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 had to skip about two pages of thread.

Anyway, the railgun idea is bloody terrible.

The one thing Tau don't need is a high power anti-tank weapon. They already have Broadsides.

What they need is more anti-tank weapons spread among the army apart from the heavy slot. And a bunch of other stuff, as widely discussed in the various "how to fix Tau" threads in DakkaDakka.

Adding a magic death beam to the railgun simply reduces its ability to be the only anti-horde pie plate in the army.

They do have anti-tank weapons spread among the army.

It's called "Markerlights" and "Seeker Missiles".

Tau aren't like the Guard. They don't give Joe a Plasma Gun and Billy+Ray a Rocket Launcher/Lascannon/Whatever. They're also not like the Astartes, giving Brother Octavion a Plasma Gun and Brother RayRay a Rocket Launcher.

Seeker Missiles mounted on vehicles(usually their squad's transports) are supposed to fill a stopgap hole for a response against armour if needed, while Crisis/Broadside Suits and Hammerheads or Piranhas with Fusion Blasters are the ones actually actively supposed to be engaging armoured vehicles.

Markerlight + Seeker missile is not a weapon, it is a weapon system.

It is not spread out among the army but concentrated in specific places such as vehicles and pathfinders. It is expensive compared to plasm guns and stuff, though obiously it has a longer range.

Yes, crisis suits have fusion guns, they also have all the other support weapons which in IG and SM armies are on the vehicles and infantry. That is one of the problems with Tau.

I don't advocate it be solved by giving support weapons to FW, but I do think crisis suits should be a bit cheaper and available in larger quantities.

Fire Warrior squad leaders can take Markerlights, can they not?

There's your "spread among the army".

I'm not really sure how they can make Crisis Suits a bit cheaper and be available in larger quantities without really futzing over the other unit choices to be frank.
I can see Stealth Suits maybe becoming Troops though.

Kanluwen wrote:Fire Warrior squad leaders can take Markerlights, can they not?

There's your "spread among the army".

I'm not really sure how they can make Crisis Suits a bit cheaper and be available in larger quantities without really futzing over the other unit choices to be frank.
I can see Stealth Suits maybe becoming Troops though.

IF take a unit of 12 FW then you can have a unit of Crisis suits as troops, not taking up another slut like IG HW teams do, no special issue gak for them and a little cheaper 5-10 points base. However make the elite ones BS4 at same current cost.

Acardia wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Fire Warrior squad leaders can take Markerlights, can they not?

There's your "spread among the army".

I'm not really sure how they can make Crisis Suits a bit cheaper and be available in larger quantities without really futzing over the other unit choices to be frank.
I can see Stealth Suits maybe becoming Troops though.

IF take a unit of 12 FW then you can have a unit of Crisis suits as troops, not taking up another slut like IG HW teams do, no special issue gak for them and a little cheaper 5-10 points base. However make the elite ones BS4 at same current cost.

IG heavy weapon squads are the same stats, same basic equipment(barring the y'know...heavy weapons), etc and require being taken in a Platoon of Guardsmen. You can't take Heavy Weapon Squads without a Platoon of basic Guardsmen
Crisis Suits and Fire Warriors don't really fit the same mold here.

IMHO, Tau should be built as the bridge between IG and Space marines with the following in mind...

Tau need to be there to say "Don't bring a knife (no matter how chained or powered) to a gun fight," and "Screw your wall o tanks and infantry". Mech armies (especially marines) have it coming.

Your worlds will burn until their surface is but glass. Your destruction is for the Greater Good, and we are instruments of Its most Glorious Path.

Kanluwen wrote:Fire Warrior squad leaders can take Markerlights, can they not?

There's your "spread among the army".

I'm not really sure how they can make Crisis Suits a bit cheaper and be available in larger quantities without really futzing over the other unit choices to be frank.
I can see Stealth Suits maybe becoming Troops though.

No, they have to pay to be upgraded to Shas'Ui and pay to have a marketlight too. Since the markerlight is a heavy weapon, using it stops the squad moving. So that's 40 points per marketlight hit, before you add the cost of a missile.

Kanluwen wrote:

I'm not really sure how they can make Crisis Suits a bit cheaper and be available in larger quantities without really futzing over the other unit choices to be frank.
.

Yes I agree this could be a problem, but that is why GW spend so much time and effort designing and testing rules. Ha ha.

TBH there are a lots of variables to play with, one of them being ways to make Fire Warriors not irrelevant. I am sure it is not impossible.

However this thread is not the place to rehearse all those points.

I have to disagree with everyone who says that the rail gun is good enough as is. It USED to be good enough, but now its nothing more than par for the course.

When the railgun first came out. It was one of the defining elements in the Tau army. A ranged S10 weapon (ap 1 didn't mean that much back then). Before that S10 was saved for things like the demolisher cannons when it was all still barrage/ordnance or actual guessing of ranges. But a direct fire 72" range gun? It was the icon of showing the Tau's superior technology.

Now who has S10 weapons? Everyone, and in multiple places. Hell, the SW codex has a guy throwing a S10 weapon. Nids have that psychic lance shot, marines can call down S10 orbital bombardments. Its everywhere you look now. And don't even get me started on AP1 Most new weapons are now AP1 because of the lack of forethought going into the vehicle damage tables and the effect it would have on the metagame.

The Railgun needs something to bring it back as the icon of superior fire power. Yeah, I'm a Tau fanboy, don't care. Each new codex for the last few years have chipped away at the Tau's position as top shooty dog and it sucks. We still have 0 HTH, and in any new codex we probably still will have 0 real HTH, so they should be better than most at something.

Fluff is a part of this game too ya know. Sadly very few people fear the hammerhead anymore because it just isn't what it used to be.

I think I would rather the Railgun become a Melta-lance weapon then be a line of sight weapon.

And as for seeker missiles, anyone else think that they should come standard (for no extra cost) on all Tau vehicles? I suppose that makes the Skyray somewhat redundant, but that could easily be fixed (reduced points cost, transport capacity, enhanced markerlights, anti-skimmer rules ala hydras).

I would also support Crisis Suits becoming a troops choice purchased with Firewarriors. That would help eliminate competition between Crisis and Stealth Suits (meaning more people would take stealth suits since they wouldn't be giving up a precious unit of crisis suits).

Just to correct a misonception: FNP doesnt care what your armour save is, you only DONT get FNP if it is AP1 or AP2, or always ignores armour saves, or causes ID. Otherwise plaguebearers would only get an armour save against AP-....

How about some dang grenades for the kroot? I mean, their only CC element cant assault anything in cover without getting ripped to shreds before they get to land a single blow. The models COME WITH GRENADES for crying out loud! I REALLY want to love Kroot, I mean outflank is awesome! But using them to assault a unit holding an objective in terrain? Say bye-bye, birdman.

Due to certain men of mystery (lol) I'm forced to call "bs" on every single rumor until official proof surfaces in the form of codex scans or clear, non-shopped photos.

I really hope it's true though, Tau are very much a one-list army right now...and that one list is really hard to actually win with. They could really use some new life breathed into them, some new interesting models and rules that don't suck. If GW can give me a good 5th edition Tau codex in August with some cool new models to go with it (please nothing sculpted by whoever did Daemons/Beastmen), then all the past Marine-pimpage will be forgiven.

I don't see what's wrong with the supercannon, either. Sounds about on-par with every other 5th edition codex if you ask me.

warboss wrote:except in this case it makes sense.

I know it makes sense. In fact, ever since Vespid first entered 40K I've been a big proponent of them being one of the few Tau units that should be able to fight in HTH well and shoot well. Their current lack of damage in both arena makes that impossible. Rending and Assault 2 would go a long way to fixing that.

warboss wrote:usually i'm right there with you to criticize GW and put a giant pile of salt on a thread but you really do need a big heaping dose of glass half full.

I'm the one who's telling everyone to not just dismiss these rumours simply because there's no such thing as a 'crazy' rumour any more. Not since 5th.

Meh. That railgun rumour seems bogus. Makes sense, but fire prisms and lascannons should get it too

Samus_aran115 wrote:Meh. That railgun rumour seems bogus. Makes sense, but fire prisms and lascannons should get it too

Not really. A laser, though capable of penetrating armor, vaporizes armor and bakes crew, but diffuses exponentially after striking surfaces and will probably not go much past the inital target with any chance of doing any real damage.

How? Why?

A Fire Prism fires a dispersed (yes even in "focused" mode) bolt of energy, hence the blast. A lascannon fires a short burst of photons, which lose their energy/disperse once they contact another surface.

A railgun is a solid projectile accelerated to several times the speed of sound. When it hits and object it can only bleed off so much of its kinetic energy due to its small size, thus it keeps on going... and going... and going...

Which is kinda why I like the rumor so much (even though I doubt its validity) since that is the way it would actually function IRL.

Never mind then
I was thinking it was some sort of laser :3

Don't like the proposed rail-ray rule. A solid shot being fired in a straight line at nearby target would go into the dirt a short distance later. Go ahead and say it, "(Gasp) "ff" expects real world physics to play a part in the rule design....Heathen. "

I just think that the Tau are going to get more of a rework thant what has been posted as rumour in this thread(Look to a fair amount of re-shuffling in the FOC).

When rumours such as these come out, I take them with the white granular subtance that is bad for my BP. In the end it doesn't make much difference. If the rumors prove to be true, I will play my Tau. If the rumors are wrong, I will still play my Tau.

Samus_aran115 wrote:I was thinking it was some sort of laser :3

That doesn't contradict what Chaos said. A laser works by heating up the target until something bad happens. A kinetic penetrator works by punching a hole in the target.

Can't say the same for myself focusedfire, lol. If the codex sucks I'll just shelve them, since it'll be another 5-6 years before an update and I'm not going to bother.

What I'm afraid of is that the codex will actually be really good, and then 6th edition comes out a year later and turns it into crap again.

focusedfire wrote:Don't like the proposed rail-ray rule. A solid shot being fired in a straight line at nearby target would go into the dirt a short distance later. Go ahead and say it, "(Gasp) "ff" expects real world physics to play a part in the rule design....Heathen. "

If by short you mean several miles... Seriously, I don't think people have a solid understanding of just how fast a railgun round travels, we're talking hypersonic velocities here. The real world prototype tested by the US Navy sometime back fired a projectile at 7 times the speed of sound, and that is considered underpowered compared to what they want to use when the weapon goes into production (we're talking 10+ times the speed of sound). Hell the Yugoslavs supposedly hit around 15x the speed of sound in their tests back in the 80s. You could potentially fire clean through a heavily armored vehicle (not that hard) and still have enough speed for the projectile to continue over the horizon (about 13 miles at sea level).

chaos0xomega wrote:If by short you mean several miles... Seriously, I don't think people have a solid understanding of just how fast a railgun round travels, we're talking hypersonic velocities here.

I assume he was talking about the "in a straight line" bit. A turret mounted railgun on a hovervehicle will be aiming downwards at most targets, which means the slug will be burrowing into the ground not that far behind the target.

It doesn't matter what real railguns can or can't do.

This is a game. What is needed is rules that make the Tau army competitive, different to the other armies, and true to their own design concept.

What I'm most excited about there is plastic kroot hounds it's damn difficult making a Kroot Mercenary army when hounds cost $22AU for 12 points.

Railgun rumour sounds plausible; potentially overpowered and definitely not well thought out, just like most other new GW rules. As others have said; Tau don't have an issue with LoS Anti-Tank firepower. They do have an issue with lack of template weapons and lack of access to mid-range S6/7/8 firepower. Amongst other things.

Kilkrazy wrote: ...and true to their own design concept.

Isn't their design concept 'a small tiny Empire in the south-east fringes of the galaxy that the Imperium could annihilate very easily if they could ever be bothered'? And, really, they play to that concept quite well.

Trasvi wrote:What I'm most excited about there is plastic kroot hounds it's damn difficult making a Kroot Mercenary army when hounds cost $22AU for 12 points.

You're still paying Australian prices for GW models? Why?

No, the tabletop game is different.

From their fluff?

Well... that's a bad thing.

I don't understand why people are bringing real world physics up as a valid argument for the rail gun rumor when nothing else in 40k is physically feasable, do I have to use orks and their waaagh fueled technology or should I say lack of tech.

If you want to use physics at least be accurate, a rail gun acts like any other fired projectile except it does not use explosive charges to fire a propellant, it uses magnetism as a slingshot, and if a rail round hits a target, even if it punches through, the odds of it continuing on its original path are laughable, it would still veer off, regardless of how fast its moving.... physics in 40k isn't worth mentioning.

its a cool concept regardless, but it just seems like it would be broken in a large scale game, especially considering how LOS could be broken apart...."oh i will target that bunker just so I can hit the whirlwind behind it I can't see....no really its the bunker im angry with."

Red Corsair wrote:"oh i will target that bunker just so I can hit the whirlwind behind it I can't see....no really its the bunker im angry with."

Difficult to hide a Whirlwind behind a bunker


Anyway, what again was the topic?