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 Formosa wrote:

I expect it to end better for the Tau as they aren't ruled by a single idiot.

neither was the imperium, the emperor was the figurehead but the day to day running of the imperium is done by planetary governors etc. also, arent the Tau effectively run by the chief ethereal, the Aun'O, used to be Aun'Va, so yeah, pretty sure its the same general thing.


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The Tau seem to be functionally immune to chaos corruption, so it's unlikely to end exactly the same way it did for the Imperium, though. I could see some scientist trying to create technology using the warp and end up with possessed stuff, but an a scale large enough to topple their empire? I don't know... Maybe if they'd started running everything through a galaxy-spanning AI network then it would certainly suck if daemons got inside of that.

The Tau are in no way immune to warp corruption and we dont know to what extent they are resistant to the temptations of Chaos (chaos corruption), the greater goods ideology seems to indicate it would be very difficult to corrupt one, but not impossible, also you would only need to find the right circumstances to cripple the Tau, exactly like the Chaos gods did to the Imperium.

They pretty much were in the GC with the Emperor giving godlike armies to people who were clearly nutters.


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 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I was going by older background that said grav vehicles were seriously limited in the imperium, being mostly ancient relics carefully maintained. Maybe they retconned that but early on they were seriously limited in availability.

As to tau drone vs servo skull, let's see... Two pulse carbines vs a las pistol....

IIRC the Imperium basically ran out of resources to produce lots of grav vehicles in 40k outside Land Speeders and small things like servo skulls. Although Cawl has apparently brought a LOT of material with him to make new grav vehicles.

Imperial Military grav vehicles are rare but other grav tech is used extensively.

Civilian ones not so much.

Its not just can you do something - its do you need to and does it cause more logistical, C3 or other issues if you do.

Not everything that the Imperium does will make immeidate sense to us (or even them) but there is usually a reason

Repulsor don't use the same tech that land speeder, they don't grav they hmm repulse (they even crush a predator by flying over in Dark Imperium). Ok it is still gakky but at least they haven't retconned this...

 Irbis wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Having the tau and Terra on the same side of the warp might may save both. Now that guilleman is in charge and was revived partially due to an eldar he may be willing to ally with some xenos races, and a tau eldar imperial alliance could be very powerful indeed.

How would it be powerful? Tau empire has literally less population than some hive worlds. Sure, individual citizen is maybe more productive but they simply don't have the economy of scale or resources Imperium has. It would be like a mosquito allying with an elephant. They are still around only due to deux-ex-machina magic asspulls constantly saving their behind (like the whole "we captured Imperial anti-air missile made with technology more advanced than anything we have ever seen by flying up to it and stealing it without it exploding, and somehow reverse engineered it into anti-tank missile more powerful than eldar or necron guns in days, then pulled a huge stockpile of it out of our arses despite being light-years away from any Tau world, never mind one with advanced munitions factory" nonsense) and if they were realistically written in any way every single Imperial crusade would be a colossal defeat to Tau not ending with collapse of their Empire only because IoM has more important things to do after reclaiming lost worlds.

The T'au Empire does not have less population than some Hive Worlds, that is absurd. And to say that the T'au only live because of plot armour is, again, absurd. Yes, the only reason they are still alive is because they exist in an area of the galaxy where Imperial power is relatively thin, and the Imperium has much bigger things to worry about to be able to go after the T'au. But is that really so unrealistic, or a core theme of the setting where the power of the galaxy spanning empire is stretched thinner and thinner as it is beset on all sides?

A ) They actually far less effective and bulkier (just compare pulse rifle or ion rifle size to Scion volley gun, a vastly superior weapon, not to mention not killing the user quickly because the only power source Tau could build was highly radioactive), B ) the few Tau weapons that are more damaging than Imperial ones are usually far more expensive, have significant drawbacks, and in general only work due to author's fiat (like ignoring the fact it would run out of ammunition in seconds or overheat and melt, like these action movies heroes firing 20 bullet mag for hours).

A good comparison of Tau tech to Imperial would be Napoleonic era gun compared to 21st century sniper rifle - sure, maybe it deals more damage and has greater range, but technologically is vastly inferior, can only be moved by battle suit, and you can barely hit the broad side of a barn without 20 markerlights to compensate...

The way you wrote that makes it seem like ALL T'au weapons quickly kill the user because of radiation, which is blatantly untrue. The only weapons that present a danger to the user are Ion weapons, and ONLY when overcharged.

You can't really compare a special weapon issued only to the most elite of the Guard to the common small arm used by the T'au's basic foot soldiers, and the Ion Rifle and Volley gun are about even (Ion better when overcharged, Volley otherwise, keeping in mind the two guns are designed for different targets), and considering it needs a cable connected to a backpack to even function, I don't think it can complain about Ion Rifles being bulky (and the pulse one isn't even bulky).

Until you actually provide examples capable of having a discussion over, I'm just going to say T’au are hardly the only faction that benefits from author fiat (if they even do, again, examples please). A Bolter, for example, should in no way shape or form be capable of holding 20 rounds unless the magazine casually and unknowingly uses pocket dimension technologies (which, I admit, would be very Imperium).

You mean, like, say, servo skull. Which is only one of the, oh, most iconic pieces of Imperial tech?

And, by the way, is tenth the size of Tau drone, far more maneuverable, less expensive, carries much better sensors, and do a lot of things in books Tau drones can only dream of.

Barely make and maintain? Gee, I wonder why in Cain series we see human worlds with highways filled with grav cars. Must have been Cain's imagination.

Or, you know, Elysian (and similar) regiments who use this impossibly inferior and difficult to make technology as tiny, disposable grav backpacks (when Tau grav unit is the entire rear of battlesuit, isn't removable because unlike Imperial ones, is too expensive to discard, and they have no personal sized ones, period). Someone must have failed to memo them they throw away a fortune in archaotech after each combat drop

“Tenth the size”
A tau drone is not ten times the size of a human head

“Far more maneuverable”
I'd say their on the same level

“Less expensive”
Of course a skull with an anti-grave engine installed is going to be less expensive than the drone that is actually armed and armoured.

“Carries much better sensors.”
I'd say Drones and Servo Skulls built for the same purpose (i.e. not comparing a sensor skull to a Gun Drone) would only edge out above each other slightly, if not simply being on the same level.

“And do a lot of things in books that Drones can only dream of.”
Examples? And if what you say is true, why doesn’t the Imperium apply them militarily like the T'au do their drones? Those blue fish people and their frisbees seem to be doing well, if Servo Skulls are so much better than why doesn't the Imperium send out swarms of skulls equipped with Volley Guns?

You really can't compare a Grav-Chut to a Battlesuit Jetpack. One's a parachute that only works when skydiving the other is a Jet Pack actually capable of lifting you off the ground and flying you around mid battle.

Also “non-removable?” How is that a drawback? In what circumstance would you WANT to remove what is probably the greatest strength of the XV8, or any other suit that has them.

And the Tau do actually have personal sized Grav-Chutes. Just look at the XV15 Stealth Suit, which is a Firewarrior in slightly bulkier armour, and possess a Jet Pack. The 7th Ed Codex even states the T'au possess “single-use grav boosters” to Deepstrike in Broadsides. If they can use the equivalent of grav-chutes to drop in a multi-tonne battlesuit, why would making one for the common Firewarrior be out of their reach?

And tech suited for civilian use is not the same as tech suited for military use, or else they would've made things like the Taurox anti-grav.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

chimera0205 wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

chimera0205 wrote:
As you all know the Tau are known for thier slow bt safe FTL witch merely skims the warp instead of going all in. why is that? why havmt they figured out warp travel yet? you may be thinking "but chimera they have no warp engines" and your dead wrong. I present to you the Kroot warsphere http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Warsphere a warp capable vessel that the kroot posses severl of witch has been recorded bieng used to aide the tau in battles so its not like the kroot are hiding them from them. your probably thinking now "ok chimera maybe they do access to warp drives but they have no navigators" and once again dead fething wrong. they have an entire planet chock full of them. The Kroot are stated to have a sort of sixth sense for finding planets in the warp. how do you think they pilot those warspheres so why the actual feth hasnt the most inginuitive race in 40k put two and two together and started reproducing warp drives in mass and throwing kroot on all thier sips to act as navigaters? this makes no sense? all the pieces are right fething under there noses.

What good are warp engines when they can't navigate the warp. They can't and will never do warp travel, they need to evolve to do that which means that unless we some some terrible ex-machina 'surprise they found out how to navigate the warp by praying to chickens' they will never gain warp travel. They aren't that technologically advanced either, they are nothing compared to the eldar or mankind at its zenith so I doubt they will find a way to navigate the warp without using the webway. Tau players just need to enjoy or live with the fact that the Tau will never be big movers on the galactic scale.

As I mentioned in the OP the Kroot have a kinda 6th senss for navigating the warp. So your very very wrong on all fronts

They don't to any significant way, they can only navigate in terms of shallow jumps so no my friend you are the one that's wrong.

Sorry, where's it said that the Kroot can only make shallow warp jumps? The fact that Kroot mercenaries are far more spread out than the Tau would indicate that they can make big warp jumps just fine.


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 AegisGrimm wrote:
Kroot would never become the Tau Empire's 'Navigators' because they would see that as stagnation. The entire reason the have Merc forces is to combat the Tau caste system's ideas for how they should fit into the Empire, so they can secretly go out and gain genetic diversity.

There could easily be a branching in the Kroot, with a particular caste of Navigators emerging, as part of their duty to the T'au Empire for having Pech saved, who would focus on becoming better navigators, while the majority of Kroot stay as warriors. They're a pretty massive race, it's not like they'er ALL warriors who want a life of violence.


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 Irbis wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Having the tau and Terra on the same side of the warp might may save both. Now that guilleman is in charge and was revived partially due to an eldar he may be willing to ally with some xenos races, and a tau eldar imperial alliance could be very powerful indeed.

How would it be powerful? Tau empire has literally less population than some hive worlds. Sure, individual citizen is maybe more productive but they simply don't have the economy of scale or resources Imperium has. It would be like a mosquito allying with an elephant. They are still around only due to deux-ex-machina magic asspulls constantly saving their behind (like the whole "we captured Imperial anti-air missile made with technology more advanced than anything we have ever seen by flying up to it and stealing it without it exploding, and somehow reverse engineered it into anti-tank missile more powerful than eldar or necron guns in days, then pulled a huge stockpile of it out of our arses despite being light-years away from any Tau world, never mind one with advanced munitions factory" nonsense) and if they were realistically written in any way every single Imperial crusade would be a colossal defeat to Tau not ending with collapse of their Empire only because IoM has more important things to do after reclaiming lost worlds.

The Imperium suffer from some pretty brutal diseconomies of scale, though. They're prone to constant disruptions due to their sheer size, and massive inefficiencies are widespread throughout their nation. The Imperium is surrounded by endless threats, and as far as it goes, the T'au are in the sweet spot. The spare resources the Imperium can manage to find need to be rapidly used to stop WAAAGH!s or Tyranid Hive Fleets or endless enemies that are about to devastate the Imperium, so spare forces from across the Imperium can't be used in big offenses here.

However, the Tau are also fairly powerful, in that they're not some backwater of feral Orks, Exodites or just any common Xenos Empire that can be invaded. Since they're not a big enough threat to justify taking away from the thousands of serious life or death battles happening across the Imperium, that means all that can be spared to deal with them are the forces in the areas around the Tau, and they're simply not impressive enough to take on the Tau. Some aspiring Noble Lord or power-hungry general can't just waltz in and start taking Tau territories, because they don't have the fire power. So the T'au is big enough to wipe out any localized Imperial threats, and they Imperium is too busy dealing with galaxy-ending threats to be able to spare the troops to deal with the Tau.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think the tau are mostly vegan so a kroot navigator in a tau ship would need special dining arrangements.

Not exactly. The Tau are omnivores, but they have only eaten meat relatively recently. Which actually makes them extremely odd, since Herbivores generally lack the ability to support brains sophisticated enough to be sentient. Simply not enough protein or energy dense calories to support the energy demands of a large brain.

Not true, gorillas are herbivores, they have a capacity for language, koko the gorilla learned sign language and actually created her own signs.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think the tau are mostly vegan so a kroot navigator in a tau ship would need special dining arrangements.

Not exactly. The Tau are omnivores, but they have only eaten meat relatively recently. Which actually makes them extremely odd, since Herbivores generally lack the ability to support brains sophisticated enough to be sentient. Simply not enough protein or energy dense calories to support the energy demands of a large brain.

Not true, gorillas are herbivores, they have a capacity for language, koko the gorilla learned sign language and actually created her own signs.

I said ‘generally’. Plus gorillas aren’t sentient.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think the tau are mostly vegan so a kroot navigator in a tau ship would need special dining arrangements.

Not exactly. The Tau are omnivores, but they have only eaten meat relatively recently. Which actually makes them extremely odd, since Herbivores generally lack the ability to support brains sophisticated enough to be sentient. Simply not enough protein or energy dense calories to support the energy demands of a large brain.

Not true, gorillas are herbivores, they have a capacity for language, koko the gorilla learned sign language and actually created her own signs.

I said ‘generally’. Plus gorillas aren’t sentient.

Yes, they are. They are capable of feeling, perceiving, and experiencing subjectively and pretty much every scientific study into them has proven such.

They aren't, to our acknowledgement, sapient, which is what you're confusing for sentience.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I said ‘generally’. Plus gorillas aren’t sentient.

Gorrilas are sentient, in the same way that dogs are sentient or termites are sentient. The word I think you were looking for is sapient, and all evidence suggests Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Elephants, Dolphins and Crows are sapient along with humans.

What's the difference between sapience and sentience? They get mixed up so often...

pm713 wrote:
What's the difference between sapience and sentience? They get mixed up so often...

Sentient is to be able to perceive or feel things. Sapience is the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment.

I do not buy that anything besides humans are sapient.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I do not buy that anything besides humans are sapient.

I'm not terribly convinced many humans are.

What tests we have don't indicate conclusively that other animals are sapient, but the tests are inherently biased to our conceptions of intellect and social order.

It's a blurry line, frankly. As someone who lives on a farm, with multiple animals of different species, there are obvious differences in cognition, and fairly complex behaviors. Our dogs keep a rough sense of time even when in the basement (where we keep the exercise equipment), and have some sense of object permanence (better than small human children).

The cattle are worse about the latter, but definitely recognize patterns of behavior and individual people. The cows will line up in specific groups of 6 or 7 to go into the barn to get fed in the morning. That can be seen as habit, but they also seem to grasp that they get fed faster if they divide in half, rather than all try to pile in the gate that opens first.

The cats largely don't care unless they want something.

But any, short version is, a binary sentient/sapient divide is probably modeling cognition incorrectly.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I do not buy that anything besides humans are sapient.

macaque monkeys have been proven to act sapient through classical behavioural fairness tests, the results are hilarious to watch, youtube it. Your religion might make you want to be skeptical about the results but you can't argue with them.

As to the kroot serving as tau navigators, I think the kroot are extremely pragmatic and practical. They have less obsession with honor than survival and take the practical approach to solving problems. The tau pretty much saved the kroot from the Orks and the kroot view the tau as necessary allies as the kroot are unlikely able to stand on their own without the tau. They would navigate for the tau and seek to gain what extra benefits they could