. This isn't an esoteric concept. Of course the Tau would have to have significant ground superiority in order to justify that fluff.

The Taus greatest weapon is not technology, their behind in a lot of ways, their genetic engineering is far behind the both the Imperium and the forces of Chaos, they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand, Tau power comes from lies, lies that they actually give a damn about others and won't just use them to serve the goals of the Etherials who are the only ones who benefit from the pyramid scheme, just look at how willing they always are to shoot the kroot in the dawn of war games, or to sterilize human populations while bringing in tau settlers, their like the Nazis but with a better PR department.

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
The Taus greatest weapon is not technology, their behind in a lot of ways, their genetic engineering is far behind the both the Imperium and the forces of Chaos, they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand, Tau power comes from lies, lies that they actually give a damn about others and won't just use them to serve the goals of the Etherials who are the only ones who benefit from the pyramid scheme, just look at how willing they always are to shoot the kroot in the dawn of war games, or to sterilize human populations while bringing in tau settlers, their like the Nazis but with a better PR department.

No. This statement is wrong. The Tau are behind in some ways but they are also ahead in some areas which is incredible given their species short span of existence. The Tau have warp-capable ships. That is why they are called the Tau Empire because they have expanded to many different systems. DoW is not all canon. Tau do not throw people into concentration camps or steralize populations in all but one case which is debatable at best. In fact they have armed and fought alongside humans. Last I checked the Nazi's did not give weapons to the Jews and fight the Allies alongside them.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Wait, it's an S10 weapon with the destroyer rule? That doesn't make sense; if it has a strength other than "destroyer" it's not a destroyer weapon... ah, and it's recosted in IA Apocalypse, making it one marginally improved broadside for the price of nine and a half. Which would, ironically, be enough to potentially bring down a warhound in one salvo. It's still a little unlikely, but it's quite a bit more so than the entirely impossible one heavy railgun bringing down a titan in one shot.

GAME MECHANICS =/= FLUFF.

The Tigershark is armed with two titan-scale weapons. Essentially it's a flying Warhound.

A warhound puts out four equivalent shots at marginally shorter range, except they're all large blasts instead of a single shot that effects a single point.

What does that have to do with a dogfight with a Thunderbolt (you know, the thing the defensive turrets on a Marauder or Tigershark are designed for)? The way you deal with Hydras is to stay above their maximum altitude and/or kill them with stand-off weapons, not strafe them with machine guns.

It's a ground supporting gunship that's supposed to stay out of the range of emplacements designed to take out anything from close support gunships to high-altitude bombers? How is that supposed to work again?

Evidence for this?

And even if the Marauder has a marginally better chance, it's still pretty much zero. Pointing out that heavy bombers die if they're forced into a dogfight with air superiority fighters isn't really saying much, and it isn't a point against the Tigershark.

Oh, the odds are definitely against it (I'm a bit tired to mathhammer out the specifics right now), but it's 50% tougher, and has weapons with better range and firepower against attacking aircraft. And the thunderbolt is just a better air-superiority fighter overall.

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
The Taus greatest weapon is not technology, their behind in a lot of ways, their genetic engineering is far behind the both the Imperium and the forces of Chaos, they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand, Tau power comes from lies, lies that they actually give a damn about others and won't just use them to serve the goals of the Etherials who are the only ones who benefit from the pyramid scheme, just look at how willing they always are to shoot the kroot in the dawn of war games, or to sterilize human populations while bringing in tau settlers, their like the Nazis but with a better PR department.

Wrong on almost every count.
If its fluff from all sources then thats what we can play, in Deathwatch RPG, its mentioned that the Tau have discovered a cure for the Genestealer Phlage taint, and are able to cure , without killing its victims, something the IoM has never acheived in any fluff (as far as I know)

The have Warp tech, its not as fast as imperial tech, and uses a different means, thats how they have expanded, its just they have benifited from a tight cluster of systems in the first 2 expansions.

Ethereals serve the Tau race , in the capacity they are best, as each of the castes do, there is no pyramid scheme, its just how Tau society works, and they do not hide the roles each caste plays.

In every book (not computer game ) they state over and over that the kroot are a valued part of the empire and do not waste them pointlessly, no more than they do any element of their military, but the kroot way of warfare leads to them taking more casulties, they do engage in CC, and that tends to be pretty lethal.

And yes in the face of a hostile population upon a captured planet, its how they deal with the problem, is it across the board and for every inhabitant of the planet, who knows, but the fluff also states that the Tau will put their own lives in danger to save allies and member planets.

They are not Nazis ..they are Aliens.

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
...they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand...

Huh, what? They do have Warp technology, except it's really, REALLY primitive.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:


In every book (not computer game ) they state over and over that the kroot are a valued part of the empire and do not waste them pointlessly, no more than they do any element of their military, but the kroot way of warfare leads to them taking more casulties, they do engage in CC, and that tends to be pretty lethal.

Yeah, but don't they look down on the Kroot as savages?

not really, they just find the kroots tendency for eating dead enemies distasteful, and they smell bad.

Some Tau at first glace considered the kroot savage, but they sent teams and envoys to study the kroot on their home planet (this was covered in the first Tau codex), and that likely cleared up alot of initial misgivings, besides if the Ethereals say they are ok..then they are ok.


The firewarriors that serve alongside the kroot respect them, and they fufill a role in the Tau OB.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
A warhound puts out four equivalent shots at marginally shorter range, except they're all large blasts instead of a single shot that effects a single point.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

And even by game mechanics the Tigershark's gun is AP 1, so not equivalent.

It's a ground supporting gunship that's supposed to stay out of the range of emplacements designed to take out anything from close support gunships to high-altitude bombers? How is that supposed to work again?

Seeker missiles = over-the-horizon strike to kill the Hydra (with a cloaked Remora marking the target), at which point the Tigershark moves in for direct railgun shots. And note that the heavy railcannons outrange a Hydra.

Also, since you love game mechanics, in Aeronautica Imperialis (the most detailed air combat we've seen) a Hydra is limited to medium range and low altitude. It is good defense against low-altitude strafing attacks, but does nothing against high-altitude bombers.

Oh, the odds are definitely against it (I'm a bit tired to mathhammer out the specifics right now), but it's 50% tougher, and has weapons with better range and firepower against attacking aircraft. And the thunderbolt is just a better air-superiority fighter overall.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

In fact, I could easily come to the opposite conclusion by looking at the Aeronautica Imperialis rules (IMO a better source for air combat) where a Barracuda, depending on the range, has a better chance of taking out a Marauder than a Thunderbolt against a Tigershark.

In fact they have armed and fought alongside humans. Last I checked the Nazi's did not give weapons to the Jews and fight the Allies alongside them.

Nazi's gave weopons to Slavs who they deemed to be subhuman, over 400,000 poles served in the German Army despite the fact that the Nazi regime was taking active steps to reduce the the diet of the Polish people to lesson their life expectency and increase infant mortality.

And yes in the face of a hostile population upon a captured planet, its how they deal with the problem

The Nazis felt they faced hostile poplulations as well.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
...they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand...

Huh, what? They do have Warp technology, except it's really, REALLY primitive.

The Imperium may have better warp travel, but that is because they have psykers to guide their ships. The new classes of Tau ships are almost as Warp-capable as Imperium ships, but they lack navigators. The superior Tau technology allows them to keep up.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
not really, they just find the kroots tendency for eating dead enemies distasteful, and they smell bad.

LMAO
Seriously?

Anyway, back on topic of the Tau Empire and it's clients, just to introduce a new dimension into the discussion, it seems to me if the Imperium is an analogy to the historical Holy Roman Empire, then the Tau are an analogy to the colonial empires of the 19th century.

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:

In fact they have armed and fought alongside humans. Last I checked the Nazi's did not give weapons to the Jews and fight the Allies alongside them.

Nazi's gave weopons to Slavs who they deemed to be subhuman, over 400,000 poles served in the German Army despite the fact that the Nazi regime was taking active steps to reduce the the diet of the Polish people to lesson their life expectency and increase infant mortality.

And yes in the face of a hostile population upon a captured planet, its how they deal with the problem

The Nazis felt they faced hostile poplulations as well.

LEAVE THE NAZIS OUT THIS.

You guys are begging for a MOD Bankai.

 reddwarf54 wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
...they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand...

Huh, what? They do have Warp technology, except it's really, REALLY primitive.

The Imperium may have better warp travel, but that is because they have psykers to guide their ships. The new classes of Tau ships are almost as Warp-capable as Imperium ships, but they lack navigators. The superior Tau technology allows them to keep up.

Ah, but that's the key word isn't it? Almost.

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:

In fact they have armed and fought alongside humans. Last I checked the Nazi's did not give weapons to the Jews and fight the Allies alongside them.

Nazi's gave weopons to Slavs who they deemed to be subhuman, over 400,000 poles served in the German Army despite the fact that the Nazi regime was taking active steps to reduce the the diet of the Polish people to lesson their life expectency and increase infant mortality.

And yes in the face of a hostile population upon a captured planet, its how they deal with the problem

The Nazis felt they faced hostile poplulations as well.

Nazis were humans doing that to other humans that they decided were not human anymore, they did not rebel or resist, they rounded them up and killed them at the commands of a madman, humans killing humans.

now switch to a fantasy universe.

Its aliens sterilizing and reducing a human population to manageable (in their minds) size, and maybe its until the resistance stops, or some other goal is acheived, and when they sterilize its not line them up and shoot them.

so think what you will, its a sci-fi universe and not re-enactment of ww2, your comparisons only hold water in the shallowest of pools, and the sterilizing is only cited in a computer game.

Anyway, back on topic of the Tau Empire and it's clients, just to introduce a new dimension into the discussion, it seems to me if the Imperium is an analogy to the historical Holy Roman Empire, then the Tau are an analogy to the colonial empires of the 19th century.

I think its the Holy Roman Empire vs the Turkish Ottoman Empire, the Tyranids are meant to be the Turinid mongols.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:

In fact they have armed and fought alongside humans. Last I checked the Nazi's did not give weapons to the Jews and fight the Allies alongside them.

Nazi's gave weopons to Slavs who they deemed to be subhuman, over 400,000 poles served in the German Army despite the fact that the Nazi regime was taking active steps to reduce the the diet of the Polish people to lesson their life expectency and increase infant mortality.

And yes in the face of a hostile population upon a captured planet, its how they deal with the problem

The Nazis felt they faced hostile poplulations as well.

Nazis were humans doing that to other humans that they decided were not human anymore, they did not rebel or resist, they rounded them up and killed them at the commands of a madman, humans killing humans.

Enough with the Nazis PLEASE!

Its aliens sterilizing and reducing a human population to manageable (in their minds) size, and maybe its until the resistance stops, or some other goal is acheived, and when they sterilize its not line them up and shoot them.

so think what you will, its a sci-fi universe and not re-enactment of ww2, your comparisons only hold water in the shallowest of pools, and the sterilizing is only cited in a computer game.

And a non-canon ending at that.

but Tau (actually capable of innovation)

Who needs innovation when you have more soldiers than they have bullets.

Yes Kroot smell really bad...they do not defecate or urinate, and have hyper efficent digestion tracts, and exude what little waste as a oily sweat, and they seem to be able to alter that sweats smell, since in a fluff text in the old codex, a kroot followed around a Tau observer, exuding various smells to bother the Tau, much to the amusement of other kroot.
It was actually a pretty good fluff blurb.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Yes Kroot smell really bad...they do not defecate or urinate, and have hyper efficent digestion tracts, and exude what little waste as a oily sweat, and they seem to be able to alter that sweats smell, since in a fluff text in the old codex, a kroot followed around a Tau observer, exuding various smells to bother the Tau, much to the amusement of other kroot.
It was actually a pretty good fluff blurb.

Weird...

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 reddwarf54 wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
...they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand...

Huh, what? They do have Warp technology, except it's really, REALLY primitive.

The Imperium may have better warp travel, but that is because they have psykers to guide their ships. The new classes of Tau ships are almost as Warp-capable as Imperium ships, but they lack navigators. The superior Tau technology allows them to keep up.

Ah, but that's the key word isn't it? Almost.

The point I was trying to make is that they are warp capable without navigators or psykers to guide them. Therefore their superior technology is what allows them to compete.

Thats actually the kind of fluff I enjoy, just little details about races and such, no galaxy shaking silliness.

And as to Tau FTL/warp tech its not Primitive per se, it just missing the keystone of IoM warp tech, namely navigators, and since the Tau are no psychic, they will have to find a way to hurdle this biological requirement, so far they have not been able to, the deep warp dives that the IoM enjoy are due to its possesion of navigators.

It a tech gap that the Tau are now having to come to grips with, how they will solve it..who knows, but as to warp drives and such there really is no fluff saying their engines are any more primitive than human ones, they just cannot take advantage of the full scop of warp travel at this point.

 reddwarf54 wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 reddwarf54 wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
...they have no warp based technology which makes the Tau Empire unable to expand...

Huh, what? They do have Warp technology, except it's really, REALLY primitive.

The Imperium may have better warp travel, but that is because they have psykers to guide their ships. The new classes of Tau ships are almost as Warp-capable as Imperium ships, but they lack navigators. The superior Tau technology allows them to keep up.

Ah, but that's the key word isn't it? Almost.

The point I was trying to make is that they are warp capable without navigators or psykers to guide them. Therefore their superior technology is what allows them to compete.

Unfortunately, that's as far as they go. The Ethereals have stopped all research on the Warp after the Medusa V campaign.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Thats actually the kind of fluff I enjoy, just little details about races and such, no galaxy shaking silliness.

Hmmm...that makes sense. TBH, I wish BL would publish some novels that aren't about crusade this, campaign that, and just something about normal galactic life; a colony fleet traveling across the stars, Rogue Traders exploring the unknown, and so on.

Actually if memory serves it was earth caste techs that found a deadend to current research, likely the lack of a psychic link in the warp tech tree, and one they cannot currently solve with their tech..cool, I love limitations to races and factions, it makes for interesting reading.

And they are aware of this shortcoming, so adapting doctrine to compansate would be the Tau empires likely route, in the short term, build up what they have, and look for alternatives.

Its the biggest contrast from the IoM the Tau are exploring and developing, the IoM is established and forgotten some its greatest acheivments, its a big circle of life.

"que lion king music"

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Actually if memory serves it was earth caste techs that found a deadend to current research, likely the lack of a psychic link in the warp tech tree, and one they cannot currently solve with their tech..cool, I love limitations to races and factions, it makes for interesting reading.

And they are aware of this shortcoming, so adapting doctrine to compansate would be the Tau empires likely route, in the short term, build up what they have, and look for alternatives.

The problem is that with their current understanding of Warp technology, they reach a point where expanding their empire would become a pointless exercise. Slow FTL and no FTL communications = troops so far away will be wiped out by Imperial/Chaos/Tyranid/Ork/Necron forces by the time reinforcements arrive. Their enemies might even goad the Tau into continuing such a futile campaign to bleed their military away, allowing for a killing blow to be struck at the depleted Tau core worlds.

As I said a hurdle, all races face them, and we will see in the new codex if the address that, likely they will since its GWs practice to make sure all races can fight everyone for any reason, anywhere.

I am hoping for a nice fluff infusion when the new codex finally arrives.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
As I said a hurdle, all races face them, and we will see in the new codex if the address that, likely they will since its GWs practice to make sure all races can fight everyone for any reason, anywhere.

I am hoping for a nice fluff infusion when the new codex finally arrives.

Good luck to that. I doubt BFG will be getting any update soon

Nope, BFG, necromunda, gorkamorka, inquistor all have been subject to the overall change in GW practices, and its a shame, some of the best balanced games they produced, and fun as well.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Nope, BFG, necromunda, gorkamorka, inquistor all have been subject to the overall change in GW practices, and its a shame, some of the best balanced games they produced, and fun as well.

Any suggestions which TT army I should get into? Is there an army with a play style similar to the Imperial Navy? Balanced, sturdy, and so on...

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Yes Kroot smell really bad...they do not defecate or urinate, and have hyper efficent digestion tracts, and exude what little waste as a oily sweat, and they seem to be able to alter that sweats smell, since in a fluff text in the old codex, a kroot followed around a Tau observer, exuding various smells to bother the Tau, much to the amusement of other kroot.
It was actually a pretty good fluff blurb.

I like the expression "fluff blurp"in this context

But an Imperial Guard regiment is not exactly a rose garden either

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Nope, BFG, necromunda, gorkamorka, inquistor all have been subject to the overall change in GW practices, and its a shame, some of the best balanced games they produced, and fun as well.

Any suggestions which TT army I should get into? Is there an army with a play style similar to the Imperial Navy? Balanced, sturdy, and so on...

Based on your interests in the Imperial navy, I would go with that, make a IG army based on the concept of a detached ships ground party, valkires, vultures, veteran troopers, stormtroopers, all kinds of cool conversions could be made to fit with the concept, Basilisks could be modeled as a mobile ground direction center for ship based weaponry, stormtroopers could be modeled as ships elite boarding teams.
Sentinals could be modeled as jurry rigged powerloaders pressed into use.

IG would be a fun project, paint the soldiers in crisper uniforms, and tone down the mud and dirt and it would sing.

Not to mention you could add air support, thunderbolts etc and it would be incredibly fluffy.

I see. All right then, I'll see if I can find a codex.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Actually if memory serves it was earth caste techs that found a deadend to current research, likely the lack of a psychic link in the warp tech tree, and one they cannot currently solve with their tech..cool, I love limitations to races and factions, it makes for interesting reading.

And they are aware of this shortcoming, so adapting doctrine to compansate would be the Tau empires likely route, in the short term, build up what they have, and look for alternatives.

The problem is that with their current understanding of Warp technology, they reach a point where expanding their empire would become a pointless exercise. Slow FTL and no FTL communications = troops so far away will be wiped out by Imperial/Chaos/Tyranid/Ork/Necron forces by the time reinforcements arrive. Their enemies might even goad the Tau into continuing such a futile campaign to bleed their military away, allowing for a killing blow to be struck at the depleted Tau core worlds.

Well no. The tau may find this as their saving grace. A slow methodical approach.
Remember the Imperium of Man is no a densely populated area, and not every system is controlled by them. Whereas the Imperium might have 2 controlled systems within easy reach. The Tau might have 8 or 9 controlled system, each colonised and fully developed, with any internal threats removed, so no surprise invasions from within the Empire.

And you can bet the Tau would be able to respond reliably as well. No dependent on the reliability of the warp. Message ships out, muster troops, fleet in = X weeks.

Imperium astropathic message= variable time mere seconds or not at all
Muster troops= variable for the muster due to warp, days weeks or years
Transport in= variable days weeks or years

Taros for example took over a year to muster and deploy troops for a campaign.

 Eetion wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Actually if memory serves it was earth caste techs that found a deadend to current research, likely the lack of a psychic link in the warp tech tree, and one they cannot currently solve with their tech..cool, I love limitations to races and factions, it makes for interesting reading.

And they are aware of this shortcoming, so adapting doctrine to compansate would be the Tau empires likely route, in the short term, build up what they have, and look for alternatives.

The problem is that with their current understanding of Warp technology, they reach a point where expanding their empire would become a pointless exercise. Slow FTL and no FTL communications = troops so far away will be wiped out by Imperial/Chaos/Tyranid/Ork/Necron forces by the time reinforcements arrive. Their enemies might even goad the Tau into continuing such a futile campaign to bleed their military away, allowing for a killing blow to be struck at the depleted Tau core worlds.

Well no. The tau may find this as their saving grace. A slow methodical approach.
Remember the Imperium of Man is no a densely populated area, and not every system is controlled by them. Whereas the Imperium might have 2 controlled systems within easy reach. The Tau might have 8 or 9 controlled system, each colonised and fully developed, with any internal threats removed, so no surprise invasions from within the Empire.

And you can bet the Tau would be able to respond reliably as well. No dependent on the reliability of the warp. Message ships out, muster troops, fleet in = X weeks.

Imperium astropathic message= variable time mere seconds or not at all
Muster troops= variable for the muster due to warp, days weeks or years
Transport in= variable days weeks or years

Taros for example took over a year to muster and deploy troops for a campaign.

If a frontal attack won't work, let us turn to the Inquisition, and have them lure a Tyranid Hive Fleet or an Ork Waaagh! into the Tau salient. Humans can manipulate other races like Eldar too

On another note, should the Tau get too strong, the Necrons are bound to take notice. They know better than anyone how dangerous a young and determined species is - because they were like that too against the Old Ones. And even if the Tau can take on the Imperium/Tyranids/Orks in a large-scale operation by that point; I doubt the same would go for the Necrons. The difference in power is too great; it's like comparing the Great Crusade-era Imperium to the Eldar Empire at it's height. The latter was actually far stronger.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Eetion wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Actually if memory serves it was earth caste techs that found a deadend to current research, likely the lack of a psychic link in the warp tech tree, and one they cannot currently solve with their tech..cool, I love limitations to races and factions, it makes for interesting reading.

And they are aware of this shortcoming, so adapting doctrine to compansate would be the Tau empires likely route, in the short term, build up what they have, and look for alternatives.

The problem is that with their current understanding of Warp technology, they reach a point where expanding their empire would become a pointless exercise. Slow FTL and no FTL communications = troops so far away will be wiped out by Imperial/Chaos/Tyranid/Ork/Necron forces by the time reinforcements arrive. Their enemies might even goad the Tau into continuing such a futile campaign to bleed their military away, allowing for a killing blow to be struck at the depleted Tau core worlds.

Well no. The tau may find this as their saving grace. A slow methodical approach.
Remember the Imperium of Man is no a densely populated area, and not every system is controlled by them. Whereas the Imperium might have 2 controlled systems within easy reach. The Tau might have 8 or 9 controlled system, each colonised and fully developed, with any internal threats removed, so no surprise invasions from within the Empire.

And you can bet the Tau would be able to respond reliably as well. No dependent on the reliability of the warp. Message ships out, muster troops, fleet in = X weeks.

Imperium astropathic message= variable time mere seconds or not at all
Muster troops= variable for the muster due to warp, days weeks or years
Transport in= variable days weeks or years

Taros for example took over a year to muster and deploy troops for a campaign.

If a frontal attack won't work, let us turn to the Inquisition, and have them lure a Tyranid Hive Fleet or an Ork Waaagh! into the Tau salient. Humans can manipulate other races like Eldar too

On another note, should the Tau get too strong, the Necrons are bound to take notice. They know better than anyone how dangerous a young and determined species is - because they were like that too against the Old Ones. And even if the Tau can take on the Imperium/Tyranids/Orks in a large-scale operation by that point; I doubt the same would go for the Necrons. The difference in power is too great; it's like comparing the Great Crusade-era Imperium to the Eldar Empire at it's height. The latter was actually far stronger.

What the necrons will do or won't do is not so much a issue, they are the longest lived race in the galaxy, so they are really in no rush to do anything, at anytime, and the reactions of the necrons are dependant on which necron lord it is, some may destroy, some my ignore, some may collect, and some may find the Tau a "Honorable" foe..who knows.

The Necrons are a far greater threat to humanity, since its they who hold the keys to the warp so to speak, and the necrons really dislike warp stuff, tau dont even factor on that radar.

And if you want to talk manipulation, what if the Tau were able in some way to communicate with the Tyranids, after all the Tyranids have their own version of the greater good, same as the vespid...and that went well, maybe a communion torpedo, they could lodge in a tyranid norn queen ship.

So its best just to discuss whats likely to happen, not delve into such and such will kill everyone ..blah blah.

That and luring hive fleets... Isn't exactly a common occurence.

In fact the whole luring nids plan was born out of desperation and the inquisitor in question was severely reprimanded.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Eetion wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Actually if memory serves it was earth caste techs that found a deadend to current research, likely the lack of a psychic link in the warp tech tree, and one they cannot currently solve with their tech..cool, I love limitations to races and factions, it makes for interesting reading.

And they are aware of this shortcoming, so adapting doctrine to compansate would be the Tau empires likely route, in the short term, build up what they have, and look for alternatives.

The problem is that with their current understanding of Warp technology, they reach a point where expanding their empire would become a pointless exercise. Slow FTL and no FTL communications = troops so far away will be wiped out by Imperial/Chaos/Tyranid/Ork/Necron forces by the time reinforcements arrive. Their enemies might even goad the Tau into continuing such a futile campaign to bleed their military away, allowing for a killing blow to be struck at the depleted Tau core worlds.

Well no. The tau may find this as their saving grace. A slow methodical approach.
Remember the Imperium of Man is no a densely populated area, and not every system is controlled by them. Whereas the Imperium might have 2 controlled systems within easy reach. The Tau might have 8 or 9 controlled system, each colonised and fully developed, with any internal threats removed, so no surprise invasions from within the Empire.

And you can bet the Tau would be able to respond reliably as well. No dependent on the reliability of the warp. Message ships out, muster troops, fleet in = X weeks.

Imperium astropathic message= variable time mere seconds or not at all
Muster troops= variable for the muster due to warp, days weeks or years
Transport in= variable days weeks or years

Taros for example took over a year to muster and deploy troops for a campaign.

If a frontal attack won't work, let us turn to the Inquisition, and have them lure a Tyranid Hive Fleet or an Ork Waaagh! into the Tau salient. Humans can manipulate other races like Eldar too

On another note, should the Tau get too strong, the Necrons are bound to take notice. They know better than anyone how dangerous a young and determined species is - because they were like that too against the Old Ones. And even if the Tau can take on the Imperium/Tyranids/Orks in a large-scale operation by that point; I doubt the same would go for the Necrons. The difference in power is too great; it's like comparing the Great Crusade-era Imperium to the Eldar Empire at it's height. The latter was actually far stronger.

What the necrons will do or won't do is not so much a issue, they are the longest lived race in the galaxy, so they are really in no rush to do anything, at anytime, and the reactions of the necrons are dependant on which necron lord it is, some may destroy, some my ignore, some may collect, and some may find the Tau a "Honorable" foe..who knows.

The Necrons are a far greater threat to humanity, since its they who hold the keys to the warp so to speak, and the necrons really dislike warp stuff, tau dont even factor on that radar.

And if you want to talk manipulation, what if the Tau were able in some way to communicate with the Tyranids, after all the Tyranids have their own version of the greater good, same as the vespid...and that went well, maybe a communion torpedo, they could lodge in a tyranid norn queen ship.

So its best just to discuss whats likely to happen, not delve into such and such will kill everyone ..blah blah.

Fair enough, but Tau subverting Tyranids would be suicide if it succeeded. I imagine Eldar emissaries immediately opening negotiations with the Imperium to end this threat. The Eldar have not forgotten nor forgiven the devastation on Iyanden. Far better to humble themselves and join with the mon'keigh to stop the Tau and their pet Tyranids before they wreak havok on the galaxy

I think in that incredibly unlikely event, the eldar would buddy up with the tau, and point to what planets the eldar want to preserve, its been stated in several places that the Eldar have compasion, interest or what ever the eldar equivalent for non-disdain for the Tau.

Likely the Tau would just ask the tyranids to go somewhere else

anyway back to your regular programming.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
I think in that incredibly unlikely event, the eldar would buddy up with the tau, and point to what planets the eldar want to preserve, its been stated in several places that the Eldar have compasion, interest or what ever the eldar equivalent for non-disdain for the Tau.

That would change...for Iyanden at least. They hate the Tyranids with a passion that's almost holy. And can you blame them?

Likely the Tau would just ask the tyranids to go somewhere else

Only for more to come back. There's more than one Hive Fleet out there, you know.

anyway back to your regular programming.

Okay...which is what?

Asking nids to go away, communication, redirecting into the Tau... Again.
This is all too far fetched and irrelevant to the discussion.
Let's look at likely options.

Tau tech I believe is better across the army but high end equipment is inferior. But equally is rare in the imperium.

The russ is inferior to the hammerhead in virtually every way, but equally more numerous.

As for Seeker missiles barely scratching the paint of a Russ. Just no. Remember seekers are not man portable weapons, its launched from vehicles and aircraft. The Tau favor a fluid mobile form of war. The seeker can be launched at any angle, its not guaranteed to be in front of the russ. It may be from Pirahnas from the rear or side as the circumnavigate the armoured column, or down on to the top of the russ from an aircraft. Yes a. Russ has armour 14 at the front, but then its only 10 at the rear.

The Imperial Navy is superior... At the moment. But the Tau have rapidly closed the gap in a relatively short space of time, and the Tau bombers are far more dangerous than anything the navy can deploy.

Also while adressing the Navy let's also talk about Air Support. Yes the Navy is larger, But the Tau air especially skilled. Tiger Sharks with titan Killing railguns, Mantas, and most importantly the Remora Drone Fighter. 1 aircraft capable of controlling its own fighter support, with you guessed it Seeker missiles. Massed produced, and capable of high speed maneuvers. This aircraft may just have turned any form of Imperial Air Superiority in a campaign into an impossibility. The ability to deploy many Aircraft so that they can compete with not only the barracudas but also x number of Remoras may be beyond them.

I've seen a few comments on the Tau FTL/Warp drive, and I feel that the Tau version is probably more advanced than the Imperial version. I'm not going to say better, but simply more advanced.

Humanity hit a problem and found a way to advance via the navigator gene, that allowed them quicker speeds, the physical mechanical aspect was never developed further, after all why did they need to. The Tau however never obtained the gene, and so have continued to develop the mechanics. AFAIK, what slows Tau ship down is the need/ability to calculate where they are going, Tau have to look before they leap, IG look while they leap and so can jump further/better/(insert word of choice).

I've also noticed a preponderance of comments (at least in other threads) that Tau are screwed if they do obtain the navigator gene due to the probable demonic possession. I've only heard of this (background wise) for humans. Has there been anything written about an alien being possessed/made a gateway of (as opposed to killed, I'm thinking ghost helm/RoW here) by a warp entity?

Cheers

Andrew

 Eetion wrote:


The Imperial Navy is superior... At the moment. But the Tau have rapidly closed the gap in a relatively short space of time, and the Tau bombers are far more dangerous than anything the navy can deploy.

Also while adressing the Navy let's also talk about Air Support. Yes the Navy is larger, But the Tau air especially skilled. Tiger Sharks with titan Killing railguns, Mantas, and most importantly the Remora Drone Fighter. 1 aircraft capable of controlling its own fighter support, with you guessed it Seeker missiles. Massed produced, and capable of high speed maneuvers. This aircraft may just have turned any form of Imperial Air Superiority in a campaign into an impossibility. The ability to deploy many Aircraft so that they can compete with not only the barracudas but also x number of Remoras may be beyond them.

Only because the larger naval formations are elsewhere. The Tau are a frontier threat; the Lord Admirals aren't going to send any unnecessary forces. As for superior Attack Craft...in space, the Barracuda is the primary Tau interceptor and is easily matched by Imperial Furies, but the Imperium can field more Furies than the Tau can field Barracudas. Mantas stand a 50-50 chance of punching through Imperial fighter screens...but Imperial warships aren't defenseless - they do have turrets of their own. Plus, the Imperial Navy still prefers to field more ships than the enemy whenever possible. Quantity is a quality of it's own, you know. In any case, even if the Imperium can't win on the ground, without naval superiority, the Imperium could just bomb the whole place from orbit. Plus Space Marines

 AndrewC wrote:
I've seen a few comments on the Tau FTL/Warp drive, and I feel that the Tau version is probably more advanced than the Imperial version. I'm not going to say better, but simply more advanced.

Humanity hit a problem and found a way to advance via the navigator gene, that allowed them quicker speeds, the physical mechanical aspect was never developed further, after all why did they need to. The Tau however never obtained the gene, and so have continued to develop the mechanics. AFAIK, what slows Tau ship down is the need/ability to calculate where they are going, Tau have to look before they leap, IG look while they leap and so can jump further/better/(insert word of choice).

The Old Ones would probably have considered the Human method as more commendable, given that in the 40k universe, psychic species are generally considered as superior to non-psychic species (IRL, I too would consider psionics as a mark of superiority, whether those born with psionic talents, those who inherited them from their parents, and those who had them induced via artificial means).

I've also noticed a preponderance of comments (at least in other threads) that Tau are screwed if they do obtain the navigator gene due to the probable demonic possession. I've only heard of this (background wise) for humans. Has there been anything written about an alien being possessed/made a gateway of (as opposed to killed, I'm thinking ghost helm/RoW here) by a warp entity?

Never heard of it myself, but I do know that Tau are not immune to psychic attack/sorcery.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Only because the larger naval formations are elsewhere. The Tau are a frontier threat; the Lord Admirals aren't going to send any unnecessary forces. As for superior Attack Craft...in space, the Barracuda is the primary Tau interceptor and is easily matched by Imperial Furies, but the Imperium can field more Furies than the Tau can field Barracudas. Mantas stand a 50-50 chance of punching through Imperial fighter screens...but Imperial warships aren't defenseless - they do have turrets of their own.

However said turrets are useless against combined waves. A smart Tau commander will launch a combined wave of fighters, missles and mantas. Any opposing forces has to make up its mind as to what it is going to strip. If they go for the missiles then the bombers get through with the fighers in support. If they go for the fighters, then the missiles and bombers hit at the same time, and the turrets can only target one. If they go for the Mantas, they have a fifty/fifty chance of surviving and the turrets still can only target one.

Cheers

Andrew

 AndrewC wrote:


However said turrets are useless against combined waves. A smart Tau commander will launch a combined wave of fighters, missles and mantas. Any opposing forces has to make up its mind as to what it is going to strip. If they go for the missiles then the bombers get through with the fighers in support. If they go for the fighters, then the missiles and bombers hit at the same time, and the turrets can only target one. If they go for the Mantas, they have a fifty/fifty chance of surviving and the turrets still can only target one.

True...but then simply have the Imperial fighters go for the drone missiles, and have the fleet concentrate their Weapon Batteries on the incoming wave. A one-in-six chance of hitting sounds small, but when you combine multiple Weapon Batteries, then you actually get a surprisingly large chance of hitting. And a single hit from a Weapon Battery would wipe out an entire wave.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
The Old Ones would probably have considered the Human method as more commendable, given that in the 40k universe, psychic species are generally considered as superior to non-psychic species.

Only by the psychic species

Never heard of it myself, but I do know that Tau are not immune to psychic attack/sorcery.

Agreed, but I have seen it proposed elsewhere that once/if the Tau obtain the gene, their empire would be torn asunder by uncontrolled warprifts/demonic incursions. I've never seen any evidence supporting that claim, ie supporting evidence via background fiction/rules. It could be that the warp is so specialised that they are capable only of entering 'realspace' via a human host. Wouldn't that be an interesting plot twist?

Cheers

Andrew

PS, I've just remembered Tau do have exterminatus weapons, just like all the other space faring factions. (This is for an earlier post in the thread)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
True...but then simply have the Imperial fighters go for the drone missiles, and have the fleet concentrate their Weapon Batteries on the incoming wave. A one-in-six chance of hitting sounds small, but when you combine multiple Weapon Batteries, then you actually get a surprisingly large chance of hitting. And a single hit from a Weapon Battery would wipe out an entire wave.

But if you're firing your batteries against the ordinance, then you're not firing them at the Tau capital ships are you? And ordinance can be reloaded, whereas hull point damage can't. I've just made the IN waste it's main advantage against reusable assets.

Cheers

Andrew

 AndrewC wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
The Old Ones would probably have considered the Human method as more commendable, given that in the 40k universe, psychic species are generally considered as superior to non-psychic species.

Only by the psychic species

Lol

But seriously, at the risk of sounding egotistical, I'll be poetic on this subject:

Any fool can hold a gun. Any primitive creature with enough complexity can order a ship to bomb a world from orbit. But only a psionic can bend reality with their mind, overcoming technology and the laws of physics alike. For all our fear of the Warp and of Chaos, we Humans know, as the Eldar know, that psionics is a power like no other.

Never heard of it myself, but I do know that Tau are not immune to psychic attack/sorcery.

Agreed, but I have seen it proposed elsewhere that once/if the Tau obtain the gene, their empire would be torn asunder by uncontrolled warprifts/demonic incursions. I've never seen any evidence supporting that claim, ie supporting evidence via background fiction/rules. It could be that the warp is so specialised that they are capable only of entering 'realspace' via a human host. Wouldn't that be an interesting plot twist?

That seems unlikely, given the Warp is generated by all living things, and not just Humans (even if Humans 'feed' Chaos more than any other sapient life form).

EDIT: There's also a one-in-six chance of ordnance running out/an accident occurring in the ordnance bays. As a last resort, ram-and-board. The Imperial armored prows and Tau weakness regarding boarding actions can tip the balance.

The Imperial Navy, yes the Barracuda is a match for a fury. But the Manta eclipses the Navys own Bombers. As for the navy having more fighters, Just No, with an entire segmentums fleet yes absolutely. Able to deploy in a single engagement. No. Virtually all of the Taus capital ships can deploy some form of fighter screen. (The custodian I don't think it can)
Fighter and bomber wings are the Taus principle method of void war.

 Eetion wrote:

Fighter and bomber wings are the Taus principle method of void war.

Ordnance superiority =/= instant win.

Ordnance can run out/malfunction. Weapon Batteries and Lances don't.

Imperial warships aren't helpless. It's going to be a tough battle no doubt, but it's not a guaranteed victory for either side, and in a battle of attrition, the Imperial Navy has the advantage. And Heaven help the Tau if the Astartes get involved. Remember the Zeist Campaign? The Tau retreated rather than face a significant force of Space Marines. If the Guard and Navy start to falter, the Ultramarines and their allies will not stand idly by.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
But seriously, at the risk of sounding egotistical, I'll be poetic on this subject:

Any fool can hold a gun. Any primitive creature with enough complexity can order a ship to bomb a world from orbit. But only a psionic can bend reality with their mind, overcoming technology and the laws of physics alike. For all our fear of the Warp and of Chaos, we Humans know, as the Eldar know, that psionics is a power like no other.

I like that quote, bet it was written by a psychic

That seems unlikely, given the Warp is generated by all living things, and not just Humans (even if Humans 'feed' Chaos more than any other sapient life form).

The thought came to me as I'm working my way through the Terry Pratchett Science novels, again, while waiting for the fourth to be published and currently on Darwins Watch. The warp could have evolved so that humans are the only food that they can 'digest'. For example, humans evolved eating raw meat, now we require cooked meat in order to extract nutrients from it. Raw meat is no longer digested properly.

It would be an intersting plot twist to say that warp entities, given the glut of human 'food', have lost the ability to digest other races. But thats getting this OT.

"Why do non-Tau accept the greater good?" Because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Cheers

Andrew

The Zeist campaign little description in the 5th ed codex, is a example of the uneven treatment each race gets , when featured in another codex, it always hige route this and 1 company takes a system that, at least in recent editions, the Tau are guilty of it too, in a scenario supplement where they wipe out a tyranid invasion force with minimal casulties, thats GW for you.
I like hard fought and well written battles, not off hand such and such wiped out these dudes crap.

 AndrewC wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
But seriously, at the risk of sounding egotistical, I'll be poetic on this subject:

Any fool can hold a gun. Any primitive creature with enough complexity can order a ship to bomb a world from orbit. But only a psionic can bend reality with their mind, overcoming technology and the laws of physics alike. For all our fear of the Warp and of Chaos, we Humans know, as the Eldar know, that psionics is a power like no other.

I like that quote, bet it was written by a psychic

No, I made that up and I don't have psionic talents...though I would jump at the chance to have them artificially induced

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
The Zeist campaign little description in the 5th ed codex, is a example of the uneven treatment each race gets , when featured in another codex, it always hige route this and 1 company takes a system that, at least in recent editions, the Tau are guilty of it too, in a scenario supplement where they wipe out a tyranid invasion force with minimal casulties, thats GW for you.
I like hard fought and well written battles, not off hand such and such wiped out these dudes crap.

Well, they have to advertise the factions.

EDIT: Regarding raw meat being digested improperly...sashimi

You know thats also why i champion the IA :3 book so much, I enjoy both imperial and Tau in the game, and I found the book a actually well written back and forth campaign, there were mistakes made by command, and heroic attempts at victories, and even a classic defensive action by space marines at the end, a assasin kills a ethereal, and causes the fire caste to attack recklessly at the withdrawing imperials. (that the Ethereal was going to permit to withdraw without hinderance, until he was killed.)

It even had a cool hunt the bismark story about the imperal fleet dealing with a custodian class carrier, that was raiding their supply lines and vessels.

I just wish they had more like this style of campaign line, it could be because it was between 2 forces that did not have really any weird space magic or warp stuff, just good old tech and weapons.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

EDIT: Regarding raw meat being digested improperly...sashimi

I said meat not fish!

My thoughts, perhaps, didn't come out correctly. We evolved eating raw food, much of the digestive requirements to do so we have now lost because we cook our food. We are still capable of killing our food though. And while warp entities would still be capable of attacking any Tau implanted with the Navigator Gene, it does not necessarily follow that they would be able to possess and 'open' a gateway through them.

So naively implanting the gene does not equal destruction by the warp. But again I'm seriously OT.

Cheers

Andrew

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
You know thats also why i champion the IA :3 book so much, I enjoy both imperial and Tau in the game, and I found the book a actually well written back and forth campaign, there were mistakes made by command, and heroic attempts at victories, and even a classic defensive action by space marines at the end, a assasin kills a ethereal, and causes the fire caste to attack recklessly at the withdrawing imperials. (that the Ethereal was going to permit to withdraw without hinderance, until he was killed.)

It even had a cool hunt the bismark story about the imperal fleet dealing with a custodian class carrier, that was raiding their supply lines and vessels.

Sounds great...I wish I could just download it like the BFG files from the GW website

 AndrewC wrote:
We are still capable of killing our food though.

That we are

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Eetion wrote:

Fighter and bomber wings are the Taus principle method of void war.

Ordnance superiority =/= instant win.

Ordnance can run out/malfunction. Weapon Batteries and Lances don't.

Never claimed it was.

As for 1 in 6 chance of running out of ordnance. That's a game mechanic.

Torpedoes run out if tubes are damaged or if they were short to begin with.
Fighters run out if they are destroyed, or the means to repair, and re arm them are compromised.

Also the tougher more durable the fighter/bomber means they can take more and still fight. Hence we can assume the Manta is much more combat ready because of its durability, combat capabilities, the eldar because of their capability to avoid damage.

I think the fluff regarding IoM space superiority is pretty solid. But considering the Tau have already developed responses in a short time span it doesn't speak well of the IoM mantaining their superiority. Not to mention that the Tau can already fight the IoM in space with a decent chance of victory already.

Damn, when did this thread become a railgun-waving contest?

Cause it's not really a contest. Imperium has more men, more ships and tanks and psykers to divine strategy. The only victory the Tau can achieve are temporary ones. If the Imperium would ever turn their full power against the Tau Empire, Tau would lose against overwhelming tide of military might.

Then again, the Imperium cannot spare any men to fully wipe out any of their major enemies. Because doing so would only make them lose another sector.

So the Imperium could win any other race (except the Tyranids) in a straight duel, but is surrounded by enemies it can't completely destroy.

Lumipon wrote:
Damn, when did this thread become a railgun-waving contest?

Cause it's not really a contest. Imperium has more men, more ships and tanks and psykers to divine strategy. The only victory the Tau can achieve are temporary ones. If the Imperium would ever turn their full power against the Tau Empire, Tau would lose against overwhelming tide of military might.

Then again, the Imperium cannot spare any men to fully wipe out any of their major enemies. Because doing so would only make them lose another sector.

So the Imperium could win any other race (except the Tyranids) in a straight duel, but is surrounded by enemies it can't completely destroy.

I wouldn't fancy the Imperiums chances against the Orks or necrons either.

As you say the Imperium cannot deploy its entire arsenal, its beset by too many foes. Also it could be argued that the Tau can deploy anywhere in the Empire, in numbers. The secruity and advanced weapons the Tau can provide may be a cause for someone to defect to the Greater Good at anyrate.

 Eetion wrote:

Also the tougher more durable the fighter/bomber means they can take more and still fight. Hence we can assume the Manta is much more combat ready because of its durability, combat capabilities, the eldar because of their capability to avoid damage.

I am assuming this means you consider Mantas as superior to Eldar Attack Craft. While I will acknowledge the Manta's superiority compared to the Imperial Starhawk, I have to say you are dead wrong about the Eldar. Eldar technology is millions of years ahead of everyone else except the Necrons. The only reason Human technology can barely catch up with theirs in the first place is because higher-tier Human tech is based on Necron technology. Tau have as much a chance of surpassing the Eldar as the sun rising in the west.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Eetion wrote:

Also the tougher more durable the fighter/bomber means they can take more and still fight. Hence we can assume the Manta is much more combat ready because of its durability, combat capabilities, the eldar because of their capability to avoid damage.

I am assuming this means you consider Mantas as superior to Eldar Attack Craft. While I will acknowledge the Manta's superiority compared to the Imperial Starhawk, I have to say you are dead wrong about the Eldar. Eldar technology is millions of years ahead of everyone else except the Necrons. The only reason Human technology can barely catch up with theirs in the first place is because higher-tier Human tech is based on Necron technology. Tau have as much a chance of surpassing the Eldar as the sun rising in the west.

Eldar Bombers have the same rule don't they? In the Eldars case I see it as an ability to fly rings round anything else, whereas the Manta is void shielded and more durable.

I don't think Mantas are better, but certainly more able to take a beating.

 Eetion wrote:

Eldar Bombers have the same rule don't they? In the Eldars case I see it as an ability to fly rings round anything else, whereas the Manta is void shielded and more durable.

Experienced Imperial Attack Craft squadrons have something similar too, based on the campaign rules where they gain the Eldar Attack Craft rules (fighters gain 50-50 chance of multiple interception, bombers can re-roll attack runs). Skill over technology...

yeah every story with some imperial deserters, like that one in the tau codex, seems to give me the impression that the tau brainwash other races. the imperials always come across as cult members, or like moe on the halloween special when he gets lobotomized: "it's not so bad homer, they even let you keep the little piece of brain they take out. (to brain) hey there, hello, who's that big man there, see uncle homer?"
a pox on the tau and their railguns, a pox i say! even the vile eldar are capable of good, honest human hatred

 AndrewC wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

EDIT: Regarding raw meat being digested improperly...sashimi

I said meat not fish!

People eat raw beef, and the ideal way to cook a steak is to leave it basically raw inside (I don't mean rare, I mean all but uncooked inside, just warmed up). The issue with raw meat is more one of sanitation than dietary necessity.

My thoughts, perhaps, didn't come out correctly. We evolved eating raw food, much of the digestive requirements to do so we have now lost because we cook our food. We are still capable of killing our food though. And while warp entities would still be capable of attacking any Tau implanted with the Navigator Gene, it does not necessarily follow that they would be able to possess and 'open' a gateway through them.

So naively implanting the gene does not equal destruction by the warp. But again I'm seriously OT.

Cheers

Andrew

A Tau with a navigator equivalent gene would be a psyker, and psykers can explode into daemons for basically no reason if they're not properly trained to avoid this. Presumably, if the Tau actually can genetically engineer such things, this would be discovered in the testing phase, causing the project to be abandoned.

Navigators are not psykers.

On another note, 25 pages? I'm impressed with this thread

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
People eat raw beef, and the ideal way to cook a steak is to leave it basically raw inside (I don't mean rare, I mean all but uncooked inside, just warmed up). The issue with raw meat is more one of sanitation than dietary necessity.

Never go to Scotland and order beef, if it's bleeding then it's not cooked. Same with lamb. I recall a Masterchef programme in which a Scottish Chef took place and presented a lamb dish to the judges who claimed it was overcooked, the reply "Not in Scotland it's not" (Or words to that effect) Lloyd Grossman (I know sorry to include him) spoke for that fact as well.

A Tau with a navigator equivalent gene would be a psyker, and psykers can explode into daemons for basically no reason if they're not properly trained to avoid this. Presumably, if the Tau actually can genetically engineer such things, this would be discovered in the testing phase, causing the project to be abandoned.

But thats the question I'm asking, is there anything saying that that is the inevitable end. For example Ork weirdboys, warp entities can't 'use' them, they become trapped. Nicassar, a highly psionic race, dont have that problem. Eldar, don't have that problem, so why would Tau?

Cheers

Andrew

Lumipon wrote:

Then again, the Imperium cannot spare any men to fully wipe out any of their major enemies. Because doing so would only make them lose another sector.

Just to this sentiment in general: the Imperium could very easily wipe out anything apart from the Eldar or anything in the Eye of Terror faster than you can say "vortex torpedo". They fight wars to take planets because they regard the planets as more valuable than the materiel and manpower that taking them burns, but are more than capable of just up and eradicating all life on a planet, or just smashing it apart.

So the Imperium could win any other race (except the Tyranids) in a straight duel, but is surrounded by enemies it can't completely destroy.

The Imperium is winning its wars, it just doesn't care if it takes centuries to finish anything up, and the Tyranids, so far, have been to the Imperium what a particularly belligerent bear in the middle of Alaska is to the US. That's the scale we're talking about with the Imperium.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Admiral Valerian wrote:Navigators are not psykers.

On another note, 25 pages? I'm impressed with this thread

Isn't most of it the same handful of arguments?

And yes, navigators are a special sort of psyker. Speaking in the most technical terms, almost all humans are psykers, having warp presences and all. It's just some wind up with bigger warp presences, and some with negative ones (blanks). There are some who are basically warp neutral, like Tau, neither drawing the warp in nor pushing it away.

AndrewC wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
People eat raw beef, and the ideal way to cook a steak is to leave it basically raw inside (I don't mean rare, I mean all but uncooked inside, just warmed up). The issue with raw meat is more one of sanitation than dietary necessity.

Never go to Scotland and order beef, if it's bleeding then it's not cooked. Same with lamb. I recall a Masterchef programme in which a Scottish Chef took place and presented a lamb dish to the judges who claimed it was overcooked, the reply "Not in Scotland it's not" (Or words to that effect) Lloyd Grossman (I know sorry to include him) spoke for that fact as well.

Do you mean they complained it was undercooked, since you said it's traditionally undercooked in scotland? Lamb is something that need to be very lightly cooked or it ends up just horrible, unless you're talking really thin strips served in a very wet sauce, in which case scorch it black. Same goes for (non-ground) beef, in my opinion. As opposed to poultry or pork, which have to be heavily cooked to prevent food poisoning.

But thats the question I'm asking, is there anything saying that that is the inevitable end. For example Ork weirdboys, warp entities can't 'use' them, they become trapped. Nicassar, a highly psionic race, dont have that problem. Eldar, don't have that problem, so why would Tau?

Cheers

Andrew

Orks are a strange case, and Eldar are either trained and/or suppressed to prevent it. There's not a whole lot about the Nicassar, is there?

 AndrewC wrote:


But thats the question I'm asking, is there anything saying that that is the inevitable end. For example Ork weirdboys, warp entities can't 'use' them, they become trapped. Nicassar, a highly psionic race, dont have that problem. Eldar, don't have that problem, so why would Tau?

Orks are too anarchic (ironic) to be influenced by Chaos/possessed by Daemons, plus Gork and Mork are far more powerful than the Chaos Powers. Nicassar...small fry among the hierarchy of psionics. Eldar...they can't access the Warp directly (it's too dangerous with She Who Thirsts and all), hence the use of runes.

Doesn't matter, I've just seen the discussion on the Warp Storm Table in the new codex. Apparently any psyker can now explode into a demon. Never mind, up to that point I did have a point.

No Sir P, meat is traditionally cooked all the way through in Scotland, it's the default setting. If you order a steak and don't specify, it's coming back cooked. Unless of course if the chef is not Scottish.

Cheers

Andrew

 AndrewC wrote:

No Sir P, meat is traditionally cooked all the way through in Scotland, it's the default setting. If you order a steak and don't specify, it's coming back cooked. Unless of course if the chef is not Scottish.

Cheers

Andrew

Ah, I read it wrong. Thanks for the correction.

Orks can fall to Chaos. There have been Nurgle Orks, which turned because they worshiped an altar of Nurgle, thinking it was Gork... or maybe Mork.

There have been Khornate Orks as well, who got a little too into the bloodshed and violence.

Orks, however, have an innate understanding of what is "proppa Orky", and Chaos isn't it, so such Chaos Orks don't mingle well with other Orks, and are often eradicated by them.

This does not mean that there isn't, somewhere, a world of entirely Chaos Orks.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Humans had warp travel before the astronomicon, and still have to rely on the less precise (and thus slower and more careful) method out where the signal is weak. The Tau tech is like a primitive version of the earliest human warp technology.

Archonate wrote:Indeed, and the imperium will stay ahead in this department unless the Tau figure out the webway or something.

That was true right up to the point IA 3 came out, It's also in BFG: FAQ 2010.

Further: on the Tau/IN debate: Tau can actually field more LBs than IN as their fleet structure goes 'battleship down' where IN goes 'Cruiser Up'. The only way you can have more LBs is with either the Segmentum Solar fleet list, a SERIOUS (and expensive) specialist build from the Bakka Fleetlist or one of the banned lists from IA 10.

Remember that on a larger than standard board, Tau easily dominate IN.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Imperial plasma tech is both more compact and more powerful than Tau (fluffwise, it only blows up if you start it generating plasma and then *don't* fire it, so it's not really all that unstable either) and the Imperium uses railguns on ships, where their disordinately large power requirements aren't an issue. The lasgun is simply a marvel of engineering, being powerful, compact, cheap, and logistically trivial to operate en mass.

Imperial tech does not 'generate' plasma. Imperial plasma guns 'overheat' because they fail to correctly generate the magnetic packet that keeps the plasma contained that it extracts from the plasma containment flask. This is why in the RPG 'Best' Imperial quality plasma weapons do not overheat.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Tau tech is bulkier than its Imperial equivalent, and suffers in any number of other ways too, as the individual case may be. Since the fluff doesn't concern itself with logistics, we don't know how sustainable the Tau military is in an engagement where they're not basically just defending an ammo dump, but unless the new codex brings them some magical new handwavium, we can assume it's nowhere near as much so as tanks that can run on anything that will burn, and infantry weapons that can be reloaded by exposing them to sunlight.

Lasguns *can* be recharged in a fire, however, this shortens their useable life and halves their magazine capacity. They cannot be 'reloaded by exposing them to sunlight' and are actually supposed to be plugged into a charging station attached to a generator.

Admiral Valerian wrote:
They're called macrocannons. They fire kiloton-grade metallic projectiles at relativistic speeds. Imperial/Chaos warships pack bank upon bank of these things along with laser/plasma/melta cannons in their Weapon Batteries. Compared to Tau vessels' ship-mounted Railguns, Imperial/Chaos Weapon Batteries pack a heavier punch.

Macrocannons are NOT mass drivers (at least not EM ones, though a rare variant exists that uses gravity manipulation to propel the charge). Melta cannons actually fire a large meltabomb using the same technology as some of the (occasionally blackpowder) rest of the macrocannons. Plasma cannons work on the same principal as Imperial plasma weapons, as do disruptor cannons.

Admiral Valerian wrote:
And yes, I would argue large-scale Imperial energy sources are better than what the Tau have, considering that Imperial plasma reactors can power huge vessels and planet-sized cities. Or...the Imperials just build more reactors as needed.

The Imperium takes years to build a starship engine. Further, the Tau have reactors that are ever bit as efficient and probably more so, as they too power massive space platforms and huge starships.

Admiral Valerian wrote:
Superior power or not, I'd take a Lasgun over a Pulse Rifle any day. It's light, reliable, and has infinite ammo (I can recharge the e-packs by simply leaving them in sunlight).

Why in the name of the Emperor do people keep trying to bring up the sunlight thing? NO LONGER CANON. Quit basing your arguments on what Lexicanum says. And the tau have access to lasguns, they just choose not to use them (Indeed, human auxiliaries ditch the lasguns at the first chance they get.)

Admiral Valerian wrote:Navigators are not psykers.

Funny, fluff and Crunch say they are in Every RT supplement published AND the core book, as well as All the CC novels, BFG blue book and all old codex fluff, all the Gaunt's Novels, all the Ultramarines novels, they're mentioned as psykers in the HH novels... well, the list goes on.

just curious but when did Lasgun cells being charged in sunlight stop being canon?

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
just curious but when did Lasgun cells being charged in sunlight stop being canon?

yeah i thought that was still legit? that was like one of its main selling points as the main small arm of the imperium. when did they remove it? seems odd, considering they've almost got that tech now.

Shouldn't matter too much as long as IG carry rechargers. And IMO solar charging wouldn't redeem the weapon. If they're fighting at night, under a smoke choked sky, or on a ship, this feature is of no use. By today's standards the Lasgun is amazing. By 40k standards, very few weapons are worse.

You can stick a turd on a golden pedestal and sing praises to it. It will still be a piece of crap.

That said, I will admit lasguns are cool. I understand the appeal. I just can't bring myself to call the weapons tech behind them superior to that of the Tau.

that's not really the point though, the imperium's been fighting for x many years longer than the tau, they worked out that with a totally erratic and unforgiving supply chain and illiterate peasant soldiers, good tech is wasted on the grunt. better to give them a weapon that never jams (thought they do in the books - wtf), that can be reloaded simply, has a large ammo capacity, doesn't use resources that are needed elsewhere, is sturdy enough to be used as a stave or club, and has no bullet drop or sway to counter. bolters are great weapons, but are complex and costly to build and maintain, require massive amounts of training and if they are lost then it's an economic hit for the imperium. the same probably applies to the pulse rifle, just that the tau aren't in a state of all out war. yet. of course the defecting guardsman would trade his lassy for a pulse rifle, but he won't even be able to shoot himself with it when a million hormagaunts are staring at him if he doesn't have any ammo or a cleaning kit for it. gw wants the tau to be the shootiest force around, fair enough. but the humble lasgun, by say ww1 standards would have been a godsend. and the 41st millennium is basically a big ww1.

Why would you assume that the basic issue Tau gear is costly and hard to build. Tau society and its caste system, let's say due to combat casualties the fire Caste is just 10% of the population. Every Single one of them is equiped with some form of pulse weaponry at the very least.
Crisis suits are hard to build,
Broadside suits are hard to build
Pulse weaponry... Sickeningly common. Can't be that hard, if your arming a sizable portion of your population with them as standard.

I hear the argument that the Tau are getting stronger and better with their evolving tech quite a lot. My question is will it help in the short run? I know gw wont really advance the timeline. But if it would, I would see a reasonable chance they might get hit by a full tyranid fleet in a 100 years or so. The Imperium can trade space for time, but the Tau really cant do that as much. Will the Tau survive a major fleet like Behemoth or Leviathan?

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
just curious but when did Lasgun cells being charged in sunlight stop being canon?

Not entirely sure. I don't remember it being in the most recent Codex: IG, Imperial Munitorum Manual says they can be put in a fire to recharge but this negatively effects them, and the Dark Heresy RPG (and all it's subsidiary games) agrees in this. Dark Heresy states they can be recharged from a suitable power source such as a generator with a simple tech use check, with the amount of time left up to the GM, or they can be placed in an open flame for 24 hours to charge them that way.

pax_imperialis wrote:
that's not really the point though, the imperium's been fighting for x many years longer than the tau, they worked out that with a totally erratic and unforgiving supply chain and illiterate peasant soldiers, good tech is wasted on the grunt. better to give them a weapon that never jams (thought they do in the books - wtf),

They do in the codex and in the other game systems as well. It may surprise you, but they do have moving parts.

pax_imperialis wrote:

that can be reloaded simply,

As simply as any other magazine.

pax_imperialis wrote:

has a large ammo capacity,

60 rounds but this varies by pattern

pax_imperialis wrote:
doesn't use resources that are needed elsewhere,

Debatable. No real information on what does into them.

pax_imperialis wrote:

is sturdy enough to be used as a stave or club,

No.

Lasgun is NOT an 'Ogryn Proof' weapon and can break if used in that manner.

pax_imperialis wrote:

and has no bullet drop or sway to counter.

True.

pax_imperialis wrote:
bolters are great weapons, but are complex and costly to build and maintain, require massive amounts of training and if they are lost then it's an economic hit for the imperium.

Correct right up to that last part. The loss of a few million bolters would have negligible effect on the Imperium. Everyone from Forge Worlds to private munitions manufacturers produces bolters. Just not in the volume that they produce lasguns. The real draw of lasguns is they're easy to produce and highly reliable by the standards of Imperial tech.

pax_imperialis wrote:

the same probably applies to the pulse rifle, just that the tau aren't in a state of all out war. yet.

With the arrival of hive fleet Kraken forcing the Imperium and Tau into a (probably temporary) alliance, 'yet' is no longer applicable. However, even when cut off from resupply by the IN on Taros, they did not seem to have an issue with resupply against the IG. It could be because Tau pulse rifles fire plasma derived from hydrogen. The most common element in the universe, and hydrogen plasma would be a logical byproduct of the fusion plants many of their vehicles use (and water). A pulse rifle holds 36 rounds, meaning it holds about half what a lasgun does, but also has a tremendous range advantage and deals damage similar to a bolter.

pax_imperialis wrote:

of course the defecting guardsman would trade his lassy for a pulse rifle, but he won't even be able to shoot himself with it when a million hormagaunts are staring at him if he doesn't have any ammo or a cleaning kit for it. gw wants the tau to be the shootiest force around, fair enough. but the humble lasgun, by say ww1 standards would have been a godsend. and the 41st millennium is basically a big ww1.

The defecting guardsman should be signing up to get the rail rifle. That said however...

Given the nature of Tau tactics (in that they use tactics beyond 'human wave' and 'armored breakthrough') and that fact that Tau have a large selection of orbit capable flying troop transports, it's unlikely even a human auxiliary would find himself in that position, as the tau usually opt for mobility over static defense, unless that defense is part of a trap.

Remember that Tau are a WW2 army in a WWi universe,

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
I hear the argument that the Tau are getting stronger and better with their evolving tech quite a lot. My question is will it help in the short run? I know gw wont really advance the timeline. But if it would, I would see a reasonable chance they might get hit by a full tyranid fleet in a 100 years or so. The Imperium can trade space for time, but the Tau really cant do that as much. Will the Tau survive a major fleet like Behemoth or Leviathan?

It has shown up and helped in the short term. Taros being the best example where they went from running from a titan to blowing it's brains out. There ability to advance dose help them out in the short term.

Can they survive a full invasion? Maybe. They might be able to use their stealer cure to keep a low profile and protect there core worlds.

Okay i'll just throw it out there, i don't like the tau. I stopped playing 40k when they came out and i've only just got back into it. I bought the tau codex when it came out and didn't like the fact that GW made a race that everyone would go out and buy because they had the then-strongest weapon and their basic troops had massively powerful weapons for a relatively low points cost. i also don't like that they were sold as the innocent good guys that will make people argue that the imperium is too cruel, and that they fought for a really crappy reason called "the greater good". i could not stop thinking about the part in hot fuzz when all the oldies keep chanting the greater good. even the necrons, cheap as they were, were evil and nefarious and made a firm stand about being intent on murdering everyone. that i can understand. the Tau just seem like the new eldar on the block, but at least the eldar have a rich heritage and personality. i really wish GW had just made the eldar better than invent the Tau. They even made a terrible ps2 game just to advertise how cool the tau were. I'm not being an imperial purist here, i would gladly play necrons, chaos, nids, and i did used to play dark eldar.

I'm off to look up the Gaunt's ghosts novel which distinctly mentions a 400 shot capacity of the lasgun. The lasgun is the AK47 and the pulse rifle is the AR15. And we both know which one has endured, despite having many shortcomings.

I'm not sure why i'm arguing my loyalty towards one fictional weapon over another, but thats what 40k does to people

pax_imperialis wrote:
i also don't like that they were sold as the innocent good guys that will make people argue that the imperium is too cruel, and that they fought for a really crappy reason called "the greater good".

Maybe you should have read more than the cover of the codex? From day one the Tau were sold as an aggressive expansionist empire whose "greater good" is "the Tau will rule the universe and everyone will submit to them". They're only "good" in 40k because they're pragmatists who have a military that isn't run by idiots, embrace progress in science and technology as a tool for success, and offer their enemies the chance to surrender and submit to Tau rule before they kill them. In any universe besides 40k they'd be the bad guys.

Maybe you should read the short story within. It concludes with a poignant wee speech between "Surly aggressive space marine" and "Wise noble Tau sage". How could they be deemed the bad guys? In any other universe the Tau would be Native Americans. I simply said i didn't like them when they came out and gave you my reasons. I also said I haven't played since they first came out, so I am open to being enlightened as to developments of both their canon and rules set. I am pleased that other races now have bigger guns to counter the mighty railgun with, and look forward to using my Banesword to splatter any fruity space hippy that leaps about in his xvst5000 battlesuit. Isn't that why we play the game?

pax_imperialis wrote:
How could they be deemed the bad guys?

Because they're an aggressive expansionist empire with a policy of "submit or die". They're only "good" in 40k because they're pragmatic enough to include "submit" while everyone else goes straight to genocide. In another fictional universe that doesn't share 40k's black-and-dark-gray morality the Tau would be the bad guys because their concept is very similar to other "bad guy" empires in those universes.

In any other universe the Tau would be Native Americans.

You've got the right time period for your analogy, but you've got it backwards. The Tau would be the white settlers. Like the US they have a policy of manifest destiny, and you will either submit to their rule (and you're not going to be at the top of the social ladder) or die to make room for more Tau.

I am pleased that other races now have bigger guns to counter the mighty railgun with

Yeah, how dare GW give the dedicated shooting army the best gun. It's much better if everyone else who isn't as focused on shooting gets guns of equal power so the Tau will have no advantage or reason to exist.

and look forward to using my Banesword to splatter any fruity space hippy that leaps about in his xvst5000 battlesuit. Isn't that why we play the game?

And I look forward to my rail cannon Tigershark blowing a nice hole in your tank while you complain about how you can't hit flyers with blast weapons.

pax_imperialis wrote:
Maybe you should read the short story within. It concludes with a poignant wee speech between "Surly aggressive space marine" and "Wise noble Tau sage". How could they be deemed the bad guys? In any other universe the Tau would be Native Americans. I simply said i didn't like them when they came out and gave you my reasons. I also said I haven't played since they first came out, so I am open to being enlightened as to developments of both their canon and rules set. I am pleased that other races now have bigger guns to counter the mighty railgun with, and look forward to using my Banesword to splatter any fruity space hippy that leaps about in his xvst5000 battlesuit. Isn't that why we play the game?

Ah the early tau where crazy nice. They are a tad darker now. Still rather nice though unless your a human.

The Tau would be the Empire from Star Wars, the Alliance in Firefly, and the robots in the Matrix.

Peace comes from the barrel of the gun in 40K, Tau are just hesitant to pull the trigger.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Peace comes from the barrel of the gun in 40K, Tau are just hesitant to pull the trigger.

Not really even hesitant, just pragmatic enough to know that it's better to conquer an enemy (and their resources) intact without a fight than to spend your own forces to conquer a burned out wasteland that used to be a city.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Peace comes from the barrel of the gun in 40K, Tau are just hesitant to pull the trigger.

Not really even hesitant, just pragmatic enough to know that it's better to conquer an enemy (and their resources) intact without a fight than to spend your own forces to conquer a burned out wasteland that used to be a city.

*sputter sputter* but it's the principle of the matter! Can't let hugo heretic or xavier xeno just have the burned out city, they might get ideas above their station

 Peregrine wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Peace comes from the barrel of the gun in 40K, Tau are just hesitant to pull the trigger.

Not really even hesitant, just pragmatic enough to know that it's better to conquer an enemy (and their resources) intact without a fight than to spend your own forces to conquer a burned out wasteland that used to be a city.

And why do you think the Imperium engages in ground wars instead of just orbital bombardment or exterminatus, when both are easily available options? Planets and infrastructure are resources that last thousands, or at least hundreds, of years, while the average soldier has a maximum operational life of a few decades, and tanks are quite a bit cheaper than massive factory complexes, and even a million tanks are still infinitely more replaceable than a habitable planet.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
And why do you think the Imperium engages in ground wars instead of just orbital bombardment or exterminatus, when both are easily available options? Planets and infrastructure are resources that last thousands, or at least hundreds, of years, while the average soldier has a maximum operational life of a few decades, and tanks are quite a bit cheaper than massive factory complexes, and even a million tanks are still infinitely more replaceable than a habitable planet.

Except that:

1) The Imperium loves to fight grinding wars of attrition where everything of value is destroyed in years-long sieges while the enemy has no reason to surrender (since you're going to kill them anyway) and will fight to the death and use their last dying act to set off a final suicide bomb that destroys everything you were trying to take.

and

2) People are valuable resources. It's better to conquer a planet with all of its civilian factory workers still alive and productive than to execute all of them and have to pull your own workers off some other factory to go work in the captured one.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Humans had warp travel before the astronomicon, and still have to rely on the less precise (and thus slower and more careful) method out where the signal is weak. The Tau tech is like a primitive version of the earliest human warp technology.

Archonate wrote:Indeed, and the imperium will stay ahead in this department unless the Tau figure out the webway or something.

That was true right up to the point IA 3 came out, It's also in BFG: FAQ 2010.

Further: on the Tau/IN debate: Tau can actually field more LBs than IN as their fleet structure goes 'battleship down' where IN goes 'Cruiser Up'. The only way you can have more LBs is with either the Segmentum Solar fleet list, a SERIOUS (and expensive) specialist build from the Bakka Fleetlist or one of the banned lists from IA 10.

Remember that on a larger than standard board, Tau easily dominate IN.

What does that have to do with "their tech is basically a crude version of the earliest human warp drives"? IA3 gave them slightly larger ships, not real warp drives. For that matter, what does the BFG equivalent of a FOC have to do with anything? By that reasoning, an IG Company could have two command squads, 44 commissars, 752 infantry, 38 chimeras, 9 leman russ executioners, and 9 vendettas, compared to what Tau can take in their FOC (6 crisis suits, 9 crisis suits or 18 stealth suits, 72 firewarriors, 24 pathfinders, 9 devilfish, and either 3 hammerheads or 9 broadsides).

Although for a further point of scale, that theoretical company there? That's less of the Imperium's military strength than one of the firewarriors' guns is of the Tau's. Less than the ammo in the pulse rifle's magazine, probably.

Imperial tech does not 'generate' plasma. Imperial plasma guns 'overheat' because they fail to correctly generate the magnetic packet that keeps the plasma contained that it extracts from the plasma containment flask. This is why in the RPG 'Best' Imperial quality plasma weapons do not overheat.

I wish I could recall where that's from, because I distinctly recall plasma weapons generating the shots from the material in the canister, such that if it's not fired fast enough, it overloads and forcibly vents the readied plaasma.

Lasguns *can* be recharged in a fire, however, this shortens their useable life and halves their magazine capacity. They cannot be 'reloaded by exposing them to sunlight' and are actually supposed to be plugged into a charging station attached to a generator.

But they still can be recharged from that fire, even if it's not great for their longevity. And lasguns have always been rechargeable by leaving them in direct sunlight; even if it's not mentioned explicitly in the last codex, which also conflates hellguns and hotshot lasguns/longlas.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
And why do you think the Imperium engages in ground wars instead of just orbital bombardment or exterminatus, when both are easily available options? Planets and infrastructure are resources that last thousands, or at least hundreds, of years, while the average soldier has a maximum operational life of a few decades, and tanks are quite a bit cheaper than massive factory complexes, and even a million tanks are still infinitely more replaceable than a habitable planet.

Except that:

1) The Imperium loves to fight grinding wars of attrition where everything of value is destroyed in years-long sieges while the enemy has no reason to surrender (since you're going to kill them anyway) and will fight to the death and use their last dying act to set off a final suicide bomb that destroys everything you were trying to take.

and

2) People are valuable resources. It's better to conquer a planet with all of its civilian factory workers still alive and productive than to execute all of them and have to pull your own workers off some other factory to go work in the captured one.

Let's take a minute to look at the possible scenarios for an Imperial conquest for a developed world:

1) the planet has fallen to chaos, but contains valuable manufactoriums. The people are tainted by chaos or dead, but the machines might be salvageable: the guard lands in force and butchers the raving defenders wholesale, because the Guard is actually a fairly elite and well-equipped force when not compared to an irrelevant extravagance like the space marine chapters or a less irrelevant but even more extravagantly outfitted force like the Eldar, or other Eldar.

1b) the planet has fallen to chaos and is not strategically valuable in any sense: exterminatus, permanent restriction on entry to the system.

2) the planet has fallen to Orks. The people have been eaten alive and the machines smashed and looted for scrap. The Guard lands in force and wages a slow, grinding war against the numerically superior orks, finally breaking their war machine, while the Navy uses orbital bombardment against any notable Ork strongpoint.

3) the planet is a Xeno world. If the planet might be strategically valuable, orbital bombardments and a Guard mop up, otherwise exterminatus and a permanent restriction on entry to the system.

4) the local government has rebelled/gone over to the Tau/whatever, and chaos isn't involved: the Guard lands in force and butchers any resistance, recovering any infrastructure and freeing the people from their deranged local overlord (unless they split up for exactly no reason and entirely counter to how they ever operate, to allow a grossly inferior Xeno force to have a sporting chance).

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
The Imperium can trade space for time, but the Tau really cant do that as much. Will the Tau survive a major fleet like Behemoth or Leviathan?

They already did. It was Hive Fleet Gorgon. A particularly nasty Hive Fleet at that, which was renowned for it's ability to evolve far faster than a normal Hive Fleet.

It has been speculated that the reason Gorgon was evolving so fast was because they were fighting the Tau, who's combat methods and technology were more flexible and adaptable than those of the other races of the galaxy. So the Tyranids had to speed up their evolution to compensate. The Ke'lshan Tau won that race in the end. (My sept )

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Let's take a minute to look at the possible scenarios for an Imperial conquest for a developed world:

You missed one.

5) The planet is owned by a minor alien race. Rather than conquer them and take the planet intact the Imperium mindlessly exterminates the xenos for no reason other than they are xenos. Since everyone knows that genocide is the only possible outcome all resistance is to the death, and the Imperium conquers a burned out wasteland that is no longer useful for anything other than its raw material resources.

And don't bother arguing about this, the whole point of the Imperium is that they're paranoid genocidal monsters who act against their own best interests because they no longer have the ability to act rationally. This is a huge element of the whole grimdark thing, the Imperium can't be pragmatic and effective, their purpose in the story is to be the horrible evil you have to accept as your only chance of surviving just a little bit longer.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Let's take a minute to look at the possible scenarios for an Imperial conquest for a developed world:

You missed one.

5) The planet is owned by a minor alien race. Rather than conquer them and take the planet intact the Imperium mindlessly exterminates the xenos for no reason other than they are xenos. Since everyone knows that genocide is the only possible outcome all resistance is to the death, and the Imperium conquers a burned out wasteland that is no longer useful for anything other than its raw material resources.

And don't bother arguing about this, the whole point of the Imperium is that they're paranoid genocidal monsters who act against their own best interests because they no longer have the ability to act rationally. This is a huge element of the whole grimdark thing, the Imperium can't be pragmatic and effective, their purpose in the story is to be the horrible evil you have to accept as your only chance of surviving just a little bit longer.

That was option 3, and Xenos have nothing to offer the Imperium aside from a planet to mine for resources or cultivate for agriculture. The Imperium has a population measured in the tens of quadrillions, and the most advanced tech of any species save for necrons and Eldar, what could some tiny, hostile, unknown quantity offer them?

And before you say "what if they're not hostile?": if they're not, the Imperium has better things to do with its resources than fight some pointless war, or redirect a ship capable of performing exterminatus; if the Imperium is at war with xenos, it's because the xenos are hostile.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Archonate wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
The Imperium can trade space for time, but the Tau really cant do that as much. Will the Tau survive a major fleet like Behemoth or Leviathan?

They already did. It was Hive Fleet Gorgon. A particularly nasty Hive Fleet at that, which was renowned for it's ability to evolve far faster than a normal Hive Fleet.

It has been speculated that the reason Gorgon was evolving so fast was because they were fighting the Tau, who's combat methods and technology were more flexible and adaptable than those of the other races of the galaxy. So the Tyranids had to speed up their evolution to compensate. The Ke'lshan Tau won that race in the end. (My sept )

Gorgon: the smallest and most pathetic fleet from a species defined by being small and pathetic, but nearly enough to wipe out the Tau.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

And I look forward to my rail cannon Tigershark blowing a nice hole in your tank while you complain about how you can't hit flyers with blast weapons.

Broadsides are better for the points, particularly since in apoc you don't have a FOC and can deploy each one as its own unit. The tigershark has one sD shot and two structure points at av10 for just a little less than a warhound, the absolute bane (for its point cost at least, though reaver titans are slightly nicer in some ways) of everything on land aside from the bs op tyranid heirophant. Tigersharks are rubbish for their cost, aside from being immune to every good titan weapon (but extremely vulnerable to every anti-flyer weapon).

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
That was option 3, and Xenos have nothing to offer the Imperium aside from a planet to mine for resources or cultivate for agriculture. The Imperium has a population measured in the tens of quadrillions, and the most advanced tech of any species save for necrons and Eldar, what could some tiny, hostile, unknown quantity offer them?

And who exactly is going to mine those resources (after rebuilding the destroyed mines so you can even attempt it)? Do you really think it's a better idea to ship countless soldiers to fight an endless war of attrition and then replacement workers instead of just declaring "you're part of the Imperium, deliver the proper amounts of X, Y and Z resources to the local forge world or we'll start killing you again".

Also, Tau technology > Imperial technology unless you include all the priceless artifacts sitting in some admech fortress and never being used. So really the only faction with worse technology than the Imperium is the orks.

And before you say "what if they're not hostile?": if they're not, the Imperium has better things to do with its resources than fight some pointless war, or redirect a ship capable of performing exterminatus; if the Imperium is at war with xenos, it's because the xenos are hostile.

Except that's not true at all. Remember the part where the Imperium has a religious duty to cleanse the galaxy of xenos? And where chapters like BT are dedicated to killing any non-human that they can find?

Gorgon: the smallest and most pathetic fleet from a species defined by being small and pathetic, but nearly enough to wipe out the Tau.

You mean from a species defined as being endless in quantity, almost impossible to defeat once they make the first invasion on a planet, even more endless in quality once they devour your entire planet and turn you into more Tyranids, and still only a tiny fraction of their full potential. I guess you must have missed the part where the Tyranids are explicitly stated to be the greatest long-term threat to the galaxy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Broadsides are better for the points, particularly since in apoc you don't have a FOC and can deploy each one as its own unit.

And you still have to hit, penetrate armor, and get through cover saves. To even match a Tigershark's railguns (against AV 14, the only thing that matters) you need 5-6 Broadsides, and the Tigershark has a decisive advantage in speed and durability.

av10

AV 12.

warhound, the absolute bane (for its point cost at least, though reaver titans are slightly nicer in some ways) of everything on land aside from the bs op tyranid heirophant.

Yes, double turbolaser Warhounds are way too cheap. By that standard pretty much every single thing in the 40k universe that isn't an Imperial D-spam titan is terrible.

PS: a Warhound still explodes from a single railcannon shot.

pax_imperialis wrote:
Okay i'll just throw it out there, i don't like the tau. I stopped playing 40k when they came out and i've only just got back into it. I bought the tau codex when it came out and didn't like the fact that GW made a race that everyone would go out and buy because they had the then-strongest weapon and their basic troops had massively powerful weapons for a relatively low points cost. i also don't like that they were sold as the innocent good guys that will make people argue that the imperium is too cruel, and that they fought for a really crappy reason called "the greater good". i could not stop thinking about the part in hot fuzz when all the oldies keep chanting the greater good. even the necrons, cheap as they were, were evil and nefarious and made a firm stand about being intent on murdering everyone. that i can understand. the Tau just seem like the new eldar on the block, but at least the eldar have a rich heritage and personality. i really wish GW had just made the eldar better than invent the Tau. They even made a terrible ps2 game just to advertise how cool the tau were. I'm not being an imperial purist here, i would gladly play necrons, chaos, nids, and i did used to play dark eldar.

Funny thing. I also hated the Tau when they first came out. Something about them just rubbed me the wrong way. I hated their vehicles, I hated their infantry, I hated their ideology, I thought Kroot were stupid looking, etc. I thought "who does this new race think it is, popping up out of nowhere, acting like they own the galaxy?"
I'm not really sure what the turning point was for me. It may be that I've always had a soft spot for the underdog. I played Tyranids in 2nd edition when they were ugly and nearly impossible to win with. Then I played Dark Eldar from 3rd until they got a new codex. Now I'm picking up Tau. I came to realize they are the underdogs of the universe, but they were given the means to stick up for themselves. Then at some point I realized that I love the way they look.

They are not naive, like everybody says. They've been attacked by everything and managed to pull through. Not by weight of numbers, but by flexible technology, adaptable tactics and good military leadership. Most of their fighting has been to defend their open-minded way of life. They view their success to be a result of their progressive ideology and pragmatism rather than a result having properly blessed their guns that morning. They believe in action.

I respect Imperial Guard and think they make awesome subject matter for books and movies. Though I think Tau are closer to our modern military.

I just plain hate SMs. It is frustrating to see the ignorant, arrogant bastards consistently win every single battle they're in, no matter the odds. They are the disgusting bullies who beat up kids at school while bragging about how cool they are, yet they never get in trouble. Ugh... Just yuck... If there are any books wherein SMs get their butts kicked, I read them. So far the Fire Warrior book has done the best job... Just another reason to like the Tau.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
A pulse rifle holds 36 rounds, meaning it holds about half what a lasgun does,

Only according to the Fire Warrior game. In FPS games reloading feels cool and adds an element of suspense to the fighting. According to the actual fluff that I'm familiar with, a Pulse Rifle ammo drum holds 250-400 rounds.

but also has a tremendous range advantage and deals damage similar to a Heavy bolter.

Fixed that for ya.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Admiral Valerian wrote:
They're called macrocannons. They fire kiloton-grade metallic projectiles at relativistic speeds. Imperial/Chaos warships pack bank upon bank of these things along with laser/plasma/melta cannons in their Weapon Batteries. Compared to Tau vessels' ship-mounted Railguns, Imperial/Chaos Weapon Batteries pack a heavier punch.

Macrocannons are NOT mass drivers (at least not EM ones, though a rare variant exists that uses gravity manipulation to propel the charge).

Source? Without one, I will continue to assume they are, since nothing actually contradicts the assumption.

Admiral Valerian wrote:
And yes, I would argue large-scale Imperial energy sources are better than what the Tau have, considering that Imperial plasma reactors can power huge vessels and planet-sized cities. Or...the Imperials just build more reactors as needed.

The Imperium takes years to build a starship engine. Further, the Tau have reactors that are ever bit as efficient and probably more so, as they too power massive space platforms and huge starships.

Correction, it takes years to build a starship. Plasma reactors are easily built, seeing as these are the staple Imperial energy source.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
just curious but when did Lasgun cells being charged in sunlight stop being canon?

Not entirely sure. I don't remember it being in the most recent Codex: IG, Imperial Munitorum Manual says they can be put in a fire to recharge but this negatively effects them, and the Dark Heresy RPG (and all it's subsidiary games) agrees in this. Dark Heresy states they can be recharged from a suitable power source such as a generator with a simple tech use check, with the amount of time left up to the GM, or they can be placed in an open flame for 24 hours to charge them that way.

In other words, nothing really contradicts they can be recharged in open sunlight. Right, we're done here.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
That was option 3, and Xenos have nothing to offer the Imperium aside from a planet to mine for resources or cultivate for agriculture. The Imperium has a population measured in the tens of quadrillions, and the most advanced tech of any species save for necrons and Eldar, what could some tiny, hostile, unknown quantity offer them?

And who exactly is going to mine those resources (after rebuilding the destroyed mines so you can even attempt it)? Do you really think it's a better idea to ship countless soldiers to fight an endless war of attrition and then replacement workers instead of just declaring "you're part of the Imperium, deliver the proper amounts of X, Y and Z resources to the local forge world or we'll start killing you again".

A century or a few decades versus letting an unknown quantity into the fold. A little time is nothing compared to the danger dealing with xenos brings.

Also, Tau technology > Imperial technology unless you include all the priceless artifacts sitting in some admech fortress and never being used. So really the only faction with worse technology than the Imperium is the orks.

We've been over this. You're just judging a book by its mass-produced marvel-of-engineering frontline military equipment. For every fancy toy the Tau have, the Imperium has a better version, and more of it.

Except that's not true at all. Remember the part where the Imperium has a religious duty to cleanse the galaxy of xenos? And where chapters like BT are dedicated to killing any non-human that they can find?

Remember the part where the Imperium has priorities and limited resources? We have Inquisitors disregarding wannabe heretics that aren't politically powerful (and thus revolutionaries) or actively consorting with daemons or xenos as too petty to waste time dealing with. Hell, we have inquistors working with Eldar or even Tau on occasion. Not to mention the rogue traders who are given license to deal with non-Imperium entities (except chaos), provided they don't try to sell xenos artifacts to civilians.

You mean from a species defined as being endless in quantity, almost impossible to defeat once they make the first invasion on a planet, even more endless in quality once they devour your entire planet and turn you into more Tyranids, and still only a tiny fraction of their full potential. I guess you must have missed the part where the Tyranids are explicitly stated to be the greatest long-term threat to the galaxy.

Taglines are rarely backed up in the fluff. The Tyranids so far have folded whenever the Navy engages them, and almost whenever the Guard does. The damage they've done to the Imperium is trivial compared to the Imperium as a whole. While the smallest and most pitiful hive fleet to date, barely larger than the splinter fleets routinely trounced by the Guard, almost eradicated the Tau.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Broadsides are better for the points, particularly since in apoc you don't have a FOC and can deploy each one as its own unit.

And you still have to hit, penetrate armor, and get through cover saves. To even match a Tigershark's railguns (against AV 14, the only thing that matters) you need 5-6 Broadsides, and the Tigershark has a decisive advantage in speed and durability.

They have basically the same chance to hit (88% versus 75%) and are we even sure the tigershark's railgun autopens? It has a strength of ten, in IA3, IA Apoc, and IA Apoc second edition, compared to the manta's heavy railgun which has a strength of D. And the tigershark costs 9.4 times as much as a broadside.

av10

AV 12.

Unless it's been erratad, no, it's av10. In every book it appears in.

warhound, the absolute bane (for its point cost at least, though reaver titans are slightly nicer in some ways) of everything on land aside from the bs op tyranid heirophant.

Yes, double turbolaser Warhounds are way too cheap. By that standard pretty much every single thing in the 40k universe that isn't an Imperial D-spam titan is terrible.

Four large blasts that can be aimed at two targets isn't all that great on it's own, considering how easy it dies. Compare to the manta, with its ten structure points at av13 and "magically ignores half of all hits because we want to sell a $1500 model to waac tfgs with too much money", or the hierophant with its ten wounds at t10 with a 3++ invuln and ridiculous biocannons. Turbolaser warhounds beat superheavy vehicles and laugh at pricy and tough junk like landraiders, but aren't all that great against their points in a more balanced list. Two of them and a laser blaster reaver with apoc missile launcher starting in reserve would be a ridiculous alpha strike against anything. Throw in a couple of thunderbolts to keep the tigersharks away...

Not that that's a realistic setup for anyone sane, but still...

PS: a Warhound still explodes from a single railcannon shot.

Only if you've brought down its void shields and get really lucky with your rolls.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
A century or a few decades versus letting an unknown quantity into the fold. A little time is nothing compared to the danger dealing with xenos brings.

Exactly. The Imperium is paranoid about what might happen so they just kill everything. You realize that this is being portrayed as a bad thing, right?

We've been over this. You're just judging a book by its mass-produced marvel-of-engineering frontline military equipment. For every fancy toy the Tau have, the Imperium has a better version, and more of it.

And your point is? A few one-of-a-kind artifacts locked away in an admech fortress somewhere and never used are completely irrelevant. Technology that you have and never use is no better than technology you don't have at all.

Also, you're missing one big difference: the Tau understand their technology. The Imperium doesn't. All they can do is mass produce some of it, as long as all the proper blueprints are there along with step by step directions for how to use them. There's no understanding or innovation, just mindless repetition.

Taglines are rarely backed up in the fluff. The Tyranids so far have folded whenever the Navy engages them, and almost whenever the Guard does. The damage they've done to the Imperium is trivial compared to the Imperium as a whole. While the smallest and most pitiful hive fleet to date, barely larger than the splinter fleets routinely trounced by the Guard, almost eradicated the Tau.

Yeah, just keep inventing your own fluff.

They have basically the same chance to hit (88% versus 75%) and are we even sure the tigershark's railgun autopens? It has a strength of ten, in IA3, IA Apoc, and IA Apoc second edition, compared to the manta's heavy railgun which has a strength of D. And the tigershark costs 9.4 times as much as a broadside.

Unless it's been erratad, no, it's av10. In every book it appears in.

You just have the old rules. Buy IA:Aeronautica if you want to continue the discussion.

Four large blasts that can be aimed at two targets isn't all that great on it's own, considering how easy it dies.

Remember the whole auto wound, auto pen, no cover thing? Taking four Shadowswords to duplicate a Warhound's firepower would be 1800 points compared to 750 for the Warhound. That is ridiculously cheap.

Compare to the manta, with its ten structure points at av13 and "magically ignores half of all hits because we want to sell a $1500 model to waac tfgs with too much money,

And a 2000+ point price tag. Mantas are terrible rules-wise, the only reason to ever take one is because you want to show off your awesome model. WAAC TFGs aren't even going to consider one.

or the hierophant with its ten wounds at t10 with a 3++ invuln and ridiculous biocannons.

It only "has" a 3++ because of obsolete rules getting changed in an unrelated book. Once the rules are reprinted it will no longer have a 3++. And RAW it doesn't have a 3++ at all.

Only if you've brought down its void shields and get really lucky with your rolls.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

The fluff explicitly states that a Tigershark can one-shot a Warhound. And it says nothing about amazing luck, the Tigershark just shows up and immediately blows away a Warhound.

 Peregrine wrote:


Also, you're missing one big difference: the Tau understand their technology. The Imperium doesn't. All they can do is mass produce some of it, as long as all the proper blueprints are there along with step by step directions for how to use them. There's no understanding or innovation, just mindless repetition.

Actually, they do understand. They just wrap it up in dogma and ritual. While innovation and creativity are frowned upon, improvement is not. Existing technology is improved as needed, hence countless variations of basically the same piece of Imperial technology for countless situations it is called upon. And there's recovery of Golden Age data (which surpasses the technology of any other species other than Eldar and Necrons), and reverse-engineering of non-interdicted Xenos technology.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
A century or a few decades versus letting an unknown quantity into the fold. A little time is nothing compared to the danger dealing with xenos brings.

Exactly. The Imperium is paranoid about what might happen so they just kill everything. You realize that this is being portrayed as a bad thing, right?

Except for the whole "they're right" bit. Xenos have nothing to offer the Imperium through assimilation, and consistently prove treacherous and predatory in their dealings with humans. It's like how mutants consistently prove psychotic chaos worshippers, or rogue psykers are defined by being sociopathic mental cases who often just explode into daemons.

We've been over this. You're just judging a book by its mass-produced marvel-of-engineering frontline military equipment. For every fancy toy the Tau have, the Imperium has a better version, and more of it.

And your point is? A few one-of-a-kind artifacts locked away in an admech fortress somewhere and never used are completely irrelevant. Technology that you have and never use is no better than technology you don't have at all.

Also, you're missing one big difference: the Tau understand their technology. The Imperium doesn't. All they can do is mass produce some of it, as long as all the proper blueprints are there along with step by step directions for how to use them. There's no understanding or innovation, just mindless repetition.

A) You really don't get what the AdMech is or does. B) Ok, let's play this game. Name a Tau tech and I'll give you a superior, and more prolific, Imperial tech.

To head you off: stealth suits < anything the officio assassinorum uses (rare, but more common in the grander scheme of things than stealth suits), crisis suits < power armor (more compact and maneuverable, can also be outfitted with jetpacks, doesn't drive its wearer insane), pulse rifles < Imperial plasma weapons (more compact and powerful, rarely used because plasma weapons are pricy and inefficient), skimmer tanks < imperial gunships (faster, cheaper, better equipped, and also not a light tank pretending it can fly), broadsides < artillery (better range, better damage output). And so on and so on. I suppose I am conflating "superior" and "more advanced" a bit with some of those, but considering the giant collection of various weapons systems and miscellaneous junk we know the AdMech has, from the large collection of fluff references and RPG sourcebooks, it would probably be possible to find more specific, but obscure, examples.

Yeah, just keep inventing your own fluff.

You're underestimating how ridiculously huge the Imperium is, and how small its ridiculously huge military is next to that. The damage the Tyranids have inflicted, as described, has taken less than a thousandth of the Imperium. Now true, that's hundreds of times greater than anything but chaos has managed, but it's still rather trivial compared to the whole, when you think about it.

You just have the old rules. Buy IA:Aeronautica if you want to continue the discussion.

Screw that, my money's going to malifaux these days. I just like 40k's fluff significantly better.

Remember the whole auto wound, auto pen, no cover thing? Taking four Shadowswords to duplicate a Warhound's firepower would be 1800 points compared to 750 for the Warhound. That is ridiculously cheap.

Yeah but, shadowswords are rubbish superheavies. Most of the superheavies are pretty rubbish, honestly. Turbolaser warhounds are just dedicated anti-superheavies that happen to also be good if suboptimal against other vehicles and the more elite infantry pieces. Unless you're spamming sD large blasts, and so can just wipe out most of the board in one round of shooting, and have some dedicated fighters to deal with pesky flyers.

And a 2000+ point price tag. Mantas are terrible rules-wise, the only reason to ever take one is because you want to show off your awesome model. WAAC TFGs aren't even going to consider one.

It's a magical pile of invincible guns. It might not have 2000 points of firepower per turn, but it's still av13 with ten structure points and a 4++ save.

It only "has" a 3++ because of obsolete rules getting changed in an unrelated book. Once the rules are reprinted it will no longer have a 3++. And RAW it doesn't have a 3++ at all.

Like its original 5++ is so much better. It's far tougher than what its points in firepower can hit it with, and it can cripple or outright kill two titans per turn, for less than a reaver costs.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

The fluff explicitly states that a Tigershark can one-shot a Warhound. And it says nothing about amazing luck, the Tigershark just shows up and immediately blows away a Warhound.

I thought you were still talking about the rules, since you put it right next to them and all. And you're looking at only about a 12% chance if the shields are down ruleswise.

And that fluff was the Taros campaign, in which guardsmen split up to make nicer targets, tanks become infantry mid-paragraph, and markerlights outrange leman russes. It's like a literate version of Ward's ramblings.

You know, I'm surprised you guys haven't spotted one weakness of Tau railguns: they're limited to linear fire. In other words, the shots can only fly straight and are incapable of indirect fire. Imperial gunnery, on the other hand, are capable of both linear fire and indirect fire.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
You know, I'm surprised you guys haven't spotted one weakness of Tau railguns: they're limited to linear fire. In other words, the shots can only fly straight and are incapable of indirect fire. Imperial gunnery, on the other hand, are capable of both linear fire and indirect fire.

But they have magical invisible markerlight platforms and perfectly accurate "over-the-horizon" magic missiles that can do anything! Why would they need proper ordnance?

To the OP- have you even read the intro to 40k? The Imperium of Man is not a fun place to live in. Maybe under a Tau regime some people would feel safer...

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
You know, I'm surprised you guys haven't spotted one weakness of Tau railguns: they're limited to linear fire. In other words, the shots can only fly straight and are incapable of indirect fire. Imperial gunnery, on the other hand, are capable of both linear fire and indirect fire.

But they have magical invisible markerlight platforms and perfectly accurate "over-the-horizon" magic missiles that can do anything! Why would they need proper ordnance?

The same reason our modern militaries use ordnance despite such things like 'fire-and-forget'/over-the-horizon weapons. I have an uncle who serves in the army. I asked him that question once some time back; the answer was there's no real replacement for such time-tested and repeatedly proven as reliable a military asset like artillery. I recall he even said he'd take/choose an artillery barrage over an air strike given the choice.

@angelofvengeance

Exaggeration. The Imperium cannot be that bad, otherwise Mankind would have burned out in less than a millennia.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
You know, I'm surprised you guys haven't spotted one weakness of Tau railguns: they're limited to linear fire. In other words, the shots can only fly straight and are incapable of indirect fire. Imperial gunnery, on the other hand, are capable of both linear fire and indirect fire.

But they have magical invisible markerlight platforms and perfectly accurate "over-the-horizon" magic missiles that can do anything! Why would they need proper ordnance?

The same reason our modern militaries use ordnance despite such things like 'fire-and-forget'/over-the-horizon weapons. I have an uncle who serves in the army. I asked him that question once some time back; the answer was there's no real replacement for such time-tested and repeatedly proven as reliable a military asset like artillery. I recall he even said he'd take/choose an artillery barrage over an air strike given the choice.

I was being sarcastic. I had a longer bit about seeker missiles secretly being large blasts that gain sD on a markerlight to hit of 4+, but decided it was too over-the-top. It was pretty much directly related to peregrine's insistence that the Tau would have won Vraks instantly because seeker missiles.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
You know, I'm surprised you guys haven't spotted one weakness of Tau railguns: they're limited to linear fire. In other words, the shots can only fly straight and are incapable of indirect fire. Imperial gunnery, on the other hand, are capable of both linear fire and indirect fire.

But they have magical invisible markerlight platforms and perfectly accurate "over-the-horizon" magic missiles that can do anything! Why would they need proper ordnance?

The same reason our modern militaries use ordnance despite such things like 'fire-and-forget'/over-the-horizon weapons. I have an uncle who serves in the army. I asked him that question once some time back; the answer was there's no real replacement for such time-tested and repeatedly proven as reliable a military asset like artillery. I recall he even said he'd take/choose an artillery barrage over an air strike given the choice.

I was being sarcastic. I had a longer bit about seeker missiles secretly being large blasts that gain sD on a markerlight to hit of 4+, but decided it was too over-the-top. It was pretty much directly related to peregrine's insistence that the Tau would have won Vraks instantly because seeker missiles.

Fat chance. The defenders would just hole up and force the enemy to come to them. The Tau would have bled to death, so to speak.

I was a 13F for 3 combat deployments, well kinda 2.5 (got blown up ), and for all non MOS savvy types a 13F is a forward observer, calls in arty..savvy.

And I too always prefered having arty on call rather than waiting for air, but it has nothing to do with accuracy, it has to do with reaction, planes come in drop and leave, but having arty on call means you have it when you need it, not wait for the ROZ to be clear, and for them to spot the target engage , and exit.

Air power is awesome when it has specific targets and is there, but its hard to beat having 155mm on call. a little HE/WP shake and bake.

Back to the Tau, my guess is based on some of the stuff in apoc expansions, the tau use large missles/rockets for artillery sine they have 2 kinds mentioned in the book, Darkstar warheads that use neutron pulses destroy biological matter but leave materials unharmed, and Icefire warheads that use EMP to destroy tech stuff, no real mention of how its deployed, likely mantas, or maybe even a variation of the skyray, kinda like a MLRs.

And as to vraks..Tau would not have fought it, if its not a fight they can execute with their doctrine, they will not waste the resources.

Tau have neutron and EMP bombs? But then again, the Imperium has virus and vortex weaponry, so it's not really that bad a trade-off I suppose...

yup, and emp bombs, and they are persistant.

The Tau trade indiscrimante damage for more surgical weapons, you can tailor the weapons for the threat.

And I would venture to guess Tau have these available a bit more readily than the IoM has virus and Vortex..since those have become fairly rare.

But its not about what trumps what, its just a discussion about what they have and what it does.

Regarding Vraks or a similar situation, how would the Tau handle it? Or are they just gonna leave Chaos taint to fester? I'm not sure that's wise; even if they blockade the system, letting Chaos grow strong is just inviting it and it's followers to come and face you on their terms.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

Fat chance. The defenders would just hole up and force the enemy to come to them. The Tau would have bled to death, so to speak.

Don't forget that the Imperial force that took... what was it? Several decades, wasn't it? To take Vraks was quite a bit larger than the force committed to the Damocles Gulf crusade, which would have wiped the Tau out had its legs not been pulled out from under it to react to Behemoth.


And, further against seeker missiles is the requirement of an independent targeter, while the Imperial version are slightly less accurate but can just be up and fired on their own, without needing a big flashing sign placed on their target. and of course the other Imperial version, that's also ordnance (meaning it hits armor harder (roll 2d6 to pen, use the highest), unless that's changed in 6th; I haven't pored over the 6th ed rules in much detail, and considering it's driven me away from the game I'm not planning to), though no longer infinite range (instead being on par with a railgun's range).

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

Fat chance. The defenders would just hole up and force the enemy to come to them. The Tau would have bled to death, so to speak.

Don't forget that the Imperial force that took... what was it? Several decades, wasn't it? To take Vraks was quite a bit larger than the force committed to the Damocles Gulf crusade, which would have wiped the Tau out had its legs not been pulled out from under it to react to Behemoth.

Hmmm...the Damocles Gulf Crusade doesn't really qualify as a full-on crusade by the time it reached Dal'yth. It might have, had reinforcements been deployed, but Behemoth arrived and the rest is history.

Regarding virus and vortex weapons, it's not they're rare, more like so powerful that the use of the former is restricted to the Inquisition/Astartes, and use of the latter requires authorization from really high up (at least that AFAIK regarding vortex weapons).

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Regarding Vraks or a similar situation, how would the Tau handle it? Or are they just gonna leave Chaos taint to fester? I'm not sure that's wise; even if they blockade the system, letting Chaos grow strong is just inviting it and it's followers to come and face you on their terms.

You never fight a enemy on their terms, varks would be dependant on what the Tau have and what is in the balance, if they have sufficent forces likely it would be a matter of a fluid seige, roving units destroying hardpoints and withdrawing and then hitting from another direction, using concentration of force, and attempting to goad the enemy into leaving their positions into waiting ambush zones, or maybe sustained bombardment by the above mentioned weapons.
Or a false withdrawl to entice the defenders out, the Tau have a mobility advantage that they would not give up.

Its a interesting mind game, but I would need hard facts on numbers, maps, and various assets to make a actual battle plan.

Lol, but let's not forget the frakheads on Vraks had access to Daemons and all sorts of gak. And Chaos Space Marines too

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Regarding Vraks or a similar situation, how would the Tau handle it? Or are they just gonna leave Chaos taint to fester? I'm not sure that's wise; even if they blockade the system, letting Chaos grow strong is just inviting it and it's followers to come and face you on their terms.

You never fight a enemy on their terms, varks would be dependant on what the Tau have and what is in the balance, if they have sufficent forces likely it would be a matter of a fluid seige, roving units destroying hardpoints and withdrawing and then hitting from another direction, using concentration of force, and attempting to goad the enemy into leaving their positions into waiting ambush zones, or maybe sustained bombardment by the above mentioned weapons.
Or a false withdrawl to entice the defenders out, the Tau have a mobility advantage that they would not give up.

Its a interesting mind game, but I would need hard facts on numbers, maps, and various assets to make a actual battle plan.

The citadel on Vraks had three defensive lines outside its curtain wall, representing thousands of years of construction to produce as impenetrable barrier as possible, with a myriad of hardened anti-orbital defenses, artillery everywhere, and enough ammo to keep up a constant heavy barrage for decades. And it withstood a force far greater than the Tau could muster for decades before cracking.

The initial approach alone is a nightmare to say the least. Apart from the ODPs and orbital docks/Space Stations in high orbit, the entire system would be crawling with Chaos ships. The landings would probably be bloody too; a world like Vraks would have plenty of defense lasers, missile silos, and air bases to spare.

The point would be..why do the Tau need to take this planet, whats its importance to the overall goals of the campaign, if its that big of a nightmare of a defence then you dont attack it directly, and if you cannot, you dont waste yourself on a futile attack. again descriptions of huge , impregnable..yadda yadda, does not provide what is required to give a actual battleplan, its just plays on words, that people like to toss around to make things seem awesome.

But seeing as Admiral Valerian actually gives some hurdles that have substance, you start picking at it from initial approach, deal with the ships..acheive orbital superiority, land no where near the main objectives, and force your enemy to leave his nice holes to come kill you.

It would take time and patience, and a different approach than the IoM generally uses, not better or worse just different.

Well. The Tau wouldn't bother building a fort like Vraks, they favor a fluid movement and defence. If it was the Tau in charge, there would have been no wall, nor any civil war in all likelihood, doctrine is to the Greater Good, not to individuals.

As for the whole marker lights outranging battlecannons, that's a game mechanic. In fluff you can only target a person if you are aware they are there. Pathfinders hide and mark target, the russes have to find them first.

Also artillery v seekers isn't the same as arty v airstrike.
A more appropriate comparison would be...

Arty v any/every vehicle in your force, can have the capacity to call an airstrike type attack at a moments notice with no line of sight, with the strike needing no effort or awareness of the driver or pilot.
Now ask, if every humvee, ifv, mbt and aircraft had the capability to make a strike on your demand. Artillery can engage 1 target at a time, seekers as many as you need at whatever location you need it at any given time.

 Eetion wrote:

Now ask, if every humvee, ifv, mbt and aircraft had the capability to make a strike on your demand. Artillery can engage 1 target at a time, seekers as many as you need at whatever location you need it at any given time.

You do realize there's such a thing as direction-finders, right? From what I know (which might be wrong) those things can track long-range missiles and pass on the origin to artillery real quick. After which say goodbye to the missile batteries. Even if you move the batteries immediately after firing, knowing the Imperial Guard they'd probably saturate not just the origin but also several square kilometers with high explosive.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:

But seeing as Admiral Valerian actually gives some hurdles that have substance, you start picking at it from initial approach, deal with the ships..acheive orbital superiority, land no where near the main objectives, and force your enemy to leave his nice holes to come kill you.

I don't have the details, but I do know that at least one Chaos Battle Barge and it's Escorts were present, though that was only towards the end. At the beginning, there were entire Chaos Fleets in system engaging the Imperial Navy. I've already given my assumptions (quite reasonable ones IMO) regarding the ODPs and other fixed defenses in my earlier post.

And they can track the direction of an insubstantial beam of light. And given that the Imps haven't been able to utilise it, its pretty safe to assume they have no luck replicating that.

And anything with a mseeker is mobile and doesn't require being stationary. In a pirahnas case or a baracudas sfaster than any Arty can track at anyrate.

 Eetion wrote:


And anything with a mseeker is mobile and doesn't require being stationary. In a pirahnas case or a baracudas sfaster than any Arty can track at anyrate.

Hence saturating not just the origin but several square kilometers or more around it with artillery.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Eetion wrote:


And anything with a mseeker is mobile and doesn't require being stationary. In a pirahnas case or a baracudas sfaster than any Arty can track at anyrate.

Hence saturating not just the origin but several square kilometers or more around it with artillery.

In a balanced conflict between IG and Tau, without either having overwhelming advantage in position or numbers, the IG would have to use alot of shoot and scoot with their arty, due to tau stealth teams, stealth remoras, and remote marker drones, so a static arty park would be a deathtrap, limiting barrages to short intensive ones, I would love to hear a account of this kind of engagement where there is no forordained outcome.

On demand with a reliable chance of knocking the enemy out?
We don't even know that the Seeker takes the most direct route to the target. And if the imperium has such powerful artillery capability why isn't it an insta win in every conflict they fight?

The pirahna has a speed of 180kph, the Sky ray, hammerhead, devilfish 70kph. Arty will have a hard time of it even if they did have a capability.

Also its unlikely to be just 1 seeker launch, it might be 5 or 10 or 20 from several different locations at different targets. Which do the arty target?

 Eetion wrote:


Also its unlikely to be just 1 seeker launch, it might be 5 or 10 or 20 from several different locations at different targets. Which do the arty target?

The Guard loves artillery. More than enough to simultaneously bombard multiple targets.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Eetion wrote:


And anything with a mseeker is mobile and doesn't require being stationary. In a pirahnas case or a baracudas sfaster than any Arty can track at anyrate.

Hence saturating not just the origin but several square kilometers or more around it with artillery.

In a balanced conflict between IG and Tau, without either having overwhelming advantage in position or numbers, the IG would have to use alot of shoot and scoot with their arty, due to tau stealth teams, stealth remoras, and remote marker drones, so a static arty park would be a deathtrap, limiting barrages to short intensive ones, I would love to hear a account of this kind of engagement where there is no forordained outcome.

Yeah, me too. Somehow I'm reminded of the old simulation plans I used to come across in my uncle's house, about NATO vs. USSR. In this case, the Imperial Guard would be the tank/artillery-heavy invading Red Army, and Tau would be the highly-mobile defending Allied forces. And from what I can remember, Tau/Allied victory would depend on stalling the Imperial Guard/Red Army long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Pretty good anology, the single biggest advantage the Tau have is the fact their entire combat force, (other than allies) is air mobile, so bridges, roads, terrain, is only a factor for cover and striking positions, and in a un hindered enviroment (not 6'X4' ), this would be a huge manuver advantage.
Again it would be a interesting mental diversion.

In that situation, the Tau would do well to avoid head-on confrontations, use guerilla tactics to slow down the Imperial advance, disrupting supply operations and prioritizing the elimination of enemy commanders. Another aspect of this situation which is similar to Cold War simulations is the air war. Like the Soviets, the invading Imperials would probably have superior numbers of Attack Craft. This could turn the tide in favor of the Imperium; rather than engaging the Imperial Attack Craft head on, it would perhaps be better if the Tau concentrated on destroying/capturing the Imperial air bases. Easier said than done, of course. The bases will be heavily defended, and the Imperium would know they are priority targets.

Another similar aspect would be the use of proxies. And once again, the Soviets/Imperials have the advantage over the Tau/Allies, having more experience manipulating 'lesser' species such as Orks and Tyranids.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Regarding Vraks or a similar situation, how would the Tau handle it? Or are they just gonna leave Chaos taint to fester? I'm not sure that's wise; even if they blockade the system, letting Chaos grow strong is just inviting it and it's followers to come and face you on their terms.

Stealth teams. What else would you use in a siege.

Be careful of calling advantages that are situational based, intrinsic abilities can be counted on, situational ones cannot, air combat would be a tight ran affair, the tau air caste is becoming a serious threat to even the experianced imperial fight/ground support arms, so thats a toss up.

and who says the imperials are invading, it could be a meeting engagement over a valuable planet , try to focus on how they would fight and not why they would win.

And as to superior numbers of attack craft that again gets into predetermining a advantage. Tau do not usually make a point of assaulting positions, they usually focus more on destroying the forces, so to whittle down air power it would likely use the "patient hunter doctrine, and give the imerials something so tempting as to lure the airpower into a ambush, as has been stated before the Tau dont fight wars quite the way the rest of the 40k universe has been.

And its why I like them.

nomotog wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Regarding Vraks or a similar situation, how would the Tau handle it? Or are they just gonna leave Chaos taint to fester? I'm not sure that's wise; even if they blockade the system, letting Chaos grow strong is just inviting it and it's followers to come and face you on their terms.

Stealth teams. What else would you use in a siege.

Daemons, witches, and daemonhosts. Yum yum, delicious sushi (if you read Wobbly Model Syndrome, then you'd understand the sushi reference ).

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:


and who says the imperials are invading, it could be a meeting engagement over a valuable planet , try to focus on how they would fight and not why they would win.

Who holds the world, Tau or Imperium? And how valuable? If it's too valuable, the Lord Admirals just might send in some of the larger naval formations.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

nomotog wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Regarding Vraks or a similar situation, how would the Tau handle it? Or are they just gonna leave Chaos taint to fester? I'm not sure that's wise; even if they blockade the system, letting Chaos grow strong is just inviting it and it's followers to come and face you on their terms.

Stealth teams. What else would you use in a siege.

Daemons, witches, and daemonhosts. Yum yum, delicious sushi (if you read Wobbly Model Syndrome, then you'd understand the sushi reference).

So are you saying daemons, witches, and daemon hosts can see the pets of houris in there stealth suits, or what are you saying.

since its a mental exercise its a balanced engagement with no one side being at a advantage, so space is contested, air is contested and ground is contested, but that is hard to express over a chat, since it becomes a exercise in oneupmanship.

Removed

nomotog wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

nomotog wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Regarding Vraks or a similar situation, how would the Tau handle it? Or are they just gonna leave Chaos taint to fester? I'm not sure that's wise; even if they blockade the system, letting Chaos grow strong is just inviting it and it's followers to come and face you on their terms.

Stealth teams. What else would you use in a siege.

Daemons, witches, and daemonhosts. Yum yum, delicious sushi (if you read Wobbly Model Syndrome, then you'd understand the sushi reference).

So are you saying daemons, witches, and daemon hosts can see the pets of houris in their stealth suits, or what are you saying.

They all have access to warp magic and as a result could conceivable use that power to detect enemies who would otherwise remain undetected.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


Also, you're missing one big difference: the Tau understand their technology. The Imperium doesn't. All they can do is mass produce some of it, as long as all the proper blueprints are there along with step by step directions for how to use them. There's no understanding or innovation, just mindless repetition.

Actually, they do understand. They just wrap it up in dogma and ritual. While innovation and creativity are frowned upon, improvement is not. Existing technology is improved as needed, hence countless variations of basically the same piece of Imperial technology for countless situations it is called upon. And there's recovery of Golden Age data (which surpasses the technology of any other species other than Eldar and Necrons), and reverse-engineering of non-interdicted Xenos technology.

historically, steel was made using a prayer of a given length during smelting. at the time they thought it was the prayer, but it turned out the guy who invented the prayer wanted an easy way to remember how long you needed to heat it for. i kinda figure thats what the imperium's views are like. they relgicize (?) their tech so illiterate, superstitious workers in wooden huts on deathworlds can still make it reliably


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Archonate wrote:

pax_imperialis wrote:
Okay i'll just throw it out there, i don't like the tau. I stopped playing 40k when they came out and i've only just got back into it. I bought the tau codex when it came out and didn't like the fact that GW made a race that everyone would go out and buy because they had the then-strongest weapon and their basic troops had massively powerful weapons for a relatively low points cost. i also don't like that they were sold as the innocent good guys that will make people argue that the imperium is too cruel, and that they fought for a really crappy reason called "the greater good". i could not stop thinking about the part in hot fuzz when all the oldies keep chanting the greater good. even the necrons, cheap as they were, were evil and nefarious and made a firm stand about being intent on murdering everyone. that i can understand. the Tau just seem like the new eldar on the block, but at least the eldar have a rich heritage and personality. i really wish GW had just made the eldar better than invent the Tau. They even made a terrible ps2 game just to advertise how cool the tau were. I'm not being an imperial purist here, i would gladly play necrons, chaos, nids, and i did used to play dark eldar.

Funny thing. I also hated the Tau when they first came out. Something about them just rubbed me the wrong way. I hated their vehicles, I hated their infantry, I hated their ideology, I thought Kroot were stupid looking, etc. I thought "who does this new race think it is, popping up out of nowhere, acting like they own the galaxy?"
I'm not really sure what the turning point was for me. It may be that I've always had a soft spot for the underdog. I played Tyranids in 2nd edition when they were ugly and nearly impossible to win with. Then I played Dark Eldar from 3rd until they got a new codex. Now I'm picking up Tau. I came to realize they are the underdogs of the universe, but they were given the means to stick up for themselves. Then at some point I realized that I love the way they look.

They are not naive, like everybody says. They've been attacked by everything and managed to pull through. Not by weight of numbers, but by flexible technology, adaptable tactics and good military leadership. Most of their fighting has been to defend their open-minded way of life. They view their success to be a result of their progressive ideology and pragmatism rather than a result having properly blessed their guns that morning. They believe in action.

I respect Imperial Guard and think they make awesome subject matter for books and movies. Though I think Tau are closer to our modern military.

I just plain hate SMs. It is frustrating to see the ignorant, arrogant bastards consistently win every single battle they're in, no matter the odds. They are the disgusting bullies who beat up kids at school while bragging about how cool they are, yet they never get in trouble. Ugh... Just yuck... If there are any books wherein SMs get their butts kicked, I read them. So far the Fire Warrior book has done the best job... Just another reason to like the Tau.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
A pulse rifle holds 36 rounds, meaning it holds about half what a lasgun does,

Only according to the Fire Warrior game. In FPS games reloading feels cool and adds an element of suspense to the fighting. According to the actual fluff that I'm familiar with, a Pulse Rifle ammo drum holds 250-400 rounds.

but also has a tremendous range advantage and deals damage similar to a Heavy bolter.

Fixed that for ya.

yeah i've checked out that tiger shark thing peregrine was going on about (heaps of new stuff since i played last) and yeah some of the tau stuff now looks cool. If i wanted to play the underdog i would play eldar, i still cannot believe how negligent GW are with them. even looking through all the new stuff that all the races have since 3rd, eldar still chug along with the worst tanks, terrible infantry (apart from aspect warriors which are so badass is beggars belief) and no artillery to speak of (that i can see yet). I haven't got their new codex, but i'm guessing they have amazing psychic powers that make up for this? back in the day one of our group played eldar and never won a single game. said he liked the underdog though, so there ya go.

@pax_imperialis
Of all the non-imperial races, I think Orks and Eldar get the most acknowledgement from GW... That doesn't necessarily mean Eldar are treated well though.

Right now, Eldar and Tau are the furthest behind. I really don't know how Eldar are faring in-game overall though. I think the challenge of their gameplay is one of the appeals though.
That was why I played DE. I took an army that was notorious for sucking, (before the new 'dex) and turned it into something vicious. It was a rewarding thing. I had to learn to think two steps ahead of my opponent. An ability that's been invaluable for Tau play style.
I imagine Eldar require the same deliberation. Reacting to what your opponent is GOING to do, rather than what they've already done.

We know that Tau and Eldar are currently being updated and will each get a new codex this year. Exciting times.

Personally, I love the look of the Tau XV9 Hazard Suits. I just hope they are in the new Codex...

pax_imperialis wrote:
historically, steel was made using a prayer of a given length during smelting. at the time they thought it was the prayer, but it turned out the guy who invented the prayer wanted an easy way to remember how long you needed to heat it for. i kinda figure thats what the imperium's views are like. they relgicize (?) their tech so illiterate, superstitious workers in wooden huts on deathworlds can still make it reliably

This is exactly how it is.

The Imperium knows enough to mass produce some of its technology by using a process heavily dependent on religious rituals and mindless repetition. They can recite the proper prayer and it makes their steel work without ever having to understand why.

The Imperium doesn't understand its technology. If you want to improve your steel you need to understand WHY you wait that long so that you can analyze different wait lengths/methods/etc.

And that's the key difference with the Tau. They don't just know how to read and follow the instruction manual, they understand how things work and can improve them based on experience and research. The Imperium will never advance in any meaningful way, while the Tau have already progressed well beyond all Imperial technology that isn't just priceless artifacts and will only continue to grow.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
I was being sarcastic. I had a longer bit about seeker missiles secretly being large blasts that gain sD on a markerlight to hit of 4+, but decided it was too over-the-top.

Sigh.

FLUFF =/= GAME MECHANICS.

In the tabletop game seeker missiles are just hunter-killer missiles with laser targeting for game balance reasons (you don't want entire armies dying on turn 1 to a seeker missile barrage).

In the fluff seeker missiles are somewhere between an anti-tank missile (one-shot a Leman Russ) and cruise missiles (one-shot a building) in size and damage. Simple concrete bunkers like on Vraks would have no chance, not because seeker missiles are secretly titan-level weapons, but because they're precision weapons. It doesn't take much to destroy defenses like Vraks had, you just have to be able to HIT the target (something that artillery firing from 15 miles away isn't very good at). And there is no disagreement that seeker missiles are accurate.

(Of course the same is true of other weapons as well. A Vulture gunship armed with anti-tank missiles would do the same thing to a Leman Russ even though it can't for balance reasons in the tabletop game.)

It was pretty much directly related to peregrine's insistence that the Tau would have won Vraks instantly because seeker missiles.

No, the Tau would have won Vraks because they weren't idiots. Anyone who isn't an idiot would have won Vraks instantly. You only get a long war out of Vraks if you just want to see how many guardsmen you can lose.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The citadel on Vraks had three defensive lines outside its curtain wall, representing thousands of years of construction to produce as impenetrable barrier as possible, with a myriad of hardened anti-orbital defenses, artillery everywhere, and enough ammo to keep up a constant heavy barrage for decades. And it withstood a force far greater than the Tau could muster for decades before cracking.

It withstood a far greater force because FW wanted their "WWI in space" book and had the IG be complete idiots incapable of any strategy beyond "send giant waves of infantry across an open field covered by enemy machine gun emplacements". If FW had remembered that they also sell Imperial Navy models the "war" would have taken less than half a book, most of it Aeronautica Imperialis scenarios.