Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've seen this topic touched on in a few threads, whether the Tau Empire or the Imperium of Man has the better Technology. I would think that both groups have about fairly equal technology. From what I've seen in the discussions both factions have the same technology fluff-wise, although it would seem that the Tau have a better understanding of Rail and Plasma weapons. I would say that this is likely to change though. The Tau don't have the phobias/dogmas attached to altering their tech that the Imperium dose. If the Tau were allowed to continue developing they would likely be able to overtake the Imperium.

What do ya'll think?

I'd say that Tau technology is better when it comes to quality, but when it comes to quantity, or just tech on a large scale, the imperium seem to be better. The imperium seems to have alot of large scale munitions and weaponry, but Tau will refine a certain technology so that is protable and easily used.

The Imperium may have the rare piece of dark age technology which surpasses that of any other races, its just that most of its is either lost, or next to othing is known about it so as it cannont be reproguced or even properally maintained. The Tau have high tech equiptment on a large scale wheras the Imperium of the 41st Millenium has to rely on lower grade mass produced tech because they are laregly unable to produce the better stuff (which they inevitably end up losing altogether). Circa Great Crusade definately the Imperium, at least on a small scale (though is a pulse rifle more advanced than a bolter?), before that man had tech on par with the Eldar, if not even more advanced, nowadays their mostly using clunky pieces of junk, but they may have the juicier stuff stashed away here and there (that'll never be used due to Mechanicus sanctions).

The Imperium has some very high-tech expensive weaponry that arguably surpasses Tau technology (such as digital weapons ect), but these are remnants of the Dark Age of Technology. The time where humanity actually comprehended the workings of most of these weapons has long passed, with their existance becoming rarer and rarer as tech is lost (such as the Leman Russ Executioner).

The Tau understand their technology, and that leaves enormous potentional for them to expand their understanding of tech further and surpass the Imperium easily.

Digital weapons aren't Imperial, they were made by Orangetans.=P

I reject your digital orangetans.

Vy ne panimaju...

the Imperium certaintly has a vaster knowledge of Technology.


the T'au, however, have a greater degree of applied Technology.

the Imperium has Railguns too, but they are massive and only mounted on space ships. the T'au have managed to make the Tech more efficient to where it can be put on land units.

the Imperium's Plasma weaponry is at the same level as the T'au, but the T'au don't use the Tech to it's full potential and keep the weapons to a safe level. the Imperium has no such safety concerns and makes more powerful weapons.

the Imperium has an edge in Space Travel too. the T'au, being a Psykerless race, can't harness the full potential of the Warp Drive and can only make short jumps.


T'au are also limited by their lifespans. they only live about 40 standard terran years while humans like at least twice as long, up to 10 times as long with Juvnat treatments. a T'au firewarrior simply won't ever get to an experiance level a Human can because he won't ever see as many battlefields.

The Imperium has better tech, but the Tau utilize more material per warrior.

The Imperium has manpower on its side and thus they field armies with lots of men and relatively little in the way of material. If they really wanted they could equip every soldier with power armor, jump packs, storm bolters, meltaguns, and powerswords. They could all ride in Valkiers or Vendettas.

They choose not to because it costs less to field a more manpower heavy army with lasguns and flak armor that rides in chimeras (seriously cheap, like made in china cheap).

The Tau on the other hand do not have endless manpower and are surrounded. In order to survive they have to equip their soldiers to face a tough task. Orks, Nids, and Imperials on all sides they have to devote more of their economy to defense, more of their manufactured goods to war.

The Tau have a much smaller force to arm and a much much smaller distance to move their weapons to their military. The Imperium has trillions of more men with a much greater distance to move their munitions. Not to mention warp hazards, you don't want to move a bunch of advanced weapons to often when they could be lost in the warp. The Tau however don't deal with the warp and have almost zero internal threats.

xXSir MontyXx wrote:The Tau have a much smaller force to arm and a much much smaller distance to move their weapons to their military. The Imperium has trillions of more men with a much greater distance to move their munitions. Not to mention warp hazards, you don't want to move a bunch of advanced weapons to often when they could be lost in the warp. The Tau however don't deal with the warp and have almost zero internal threats.

think that through again.
Farsight anyone?

Asherian Command wrote:

xXSir MontyXx wrote:The Tau have a much smaller force to arm and a much much smaller distance to move their weapons to their military. The Imperium has trillions of more men with a much greater distance to move their munitions. Not to mention warp hazards, you don't want to move a bunch of advanced weapons to often when they could be lost in the warp. The Tau however don't deal with the warp and have almost zero internal threats.

think that through again.
Farsight anyone?

Farsight being exposed to chaos is only a conspiracy theory, and he's not so much a threat to the Tau empire, but just don't talk to each other any more.

Imperium weaponry always struck as being brutal, using titans and giant tanks and cannons. The Tau seem to pick small, fast and very tactical.

Mr Nobody wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:

xXSir MontyXx wrote:The Tau have a much smaller force to arm and a much much smaller distance to move their weapons to their military. The Imperium has trillions of more men with a much greater distance to move their munitions. Not to mention warp hazards, you don't want to move a bunch of advanced weapons to often when they could be lost in the warp. The Tau however don't deal with the warp and have almost zero internal threats.

think that through again.
Farsight anyone?

Farsight being exposed to chaos is only a conspiracy theory, and he's not so much a threat to the Tau empire, but just don't talk to each other any more.

Imperium weaponry always struck as being brutal, using titans and giant tanks and cannons. The Tau seem to pick small, fast and very tactical.

No not that. Just saying he rebeled. He has not been touched by chaos. Has he? And they stink in political agruements.

The Ethereals with him died, he realized that they'd been controlling him, and essentially fled from their influence to establish his own self sufficient colonies in proscribed space, where they wouldn't bother to follow to him. If they sent anyone after him, he'd end up under their mind control again.

that highlights how reliant the T'au are on the Etherials maintaining their control.

if the Etherials are wiped out for what ever reason, the T'au would likely splinter apart and become a weak empire waiting for Nids to nom them.

Okay, has been stated the Imperium has Warp capability where the Tau do not. They also have teleporters(Space Marines) the Tau do not.

Tau have more Gravity vehicles(skimmers), and mass produce them.

Smaller and varied Railguns tech vs munitions and ordnance.

Pulse rifles vs lasguns.

Tau plasma is safer yet weaker, BUT is mass producible.

Firewarriors and Pathfinders all have carapace, IG get flak.

Leman Russ is a crawler, but has thicker armor, but Railguns can make a mockery of that.

Battlesuits are superior in some ways to other things the Imperium has, but they lack power weapons, making Tau on the lower footing in hand to hand.

Markerlights help get more hits and lower protection of terrain and leadership due to their psychological impact.

Space Marines have the best tech and the IG get the cheap stuff. The IG have to worry about the Tau the most.

Both have Melta type weapons.

both have flamers as that is a relatively simple weapon system, but the Imperium seems to have made more potent version like Heavy Flamers and the Flamestorm cannons.

Robotics, the Tau robots are independent where the Imperium is afraid of it!

Then there is numbers, the Tau Empire is not big enough for the Imperium to truly worry about, however, if the Tau suddenly grew numbers of soldiers and materiel to challenge the Imperium militarily, then they would likely exert more military power in the area. Meanwhile, they have the Chaos Black Crusade, Nids, 'Crons, and Dark Eldar to deal with as well as the Ork empires to deal with, the Tau are small fry in comparison.

on the issue of AI:

while the T'au are currently enjoying the benifits of AI, History must be remembered.

Humanity also had AI once. they were called the Iron Men, fully autonomous hominoids capable of thinking and perfoming independent action.

then these AI's realized they didn't need Humans anymore and so the War of the Iron Men began, triggering the end of the Dark age of Technology and the fall of the Old Night.

Humanity eventually eradicated the Iron Men, but they weren't forgotten. Humans realized that AI that is capable of human level thought processes was dangerous.


true AI was replaced with what is called the Machine Spirit. a computer made up of both Biological and mechanical componts. as a result, the AI can't function or replicate without Human intervention at some point in time and is prevented from rebelling.



the T'au will eventually suffer the same issues. they will realize that their own pathetic bodies are poorly suited to warfare in this Galaxy. they will create warrior machines who will eventually rebel against the T'au.

the T'au will be ill suited to stopping their AI rebellion because of the small empire size and realitivly low T'au to AI ratio they will have.

The T'au technology is much more advanced. Mass produced Skimmers? S5 30" standard rifles? Railguns capable of being mounted on Battlesuits? Battlesuits?

The Imperium has tons of powerful tech, don't get me wrong, but not only do they no longer fully understand it, but some of it is just unused as it's viewed as a relic.

Fire Warrior. only basic troop unit to have a standard issue weapon with a Str more then 1 point above the models.

compensating perhaps

chaos tech pwns all we have that no other race has

put really the imperium is in technological decay & the tau are rapidly advancing in the end tau tech is gonna get better & better

Cryonicleech wrote:The T'au technology is much more advanced. Mass produced Skimmers? S5 30" standard rifles? Railguns capable of being mounted on Battlesuits? Battlesuits?

The Imperium has tons of powerful tech, don't get me wrong, but not only do they no longer fully understand it, but some of it is just unused as it's viewed as a relic.

I see your battlesuit and raise with Tactical Dreadnought Armour, Warp Drives, Land Speeders and Nova Cannons. Oh, and Vortex weaponry.


As some posters in the thread has said, the Imperium is more technologically advanced. The Tau Empire, however, manages to give the average grunt more of theirs, thus creating the illusion of technological equivalency. The AdMech certainly aren't fools, and they haven't forgotten EVERYTHING, there's still plenty of nastiness to outclass the Tau.

I think it's worth mentioning that the tau are probably more open to reverse engineering IoM tech to help even the scales.

I'm sure the IoM considers such actions hersey, though maybe Ordos Xenos is more open to the idea.

The level of technology on both sides is about the same.

However, the IoM largely does not understand its technology, having acquired most of it by finding STCs rather than building it from scratch. They are also very unproductive, making a lot of items by hand which would be better produced by mass production. Presumably this is because they can't maintain the factories forever. In other words, IoM technology is more likely to decline than improve.

Tau built all their own technology, except for warp drives which you will notice is the area they are weakest in. Their technology is rapidly advancing, so in the long term it will surpass IoM technology levels.

Building big weapons is merely a matter of wanting to build big weapons once the technical issues are solved. The Tau aren't interested in busting planets, so they don't build planet busting weapons.

Naval technology is limited on both sides. The IoM can no longer produce the grav plates for their ships, and are forced to rely on recycling the plates from old ships. This means they can only build certain sizes of ships, for which suitable grav plates are available.

The Tau are limited by their difficulties with warp drive. They probably couldn't build super size ships if they wanted to.

Asherian Command wrote:

Mr Nobody wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:

xXSir MontyXx wrote:The Tau have a much smaller force to arm and a much much smaller distance to move their weapons to their military. The Imperium has trillions of more men with a much greater distance to move their munitions. Not to mention warp hazards, you don't want to move a bunch of advanced weapons to often when they could be lost in the warp. The Tau however don't deal with the warp and have almost zero internal threats.

think that through again.
Farsight anyone?

Farsight being exposed to chaos is only a conspiracy theory, and he's not so much a threat to the Tau empire, but just don't talk to each other any more.

Imperium weaponry always struck as being brutal, using titans and giant tanks and cannons. The Tau seem to pick small, fast and very tactical.

No not that. Just saying he rebeled. He has not been touched by chaos. Has he? And they stink in political agruements.

I wasn't saying that chaos always get a hold of them just that they don't want to lose them..... I wouldn't want to. Ther'es not really much to think through, one side has a much larger force to supply and the Tau don't have nearly as many troops..... Imperium has traitors and pirates and the Tau seem to be as obedient as lap-dogs with the Etherals around. However it is very true that the Imperium is losing understanding of its tech and the Tau is advancing constantly. I say they are equal, for now. This will end soon though.

Kilkrazy wrote:
Building big weapons is merely a matter of wanting to build big weapons once the technical issues are solved. The Tau aren't interested in busting planets, so they don't build planet busting weapons.

I think that's QFT. The IoM and the Tau simply use land war tech differently. The IoM relies heavily on sheer firepower and often neglects accuracy and range in their land weapons. On the other hand, the tau seem to be doing the exact contrary: accurate and reliable weapons, but with slightly less power.

It has been mentionned that the ioM fields titans, unlike the Tau. I think the Tau simply do not feel the need to build titans. Titans are religious items for the AdMech, effigies of their god (a bit like gargants and the orks actually ) as much as war machines. The tau would simply never build weapons as effigies of the Greater Good, right? In addition, Tau have proved time after time that their powerful air power was fully capable of taking down imp titans (mantas, titan-killer barracudas and the like).

Kilkrazy wrote:
Naval technology is limited on both sides. The IoM can no longer produce the grav plates for their ships, and are forced to rely on recycling the plates from old ships. This means they can only build certain sizes of ships, for which suitable grav plates are available.

Where do you quote this fact on grav-plates? It is the second time I'm reading it on this forum, and I've never heard about it before. Are you sure it is still cannon? I've checked all my rulebooks for battlefleet gothic a couple of times after reading this post, and I cannot find any info at all on grav-plates. If it is true, it sounds completely unrealistic. How would the IoM be able to maintain its fleet after loosing such an essential tech about space travel? In addition, the IoM has recently released completely new designs of ships for its navy (Falchion escort, Voss-Pattern light cruisers and others) which contradicts your point that the IoM can only copy older designs for its Navy.

Kilkrazy wrote:
The Tau are limited by their difficulties with warp drive. They probably couldn't build super size ships if they wanted to.

Nonono! Again, the tau have recently started building "second generation" ships for their navy. And their brand new battleships (Custodian-Class battleships) equal the size of the biggest imperial vessels, though they still cannot match the speed and firepower something as basic as an imperial cruiser.

Imagine it like this:
In the Tau Empire, everyone has a car.
In the Imperium, 99% of the population has a horse and carriage, and 1% have hovercraft.

I think the Tau are more likely going to employ public transport systems of various types.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grav Plates.

I don't know where it comes from. However the Imperium has lost many essential technologies, so it doesn't seem unrealistic to lose one more.

Kilkrazy wrote:I think the Tau are more likely going to employ public transport systems of various types.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grav Plates.

I don't know where it comes from. However the Imperium has lost many essential technologies, so it doesn't seem unrealistic to lose one more.

It comes from 1st edition.

On the thread.

The Tau are roughly par on the Imperium in the terms of technology.By the way Tau don't have phase technology(IoM uses it to bypass defenses).

Isn't phase technology the Necron trick?

Imperium tech is vastly more advanced than Tau.

What we usually see in their armies is not their best technology. Since they outnumber Tau billions to 1(in soldiers alone), they can't outfit every man with the very best gear, just like in real life.

The Imperium has personal teleportation devices, vortex weaponry, medical procedures to make folks immortal, etc. This doesn't even count their psychic technologies Tau can never have like warp engines, force weapons, psychic hoods, mnemo quills, etc.

But when you have billions of soldiers for every one your enemy has, you give your men light armor and weapons with no moving parts and infinite ammo.

The Tau empire would be exhausted in years if it fought even one war on the scale the Imperium operates. They just don't have the resources for something like that.