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I am not trying to initiate flame war here, I am trying to get some answers ( so I will put my Imperial fanboyism at the side for now ).

I heard so much about Tau from one side and from another side and I need to get some answers.

I know that they have a slightly over 100 worlds ( 100 - 110 IMHO ), with 26 of those world being Sep't worlds. ( worlds actually numbering millions if not billions of citizens )

1. How many population an Tau world have, in average account?
2. How many Fire Warriors can a Tau world "produce" for war ( they are breed after all since birth for one of the four castes ).

And if we take Tau Empire size and all mineral resources they can take per planet, I can only conclude that they can build a limited fleet but fair numbers of other war machines. ( I imagine that entire Tau production can be like 2 maybe 3 Imperial Forge Worlds. But I may be wrong since we know nothing about that ).

3. How many ships Tau navy posses? How many capital ships they have, cruisers, battleships?
4. How many battle-suits can Tau world produce in war times? Hundreds, Thousands? ( I imagine that they are hard to produce, something liek Terminator armor. So that they must be in limited number in Tau army. )

If answers don't exist for question named, any speculation and conclusions are welcome.
Thank you in advance.

Brother Coa wrote:I am not trying to initiate flame war here

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlatantLies

Including every sept world, I wouldn't be surprised if the Fire Caste made up about 20-25% of the whole Empire. This is probably the case with all of the septs, some(Aun and maybe Por) being closer to 20% and others(Shas and Fio) being closer to 25%. Just speculation.


on the individual Septs, it would depend on what Sept.

Sa'cea has a high population of Fire Warriors (first Expansion)

Dal'yth has a lot of Por Caste members (first Expansion)

T'oiku is known for their Aun Caste Members (Second Expansion)

The Kor Caste has a long tradition in the Vash'ya Sept (second Expansion)

Most of the Fio Caste's Technological Innovations are from the Fal'shia sept( First expansion) and Bork'an is the Sept that most of the Fio caste come from.

Ok I will try:

1. If we take that Tau world have in average about 20 billion citizens ( just wild speculation ) then:

2. 25% of it's population should be Fire Warriors and that makes around 5.000.000.000 Fire Warriors per one planet. That number is off scale in my eyes, but I don't know how many Tau they send in each caste. I am assuming that equal numbers are going into each caste, but then again biggest number of them may go in Earth caste, or Wather...

3. Giving the size of their Empire, I woudl say taht their fleet number something around 200 - 2000 ships. Of course, this would include all ships in the Tau Space Fleet capable for fighting. Their number shoudl be big simply because their Warp Drive is very primitive, so they need a lot of time to arrive to defend some area, and when they do they need to arrive in force to repel the invader. They also must leave number of ships in space around capital planet ( that is in center of their Empire ) t obe able to respond to threats that may appear somewhere else in the Empire.

4. Battlesuits are very powerful peace of equipment, logic implements that they must also be hard to build. They are millions of them in the empire but I doubt that Tau worlds can produce a great number of them so easily. Let say that average Tau world produce 1000 of them on monthly level, for every battlesuit goes weeks to build and prepare. Fro mevery part put in place, connected, balanced between other parts, tested etc...

But I already see several flaws here.
For having so much big population and military they need a lot of food and supplies to deliver them. We don't know nothing about their agri worlds so I may assume that they average population is even lower then that.
For fleet I may be wrong and I mayt be right.
As for military production it all comes down to resources needed for production and from transportation of those raw materials. I may be right for timeline, besides al lthis I said up there in post 4 they maybe sometimes need to wait until material needed arrive in plant. They may mine worlds + asteroids for metals, gas and other resources. So they may have plenty of them.

I have given my opinion, every correction is wellcomed.

And thank you Void__Dragon for your help in answering my question, it was really helpful :p

You're welcome.

THe earth Caste manages to produce Vast amounts of fleets ans starships in a very small space of time. Plus every time one is destroyed a better one replaces it rather than the imperium which takes far longer to create an almost as good version. In this sense soon the Tau should have Naval superiority over all other races and their Troops wont have to deal with major threats as no troops will arrive at their destination. I have a feeling that that kind of thing will be in the next Tau codex

1+3+4) Noone knows. And wild guesses not based on facts are wild guesses not based on facts.
2.) Tau are not bred.

And you asked this before. And you never put your Imperial fanboyism at the side.

Brother Coa wrote:Ok I will try:

1. If we take that Tau world have in average about 20 billion citizens ( just wild speculation ) then:

2. 25% of it's population should be Fire Warriors and that makes around 5.000.000.000 Fire Warriors per one planet. That number is off scale in my eyes, but I don't know how many Tau they send in each caste. I am assuming that equal numbers are going into each caste, but then again biggest number of them may go in Earth caste, or Wather...

Not quite. I said throughout the whole empire,the Fire Caste probably evens out to be 20%-25% (just because I like numbers to be close together. No real backing to this part) but each individual sept is different. Some produce more of one caste than all other castes. (page 18-19 of the Codex)


And the tau don't get sent into a Caste. They're born into it. The Earth Caste covers Building as well as farming (Codex says pre Ethereals the Earth Caste farmed as well as built. Seems logical that they would continue this.)

Exact production numbers for Tau equipment are not avaiable. The existence of a large number of Hero class cruisers ( they are described as being the mainstay of the Velk'Han fleet ), a ship which was devoloped as a result of the Damocles crusade which only happened 37 years before, in the Jericho reach, points to some significant shipbuilding capabilities.

You'll never get a set figure, since this is GW doing the writing. One thing I will say is that people always seem to assume the Tau are a lot smaller than they actually are, because they're always compared to the Imperium. A realistic population for the Tau IMO would be 80-100 billion, with about 20% in the Fire Caste and 1% of the population combat ready at any moment. Obviously any attempts to work out their actual numbers is purely speculation.

Replace 'The Force' with 'The Greater Good' and enjoy.

It seems as though the tau have a HIGHLY efficient war machine, but lack the sheer number of worlds that the other races have.

If the fluff doesn't support that, it should. It's good worldbuilding.

Brother Coa wrote:I am not trying to initiate flame war here, I am trying to get some answers ( so I will put my Imperial fanboyism at the side for now ).

I heard so much about Tau from one side and from another side and I need to get some answers.

I know that they have a slightly over 100 worlds ( 100 - 110 IMHO ), with 26 of those world being Sep't worlds. ( worlds actually numbering millions if not billions of citizens )

1. How many population an Tau world have, in average account?
2. How many Fire Warriors can a Tau world "produce" for war ( they are breed after all since birth for one of the four castes ).

And if we take Tau Empire size and all mineral resources they can take per planet, I can only conclude that they can build a limited fleet but fair numbers of other war machines. ( I imagine that entire Tau production can be like 2 maybe 3 Imperial Forge Worlds. But I may be wrong since we know nothing about that ).

3. How many ships Tau navy posses? How many capital ships they have, cruisers, battleships?
4. How many battle-suits can Tau world produce in war times? Hundreds, Thousands? ( I imagine that they are hard to produce, something liek Terminator armor. So that they must be in limited number in Tau army. )

If answers don't exist for question named, any speculation and conclusions are welcome.
Thank you in advance.

What ever numbers anyone puts here will be either interperted as to much and unrealistic or too little and further re-enforce your IoM fantasies, its pretty transparent.

Put it this way, they do more with what they got then most empires do all day, they are being all they can be... a empire of one, blah blah blah.

I could have sworn as of third sphere they had over a hundred owrlds.. at least a couple hundred.. they're at least the size of a good Imperial sector, and probably with comparable military forces. Thousands of ships (including dozens or hundreds of warships), millions of fire warriors (and even more auxiliaries) at least (Taros was a pretty significant outlay of troops for them as I recall for example.) there is something like 1 tau for every 100,000 or a million humans in the galaxy by Tau estimates (IIRC the fire warrior novel) which is going to be something like.. tens or hundreds of billions population in the Tau Imperium, and whilst we know many colonies and worlds of theirs aren't as densely populated as their human analogues they still have some worlds at least in the billions range (the sept worlds, if nothing else, which should argue at least tens of billions of tau.)

The Tau actually produce their elite gear they know how it works, how to build it and they constantly improve it.

They can afford to lose equipement but not troops as they own a smaller territory.

The Empire struggles to do that, espically higher end stuff and they seem to be agaisnt most form of improvement.

They also have to produce much less equipement for their troop as such one Tau ''Forgeworld'' (do they have that or an equivalent) probably produce less than an Imperium one, it produces according to the needs of the race in general.

I read some piece of fluff somewhere in I believe a deathwatch related book that stated the tau can mass produce their battlesuits, so in theory one earth cast member can probably produce around 1-2 a month easily, maybe more.

I believe it was said that Tau Sept worlds had the majority of the Empires population(as in over 90%), but were still less densely populated then an Imperial Hive World.

Sept worlds are also described as being entirely self-sufficient as far as basic supplies were concerned.


This means they can't have the huge population densities that the Imperium has everywhere.

Basically, the Tau have a tiny population even when you simply look at pop density as opposed to pure numbers.

The Empire just isnt the tAu proper, but also all the auxiliary races they've brought in. That can bring the numbers up quite a bit as well.

Of course they don't equip auxiliaries as well as Fire Warriors. Kinda like Storm trooper vs IG in that way.. lol

Connor MacLeod wrote:The Empire just isnt the tAu proper, but also all the auxiliary races they've brought in. That can bring the numbers up quite a bit as well.

Of course they don't equip auxiliaries as well as Fire Warriors. Kinda like Storm trooper vs IG in that way.. lol

Actually vespin have some high quality sonic weapons. Though I don't think tau actually equip there auxiliaries. It's more that the auxiliaries bring there own guns.

Really I don't think you can say each major caste is 25% of the Tau population. Division of labor isn't so evenly applied. You need far more workers then you do soldiers and diplomats. Really, I'd say it goes Earth > Air > Fire > Water > Ethereal in proportion of the Tau population.

Given how the Tau fight their wars (not a lot of manpower required) and given how professional their military comes off as, I wouldn't put their standing army at over several tens of millions not counting alien auxiliaries or security/police troops. Their combined fleet is probably comparable to an Imperial Sector Battlefleet.

From what I recall, there's a slight bias in Fire Caste population to the others, but maybe that was pre-ethereal, I haven't read my 'dex since I got it tbh...

But anyway, Tau are closer to modern production standards than imperial.

Meaning rather than taking months + chanting the whole time etc to make a tank, it's stamped out of a production line the systems tested then shipped to a tank crew, who are simply trained in its use as opposed to taught litanies to turn it on etc.

When you consider a modern Main Battle Tank only takes 1-2 months to make each, then I imagine it wouldn't take more than a month (if not less) for the Tau to make each tank or suit.

Iur_tae_mont wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:Ok I will try:

1. If we take that Tau world have in average about 20 billion citizens ( just wild speculation ) then:

2. 25% of it's population should be Fire Warriors and that makes around 5.000.000.000 Fire Warriors per one planet. That number is off scale in my eyes, but I don't know how many Tau they send in each caste. I am assuming that equal numbers are going into each caste, but then again biggest number of them may go in Earth caste, or Wather...

Not quite. I said throughout the whole empire,the Fire Caste probably evens out to be 20%-25% (just because I like numbers to be close together. No real backing to this part) but each individual sept is different. Some produce more of one caste than all other castes. (page 18-19 of the Codex)


And the tau don't get sent into a Caste. They're born into it. The Earth Caste covers Building as well as farming (Codex says pre Ethereals the Earth Caste farmed as well as built. Seems logical that they would continue this.)

I read somewhere that they built drones equipped for farming, I think it was the Savage Scars novel. Or perhaps another.

It is in Savage Scars

It's also mentioned in the codex that they trade industrial and agricultural equipment with human worlds (possibly at a deep discount) so that they may establish favourable diplomatic relations.

odds are everything the Tau produce is Drone bult, or at least assembled upon automated assembly lines, including their spacecraft built in the orbital Air caste cities, these assembly lines are monitored and maintained by earth caste members, who also in turn are responsible for the improvements and refining of these items, as well as testing.
Based on these assumptions (and all we have is assumptions where Tau production values are concerned ) materials would be the least of their concerns when it comes to military strength, automated production makes for a incredibly fast and exact product fabrication, personel to use said equipment is the deciding factor.

In BFG when the older Tau fleet was deemed unsuitable the empire geared up to replace the entire warfleet with newer designs.

Imperial intelligence suggests that the Tau took swift action to develop the Kor'vattra following their repeated defeats during both the Damocles Gulf Crusade against the Imperial Navy, and during their first encounters with tendrils of the implacable Tyranid Hive fleets. It is believed that the very best scientists of the Earth Caste were given unlimited resources to develop new designs of starship. The project was titled the Kor'or'vesh, and it swiftly bore fruit.

The Custodian class carrier vessel is the largest of the new generation of Tau ships yet encountered by the Imperial Navy. It is a huge carrier, capable of transporting squadrons of Mantas and Barracudas which fly in support of the rest of the Tau fleet. As well as its own firepower, the Custodian also carries three Warden-class escort vessels.

During the war on Taros, the Custodian-class vessel known as the A'rho was deemed such a threat to the Imperial fleet that it was remorselessly hunted down by Admiral Kotto

from the forge world entry for Custodian class carrier.

It seems even such a daunting task as overhauling their fleets is just a matter of will, it does represent a impressive logistical and organization basis, since the building of star faring craft is the ultimate expression of a advanced society, and would represent the apex of technologies of that society, and I will say after playing both with and against these new Tau warships in quite a few BFG games, they are pretty good craft, nicley balanced...I miss BFG

As far as estimatingTau Population well thats alot of hypothetical math, since we have no hard facts on their living city densities, birth rate, medical technologies, family basic size , average pop on the multiple Air caste space cities etc etc... so thats pretty much just pulling numbers out of the ether.
Anyones guess on that is about as valid as any other, but my guess is they would be less populous that a equivelent human planet due to the fact that theTau do not allow their own population to out strip the local environs ability to support it, so yes no 200billion inhabitant hive worlds , but perhaps 10-20 billion on major sept worlds, but heres a important point their population not being materialistic would result in a far more available workforce and be flexible in the extreme to market fluctuations, since the citizens work for the greater good.

Its a interesting racial/society from a intellectual veiwpoint, one of the reasons I choose to invest my time and money in them as my 40k faction.

There's no definitive number to define exactly what our Empire exactly has, however, there are some inferences to just how fast Tau can produce and adapt their military arsenal. For instance in the Tyranid Codex about the battle against Hive Fleet Ghorgon; where the Tau kept adapting their weapons/tactics as fast as that of the Hive Mind...

To adapt that fast requires a serious productuing que and technological know-how.

KplKeegan wrote:There's no definitive number to define exactly what our Empire exactly has, however, there are some inferences to just how fast Tau can produce and adapt their military arsenal. For instance in the Tyranid Codex about the battle against Hive Fleet Ghorgon; where the Tau kept adapting their weapons/tactics as fast as that of the Hive Mind...

To adapt that fast requires a serious productuing que and technological know-how.

Against Gorgon, as far as I know they didn't develop any different technology or weapons, they just ended up using different weapons against differently adapted Tyranid creatures (like when they grabbed Kroot rifles).

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

KplKeegan wrote:There's no definitive number to define exactly what our Empire exactly has, however, there are some inferences to just how fast Tau can produce and adapt their military arsenal. For instance in the Tyranid Codex about the battle against Hive Fleet Ghorgon; where the Tau kept adapting their weapons/tactics as fast as that of the Hive Mind...

To adapt that fast requires a serious productuing que and technological know-how.

Against Gorgon, as far as I know they didn't develop any different technology or weapons, they just ended up using different weapons against differently adapted Tyranid creatures (like when they grabbed Kroot rifles).

Yep, they didn't build any new weapons. Tau just carry a huge verity of weapons and vehicles.

Brother Coa wrote:
2. How many Fire Warriors can a Tau world "produce" for war ( they are breed after all since birth for one of the four castes ).

Hopefully as many as possible. They'd need them for the huge military operations the Tau have to undertake.

Estimate from the size of their known military deployments and how significant they were treated. IIRC they deployed some several tens of thousands of troops at Taros, at least that many in Damocles gulf. I'm not sure how big the wars in Jericho Reach are (but I remember reading they needed to draw heavily on human auxiliaries to supplement their forces against the part of the Crusade those Tau are facing.)

This would probably be a more accurate benchmark anyhow becuase the number of troops you deploy isn't the only factor - you need to have an idea of how much support they need and how well the Tau's logistics train can carry them. It's all well and good to have a huge number of troops but if you can't carry them all, or carry the ammo, food, fuel and parts you need to sustain them, and sustain them regularly, you're going to be limited militarily.