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EmpNorton wrote:

What I really want is a lizardman army in space...

At any rate, I'm not seeing anywhere in the codex indicating that as many tomb worlds will come online as you think. Certainly, there are hundreds of billions of 'Crons that are not yet active... but there hasn't been a Gallup poll taken of "Is your tomb world awake or will be awoken?" The only thing the codex is clear on is that the majority still slumber, waiting to rise... or be put down by an Imperial crusade or Eldar hunt.

If they aren't broken, they will wake up. It is only a matter of time. Since it would take the Tau hundreds of thousands of years to get to necron space, it strikes me as preposterous that, if they somehow survived the journey and conflict with the Imperium, they would be on any size to create a legitimate opponent for the Necron. The Necron are what you seem to think the Tau are, the technological marvels of the galaxy.

At every turn in this discussion you approach it with the assumption that the Tau will have the best of luck and the least beneficial fluff for other races are used. The reality is that two things have allowed the Tau to continue to exist: Hive Fleet Behemoth and Armageddon. The distraction forced the Imperium to pull the forces that would have leveled the Tau. But that is the Tau in a nutshell. Every stripe of fluff features some plot point that diminishes the battles and gives the opportunity to let the Tau win or to have something happen that removes the opposing force or doesn't allow them to reinforce and flatten the tiny Tau empire.

 Psienesis wrote:
If the Tau increased their size ten-fold they would still be a tiny circle in the lower right-hand corner of the galactic map. That's how small their Empire is. It currently numbers, what, twenty-five systems?

From the map in the codex there are roughly 17 'Septs'. Now it is a bit vague about weather or not a 'sept' can comprise more than one system or not; saying only that they "can include any
number of additionally colonised planets, moons or artificial bases under one central control."

The Tau suffer from a similar problem of scale to the SM (and possibly DE & CE), though in the Tau case it could be argued that they have it worse than anyone. They are written about like they are supposed to be significant players on the larger stage, when their numbers and reach are so small compared to the other 'galactic' numbers thrown around it creates a really stark dissonance.

 Psienesis wrote:
They also managed to piss off the Space Wolves, which never bodes well for anyone, because if any Chapter wears 10 meters of plasma-strengthened Plot Armor, it's the Space Wolves.

When did that happen? Also: How did that happen? I though the SW were on the other end of the Galaxy?

And anyway; when you get plot armor grinding against plot armor it's never good. Everybody losses.

From the map in the codex there are roughly 17 'Septs'. Now it is a bit vague about weather or not a 'sept' can comprise more than one system or not; saying only that they "can include any
number of additionally colonised planets, moons or artificial bases under one central control."

The Tau suffer from a similar problem of scale to the SM (and possibly DE & CE), though in the Tau case it could be argued that they have it worse than anyone. They are written about like they are supposed to be significant players on the larger stage, when their numbers and reach are so small compared to the other 'galactic' numbers thrown around it creates a really stark dissonance.

So let's assume a given Sept has 10 planets/permanent stations/colonized moons/etc attached to the command of the central Sept World. I'm sure there are Septs with more, and I'm sure there are Septs with less, so I'm choosing 10 as the average. That would be a heavily-populated system by the metrics of any faction in the setting, with 10 inhabited planets/whatevers around one star.

That gives the current Tau Empire 170 worlds. This is barely more than 1/100th of 1% of the number of worlds the Imperium commands. If you were to grant the Tau ten times this number, they still don't quite reach 2% of the Imperium.

But, yes, GW has absolutely no sense of scale, or even a clear understanding of military logistics.

When did that happen? Also: How did that happen? I though the SW were on the other end of the Galaxy?

666.M41, on some aquatic world. Lexi blurb:

In 666.M41, the Tau fought against the Adeptus Astartes of the Space Wolves Chapter during the War for Kvarium Alpha. On that water-clogged world, drop pods landed deep in the oceans where their occupants made a move to engage their enemy. On the surface, the battle was fought between the two sides with an equally deadly conflict erupting in the depths of the sea between the Space Wolves and Tau Battlesuits. Thunderhawk Gunships were used to great effect against Hammerhead tanks and Manta gunships with torpedoes, prop-bombs and missiles being used against the Tau. Ultimately, the Space Wolves proved to be the victor in the conflict where hundreds of Tau and Space Wolf corpses floated to the surface. With their mission complete, the Space Wolves made the long trek back to land across the sea bed.

... the Space Wolves go on "Great Hunts" all the time, which is what they call their searches for Russ. I suppose they encountered them there. The Wolves go flying out from Fenris every which way and run into something Evil, kick its ass, and then commence to party. They're one of the most-popular Chapters across the Imperium because of this.

Although it was a tau loss, just the fact they did kill quite a few SWs does say something...

There are always more Space Wolves. Always. Somehow, even after a war vs the Inquisition and the GK, they didnt lose enough Wolves (even though they lost half their fleet) to put a dent in their campaigning... I guess they have Initiates just ready to go at all times.

I was saying that the tau were good enough to kill s bunch of SMs, who are renowned to be some of the hardest to kill soldiers in existence.

Yeah, but they did that in the Damocles Gulf, too. Killing SM is not as hard as people like to think that it is. I'm not saying that the Tau are terrible and suck, I'm simply pointing out that they're hopelessly outmatched in numbers and guns by every other faction in the setting.

Number, most definitely. I'm not sure what you mean by guns.

 Psienesis wrote:

By the time they can become a threat, the Tau will at least have quadrupled their size with further expansion. Their technology will have progressed. After interacting with the Necrons, the Earth Caste may find a way to stop their phasing out.

The Tau can still do things like that. They're progressing technologically.

They would need to first capture a Necron to take it apart and see how it Phases Out before they can begin to counter the science behind the event. The Earth Caste aren't wizards, they can't just see something happen and gain understanding of the mechanics behind the event. But this is only possible if the Necrons have already arrived, which means its too late.

"Few Necrons awaken from stasis-sleep with fully-functioning consciousness. Most arise addled by their long slumber, their wits and reason slow to come fully online." (page 62, Necron codex)

Here's a scenario that is completely possible within the fluff.

A Necron tomb world, underneath a Tau world, comes online. Its leader, not aware completely of what is going on, is met by Water Caste Ambassadors. The Necron, not yet in his right mind, accepts the offer to work for the Greater Good. Tau then get a chance to work alongside the Necrons, until said Lord realizes whats going on, who he is, and does his thing. By that time, it may be too late.

Or, ya know, the Tau could find a world in which the Necrons are all malfunctioning and just take apart whats there to learn how it works.

Or the C'tan could betray the Necrons... again, and give the Tau some insight into their slavers/former allies.

There- three perfectly possible scenarios in which Tau get a chance to learn about Necron technology.

The C'Tan are in no shape to betray the Necrons. Most of them are in shards so small they are barely sentient (stick more shards into one another and it gets more powerful, hence Transcendent C'Tan). Further, as we've seen with the Void Dragon, it's possible to starve a C'Tan... these things used to eat stars, and then they ate souls, and now they haven't eaten in 60 million years. This is why they can only do their thing over a relatively small range (however large a table-top battlefield is supposed to be in 12 to 48 inches) rather than across astronomical distances.

The C'Tan are has-beens, on a galactic scale, and they're not coming back at any time in the current era. It'll be another 60 million years before they regain enough sense to do much of anything except be Pokeballs.

The awakening Tomb World is still not going to buddy-buddy with the Tau. They'd accept the Tau as their vassals, and demand tribute from them, but a sleep-addled Pharon is still a Necron. They don't "ally" with other cultures, they enslave them or they destroy them. Even Zandrekh, despite being senile as all hell, still acts like a Necron Warlord, even if he mistakes Orks for some rebellious Necrontyr Dynasty.

 PhillyT wrote:


If they aren't broken, they will wake up. It is only a matter of time. Since it would take the Tau hundreds of thousands of years to get to necron space, it strikes me as preposterous that, if they somehow survived the journey and conflict with the Imperium, they would be on any size to create a legitimate opponent for the Necron. The Necron are what you seem to think the Tau are, the technological marvels of the galaxy.

At every turn in this discussion you approach it with the assumption that the Tau will have the best of luck and the least beneficial fluff for other races are used. The reality is that two things have allowed the Tau to continue to exist: Hive Fleet Behemoth and Armageddon. The distraction forced the Imperium to pull the forces that would have leveled the Tau. But that is the Tau in a nutshell. Every stripe of fluff features some plot point that diminishes the battles and gives the opportunity to let the Tau win or to have something happen that removes the opposing force or doesn't allow them to reinforce and flatten the tiny Tau empire.

You, meanwhile, have assumed worse than the worst of fluff about the Tau, diminishing what they have achieved in the incredibly short amount of time they have had.

Humanity once passed through the same gauntlet the Tau are passing through now. The galaxy was dominated by the Eldar, which could have snuffed humanity out at its leisure but didn't. Why is, of course, a mystery lost within the DAoT, but we know for certain that humanity didn't expand through an empty universe. There were, invariably, other empires it dealt with- one of which we KNOW was far larger and more technologically advanced. They made it. Of course, most of the knowledge that allowed them to do so is lost, and so long as the Imperium exists, the exchange of information required to rebuild that base of knowledge will never be.

My way of looking at how the future plays out starts with one assumption- that humanity survives the 41st Millenium.

From there, we know that the Imperium is losing. There are three factions that are- based on the fluff from *those* factions- capable of destroying humanity completely. Necrons, Chaos (even with Tzeentch undermining it, as he routinely does), and the Tyranids. In order for any one of those three to not genocide humanity (or turn it into mindless raving lunatics), the efforts from them have to, at some point, be mostly focused on each other... then two of them have to be neutered. In theory, the Necrons *may* be capable of being folded into whatever galactic peace happens to exist after the Tyranid invasion ends... but probably not, and certainly not if they aren't in the "dying race" category with the Eldar.

Orks aren't helping anyone but Orks, and that's only if they have someone to krump.

The Dark Eldar aren't saving anyone's day.

The Eldar are a "dying race" ... even not counting the apparent billions of them that die in Warhammer 40k games- tabletop, video, or otherwise and with Eldrad no longer there to call the shots, the Eldar situation isn't going to improve radically any time soon.

Humanity, as we have already discussed, is slowly but surely losing. There are too many threats on too many fronts. The secrecy of the AdMech prevents humanity from unleashing the creative force it had during the DAoT. After all, if the AdMech were enough to find technological solutions, they wouldn't be looking for new STCs like a drunk on Sunday going through the fridge for one last can of beer. Heck- they were looking that hard during the Great Crusade, when they were at their strongest and humanity had a leader that liked rationality and science.

The Imperial Cult and the Imperium's attitude toward xenos makes outside help unlikely. While individuals are willing to work alongside xenos for the Greater Good, humanity as a whole is not.

The Space Marines have been fighting hard, but their best efforts aren't turning the tide... nor are the Inquisition, the Sororitas, or the Imperial Army and Navy.

Who is left? The one race in the galaxy that is still developing technologically and is willing to accept humans into the fold.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:
The C'Tan are in no shape to betray the Necrons. Most of them are in shards so small they are barely sentient (stick more shards into one another and it gets more powerful, hence Transcendent C'Tan). Further, as we've seen with the Void Dragon, it's possible to starve a C'Tan... these things used to eat stars, and then they ate souls, and now they haven't eaten in 60 million years. This is why they can only do their thing over a relatively small range (however large a table-top battlefield is supposed to be in 12 to 48 inches) rather than across astronomical distances.

The C'Tan are has-beens, on a galactic scale, and they're not coming back at any time in the current era. It'll be another 60 million years before they regain enough sense to do much of anything except be Pokeballs.

The awakening Tomb World is still not going to buddy-buddy with the Tau. They'd accept the Tau as their vassals, and demand tribute from them, but a sleep-addled Pharon is still a Necron. They don't "ally" with other cultures, they enslave them or they destroy them. Even Zandrekh, despite being senile as all hell, still acts like a Necron Warlord, even if he mistakes Orks for some rebellious Necrontyr Dynasty.

So... if one manages to get ahold of some food, all bets are off. The Necrons are already sticking shards together for an edge. If some escape from a Tesseract Vault- like through malfunctioning circuitry (which is mostly within fluff) or a dead Canoptek Sentinel- all bets are off.

... and if one as addled as Zandrekh is approached by a Water Caste and he thinks another Necron is asking him to work together for the Greater Good, he might very well. I think your example of a named character confusing Orks with Necrontyr hurts your case, because it's perfectly reasonable for one Dynast to ally with another one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:
Yeah, but they did that in the Damocles Gulf, too. Killing SM is not as hard as people like to think that it is. I'm not saying that the Tau are terrible and suck, I'm simply pointing out that they're hopelessly outmatched in numbers and guns by every other faction in the setting.

The Orks weren't finished, you know. The Old Ones died before a control mechanism could be put in place. If the Tau could succeed in doing that, then all of a sudden the combined mass of orks in the galaxy would be working toward one purpose... and as I've pointed out repeatedly, the Tau are the one race that is pushing forward technologically. If it can be done, they'd be the ones to do it.

 Psienesis wrote:
... the Space Wolves go on "Great Hunts" all the time, which is what they call their searches for Russ. I suppose they encountered them there. The Wolves go flying out from Fenris every which way and run into something Evil, kick its ass, and then commence to party. They're one of the most-popular Chapters across the Imperium because of this.

Ahhhh, ofcourse, forgot about the hunts. Dam, my SW fluff is rusty.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Number, most definitely. I'm not sure what you mean by guns.

Because while the Pulse Rifle is nice, it's not all that and a bag of chips. From purely a fluff perspective, it's like a longer-ranged bolter, and it falls far short of the Gauss Rifle. It's more like a shuriken catapult, really. High tech, effective in its role, but also not really out-of-step with the technology of other races.

So... if one manages to get ahold of some food, all bets are off. The Necrons are already sticking shards together for an edge. If some escape from a Tesseract Vault- like through malfunctioning circuitry (which is mostly within fluff) or a dead Canoptek Sentinel- all bets are off.

There would need to be another Biotransference-like event in order to feed a C'Tan. Like I said, they used to eat stars. That's a lot of juice (apparently very bland juice, but whatever) to find a replacement for.

Humanity once passed through the same gauntlet the Tau are passing through now. The galaxy was dominated by the Eldar, which could have snuffed humanity out at its leisure but didn't. Why is, of course, a mystery lost within the DAoT, but we know for certain that humanity didn't expand through an empty universe. There were, invariably, other empires it dealt with- one of which we KNOW was far larger and more technologically advanced. They made it. Of course, most of the knowledge that allowed them to do so is lost, and so long as the Imperium exists, the exchange of information required to rebuild that base of knowledge will never be.

Because, at the time, Mankind's tech-levels matched the Eldar's, and the Eldar did not have the savagery that Mankind did. Also... space is really, really big. Man will settle anywhere they can breathe (and in many places where they can't). The Eldar took for themselves only the choicest worlds. Mankind terraformed a lotta rocks in those days, creating habitable worlds where, previously, there were none. There were, lastly, those bands of humans who encountered the Eldar and, instead of reaching for weapons, said "oh, hai!". Mankind of this era was not exactly a united race.

The secrecy of the AdMech prevents humanity from unleashing the creative force it had during the DAoT. After all, if the AdMech were enough to find technological solutions, they wouldn't be looking for new STCs like a drunk on Sunday going through the fridge for one last can of beer. Heck- they were looking that hard during the Great Crusade, when they were at their strongest and humanity had a leader that liked rationality and science.

It is not the secrecy of the AdMech that makes technological innovation slow (and development and innovation does happen in the AdMech), it is reasonable caution, because Mankind's tech-base is so thoroughly riddled with virii and daemonic entities that experimenting willy-nilly with technology is a good way to get your planet devoured by Artificially Intelligent super-weapons.... like what happened with the Men of Iron. The Tau haven't yet had their Rise of the Machines, but it may yet happen (if, you know, the setting ever moves forward, which it won't). The Tau haven't experienced an extinction-level event like Mankind has (twice). When they do (which, given the static nature of the 40K franchise, they never will) then we'll see what they're made of. The thing to remember about the AdMech is that they're not stupid, it is simply that certain avenues of research are entirely closed off, because the basic principles of those avenues were lost thousands of years ago when everyone who knew anything about it were killed off and all their records and writings destroyed. This would be like, in the modern world, gathering together any book/disc/server/file/movie/tape/recording of any kind/person that knows anything about it that deals with Einstein's theory of relativity and setting it on fire, immersing it in acid, throwing it into a sun and then, just in case, exposing any remains to a mystical force of malignant evil.

Now, sure, in some people, some will remember "E=mc^2"... but who really understands what that means? How many know that it is only part of a larger formula? Who understands what the formula, and the theory, actually states?

That's what the AdMech was left with, in the best circumstances. People who vaguely remember reading about this one thing one time at a seminar on something entirely different, or maybe they knew someone who knew someone who did. Entire schools of human understanding have been so thoroughly eradicated that even the knowledge that such sciences once existed has been lost. Entire concepts of medical science, of natural science, of environmental science, of every science you can name, have been lost forever, because the idea that there even are sciences in such things to study has been lost. So what the AdMech knows, it knows pretty fething well... but there's a lot of things they don't know, and even more things they know are too fething dangerous to mess with, because it will eat your brain out your butt.

That's why they're looking for an intact STC. If one exists, and they can find it, then the Imperium catapults itself to be basically Eldar/Necron levels of technology. Uncorrupted knowledge that spans the entirety of human understanding, from a time when Humanity rivaled the Eldar. Finding one of those is much easier than repeating some 25,000+ years of scientific development.

The Orks weren't finished, you know. The Old Ones died before a control mechanism could be put in place. If the Tau could succeed in doing that, then all of a sudden the combined mass of orks in the galaxy would be working toward one purpose... and as I've pointed out repeatedly, the Tau are the one race that is pushing forward technologically. If it can be done, they'd be the ones to do it.

The Orks are not the Krorks. The Orks are what the Krorks evolved (devolved?) into. Given that the Old Ones were a race of powerful Psykers that moved in and out of the Web-Way and the Warp with impunity, I don't think the Tau have the means to develop the control the Old Ones had planned... if one, indeed, was planned.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Number, most definitely. I'm not sure what you mean by guns.

Because while the Pulse Rifle is nice, it's not all that and a bag of chips. From purely a fluff perspective, it's like a longer-ranged bolter, and it falls far short of the Gauss Rifle. It's more like a shuriken catapult, really. High tech, effective in its role, but also not really out-of-step with the technology of other races.

True. It is more powerful than a bolter, but it's main power is range. Being stronger than things like bolters does help though. Tau have this thing where most of it's stuff is not necessarily the most advanced (a pulse rifle is just the concept of a plasma weapon combined with a coil gun) but is good stuff nevertheless.

Personally I think that the tau's main strengths lies in the fact that there is almost no in-fighting, extreme efficiency, and the ability to adapt and create new things. Against the full forces of any of the other races they would be obliterated. However, against the forces that they have faced so far they have not yet suffered setbacks severe enough to cripple them, even momentarily. They are gaining momentum, but it is like comparing a bolder to a mountain, pretty insignificant.

This is one of the reason's I have always liked tau, they are underdogs. They are up against impossible odds, yet if the imperium is truly crippled by the forces of chaos (something like Abbidon taking terra and the light of the astronomicon going out, than tau would have a definite chance to grow. An imperium sindisarray would not organise, systems would stay to their own and protect their own. Orks, necrons, eldar, and tau could take planets with relative ease if they did not have to prepare for imperial backup. Not that that would ever happen because GW refuses to advance the timline.*

*Honesty, this could form a pretty cool story-line. Whatever of the imperium's leadership was left would have to try to pick the imperium back up to reclaim Terra and re-light the astronomicon. Meanwhile, the tyranids continue advance, to the points where the imp might even question it's rules not to deal with aliens. A ridiculously sized Ork WAAGH led by ol' Grahzgul thraka would emerge, taking advantage of the weakened forces, and sewing mayhem and havoc in their wake. The necron dynasties continue to rise. Tau expansion accelerates. The eldar do more mysterious shiz-wazz. ect.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Number, most definitely. I'm not sure what you mean by guns.

There would need to be another Biotransference-like event in order to feed a C'Tan. Like I said, they used to eat stars. That's a lot of juice (apparently very bland juice, but whatever) to find a replacement for.

Because, at the time, Mankind's tech-levels matched the Eldar's, and the Eldar did not have the savagery that Mankind did. Also... space is really, really big. Man will settle anywhere they can breathe (and in many places where they can't). The Eldar took for themselves only the choicest worlds. Mankind terraformed a lotta rocks in those days, creating habitable worlds where, previously, there were none. There were, lastly, those bands of humans who encountered the Eldar and, instead of reaching for weapons, said "oh, hai!". Mankind of this era was not exactly a united race.

It is not the secrecy of the AdMech that makes technological innovation slow (and development and innovation does happen in the AdMech), it is reasonable caution, because Mankind's tech-base is so thoroughly riddled with virii and daemonic entities that experimenting willy-nilly with technology is a good way to get your planet devoured by Artificially Intelligent super-weapons.... like what happened with the Men of Iron. The Tau haven't yet had their Rise of the Machines, but it may yet happen (if, you know, the setting ever moves forward, which it won't). The Tau haven't experienced an extinction-level event like Mankind has (twice). When they do (which, given the static nature of the 40K franchise, they never will) then we'll see what they're made of. The thing to remember about the AdMech is that they're not stupid, it is simply that certain avenues of research are entirely closed off, because the basic principles of those avenues were lost thousands of years ago when everyone who knew anything about it were killed off and all their records and writings destroyed. This would be like, in the modern world, gathering together any book/disc/server/file/movie/tape/recording of any kind/person that knows anything about it that deals with Einstein's theory of relativity and setting it on fire, immersing it in acid, throwing it into a sun and then, just in case, exposing any remains to a mystical force of malignant evil.

Now, sure, in some people, some will remember "E=mc^2"... but who really understands what that means? How many know that it is only part of a larger formula? Who understands what the formula, and the theory, actually states?

That's what the AdMech was left with, in the best circumstances. People who vaguely remember reading about this one thing one time at a seminar on something entirely different, or maybe they knew someone who knew someone who did. Entire schools of human understanding have been so thoroughly eradicated that even the knowledge that such sciences once existed has been lost. Entire concepts of medical science, of natural science, of environmental science, of every science you can name, have been lost forever, because the idea that there even are sciences in such things to study has been lost. So what the AdMech knows, it knows pretty fething well... but there's a lot of things they don't know, and even more things they know are too fething dangerous to mess with, because it will eat your brain out your butt.

That's why they're looking for an intact STC. If one exists, and they can find it, then the Imperium catapults itself to be basically Eldar/Necron levels of technology. Uncorrupted knowledge that spans the entirety of human understanding, from a time when Humanity rivaled the Eldar. Finding one of those is much easier than repeating some 25,000+ years of scientific development.

The Orks are not the Krorks. The Orks are what the Krorks evolved (devolved?) into. Given that the Old Ones were a race of powerful Psykers that moved in and out of the Web-Way and the Warp with impunity, I don't think the Tau have the means to develop the control the Old Ones had planned... if one, indeed, was planned.

If one gets loose near a hive world, it'll have billions to feast upon. I imagine that's enough to become a big problem.

When the Necrons went to sleep, and Eldar became the galaxy's top dog, the dinosaurs had been dead for 5 million years. What would become humanity was still LAYING EGGS!

The rate of development has been discussed at length. To give perspective to what "development and innovation" means, it took the AdMech 10,000 years to design a new variant of power armor for the Space Marines.

Also, as a reminder, things like the Land Raider, Leman Russ, and Predator are from the DAoT. They represent what humanity came up with when they knew what they were doing. Repeat- humanity wasn't on the level of Eldar, Necron, or Tau (at least in the particular area of tank development) by a longshot. They had a lot of resources and did a lot of neat things with what they had... but what they mass-produced wasn't all that great.

One was planned, but never implemented. At any rate, lots of Imperials (probably correctly) claim that the Vespid are being mind-controlled by the gear Tau give to strain leaders and that the Ethereals mind-control other Tau. They do both without any use of the Warp whatsoever. Mayhaps they can find a similar solution for the Orks.

Land Raider was a general purpose battle tank, all forces of the Imperium used it, not just Space Marines.

However the Horus Heresy destroyed many of them and the forgeworlds they were primarily built on, so they became exclusive for the elite of the elite.

So Land Raiders were the normal battle tank in DAoT, a 14/14/14 standard vehicle is already better than Tau. Leman Russes came DURING the Heresy. Please your mega-bias is showing that you don't bother checking other faction's fluff. Also DAoT ISN'T the pinnacle of humanity, kinda why it has the word DARK in it.

EDIT: Correction, apparently some fluff was changed, came during the Crusade.

Guyz, that's 5 pages of off-top. Let the thread die, gw hasn't put any greater purpose in tau yet. I'm sure, they will cause the models are selling good but not yet. Wait for a 7-th ed tau codex with ethereal LOW, nerfs and greater purpose.

 Psienesis wrote:

That gives the current Tau Empire 170 worlds. This is barely more than 1/100th of 1% of the number of worlds the Imperium commands. If you were to grant the Tau ten times this number, they still don't quite reach 2% of the Imperium.

Doubling, it's magic.
If the Tau double their empire every 20 years, in the span of say 160 years, their empire will have grown by a factor of 256 and reached 2,56% of the Imperium.
If they were left alone for a total of ... 320 years, their empire will have grown by a factor of 65536 and reached 655,36% of the Imperium.

That's the catch with the Tau: they're expanding incredibly fast, so fast that the other factions seem to be standing still, and their technology follows that path.
If the Imperium is kept busy for another 100 years, which is most likely, they will have reached critical mass to make them a non-target, for being at the same time not menacing and too big to crush instantly.

From what I know of the fluff, the Imperium has a lot of things to worry about for those 100 years, and the Tau may very well get that free pass to the next stage of their evolution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:

Because, at the time, Mankind's tech-levels matched the Eldar's, and the Eldar did not have the savagery that Mankind did. Also... space is really, really big. Man will settle anywhere they can breathe (and in many places where they can't). The Eldar took for themselves only the choicest worlds. Mankind terraformed a lotta rocks in those days, creating habitable worlds where, previously, there were none. There were, lastly, those bands of humans who encountered the Eldar and, instead of reaching for weapons, said "oh, hai!". Mankind of this era was not exactly a united race.

WHAT ?
mankind had the tech level of Eldar even once in history ? bollox !

Quickjager wrote:
Land Raider was a general purpose battle tank, all forces of the Imperium used it, not just Space Marines.

However the Horus Heresy destroyed many of them and the forgeworlds they were primarily built on, so they became exclusive for the elite of the elite.

So Land Raiders were the normal battle tank in DAoT, a 14/14/14 standard vehicle is already better than Tau. Leman Russes came DURING the Heresy. Please your mega-bias is showing that you don't bother checking other faction's fluff. Also DAoT ISN'T the pinnacle of humanity, kinda why it has the word DARK in it.

EDIT: Correction, apparently some fluff was changed, came during the Crusade.

... except if you look at the weapon systems, or the fact that the Hammerhead hovers. A railgun has over half again the range of a lascannon. On a 4x6 mat, that's not a big deal, but in the kind of open terrain tank battles in 40k would actually take place on, than means the hammerheads get several salvos off before the LR is in range... assuming the Tau can't just back up and keep pounding away, outside of LR weapons range.

... and what's another point of armor versus a jink save?

There's also no reason to believe that the Leman Russ wasn't from an STC. The Predator most assuredly was.

The Age of Technology has the word dark in it because of Imperial Cult Propaganda.

"Although a "golden age" in terms of scientific achievement, because of the catastrophic effects of the following Age of Strife, mankind has since come to regard scientific knowledge as abhorrent and dangerous. The Age of Technology is thus considered "dark" in the Imperium's current age. It is also considered a dark age because mankind in the Age of Technology had come to worship science as God. "

 koooaei wrote:
Guyz, that's 5 pages of off-top. Let the thread die, gw hasn't put any greater purpose in tau yet. I'm sure, they will cause the models are selling good but not yet. Wait for a 7-th ed tau codex with ethereal LOW, nerfs and greater purpose.

Yea I'm done talking with them, it has been a while I've seen some people with their heads so far in the ground.

Quickjager wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Guyz, that's 5 pages of off-top. Let the thread die, gw hasn't put any greater purpose in tau yet. I'm sure, they will cause the models are selling good but not yet. Wait for a 7-th ed tau codex with ethereal LOW, nerfs and greater purpose.

Yea I'm done talking with them, it has been a while I've seen some people with their heads so far in the ground.

I second this.

I started this thread hoping to look at the big picture, speculate and try to join the dots in the Tau fluff but it seems to have descended into off topic arguing between Imperial and Tau fans sadly.

But let's face it, the Harlequins did it. And masterfully so, and the Tau do have an awesome shot at becoming relevant.
They're not relevant yet though.
And there is no question that Imperium tech sucks balls.

morgoth wrote:

That's the catch with the Tau: they're expanding incredibly fast, so fast that the other factions seem to be standing still, and their technology follows that path.
If the Imperium is kept busy for another 100 years, which is most likely, they will have reached critical mass to make them a non-target, for being at the same time not menacing and too big to crush instantly.

From what I know of the fluff, the Imperium has a lot of things to worry about for those 100 years, and the Tau may very well get that free pass to the next stage of their evolution.

That seems to be the point of the Tau. The first steps of the new and upcoming empire. In many ways they are also portrayed as what pre-warp DAoT humans would have been like. Not as insane as the IoM but still a dystopian future society along the lines of Heimlein and Orwell.


Returning to the OP's subject: Who is guiding them is anyone's guess. Originally in third edition, there were strong hints that all events in 40k had ties to the War in Heaven.

They could be another Old One's project or part of the plans of Cegorach. Alternatively the Eldar are building them up as a future weapon against chaos. The Tau could also be primitive Necrontyr but I'm not sure if that is still a possibility with the Newcron lore.

IMHO, the topic was answered at "It was POSSIBLY the Harlequins and here's why". That theory has some actual circumstantial evidence in the fluff, unlike other theories. Sure, the evidence is rather flimsy but at least it's THERE.

morgoth wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

That gives the current Tau Empire 170 worlds. This is barely more than 1/100th of 1% of the number of worlds the Imperium commands. If you were to grant the Tau ten times this number, they still don't quite reach 2% of the Imperium.

Doubling, it's magic.
If the Tau double their empire every 20 years, in the span of say 160 years, their empire will have grown by a factor of 256 and reached 2,56% of the Imperium.
If they were left alone for a total of ... 320 years, their empire will have grown by a factor of 65536 and reached 655,36% of the Imperium.

That's the catch with the Tau: they're expanding incredibly fast, so fast that the other factions seem to be standing still, and their technology follows that path.
If the Imperium is kept busy for another 100 years, which is most likely, they will have reached critical mass to make them a non-target, for being at the same time not menacing and too big to crush instantly.

From what I know of the fluff, the Imperium has a lot of things to worry about for those 100 years, and the Tau may very well get that free pass to the next stage of their evolution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:

Because, at the time, Mankind's tech-levels matched the Eldar's, and the Eldar did not have the savagery that Mankind did. Also... space is really, really big. Man will settle anywhere they can breathe (and in many places where they can't). The Eldar took for themselves only the choicest worlds. Mankind terraformed a lotta rocks in those days, creating habitable worlds where, previously, there were none. There were, lastly, those bands of humans who encountered the Eldar and, instead of reaching for weapons, said "oh, hai!". Mankind of this era was not exactly a united race.

WHAT ?
mankind had the tech level of Eldar even once in history ? bollox !

Did you not get the memo on DAOT humanity or have you read anything on the Imperium from the Black Library at all. DAOT was zipping around space wielding gravity guns en masse while their ships were armed with black hole guns that fired their shots back in time. And other fun stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EmpNortonII wrote:

Quickjager wrote:
Land Raider was a general purpose battle tank, all forces of the Imperium used it, not just Space Marines.

However the Horus Heresy destroyed many of them and the forgeworlds they were primarily built on, so they became exclusive for the elite of the elite.

So Land Raiders were the normal battle tank in DAoT, a 14/14/14 standard vehicle is already better than Tau. Leman Russes came DURING the Heresy. Please your mega-bias is showing that you don't bother checking other faction's fluff. Also DAoT ISN'T the pinnacle of humanity, kinda why it has the word DARK in it.

EDIT: Correction, apparently some fluff was changed, came during the Crusade.

... except if you look at the weapon systems, or the fact that the Hammerhead hovers. A railgun has over half again the range of a lascannon. On a 4x6 mat, that's not a big deal, but in the kind of open terrain tank battles in 40k would actually take place on, than means the hammerheads get several salvos off before the LR is in range... assuming the Tau can't just back up and keep pounding away, outside of LR weapons range.

... and what's another point of armor versus a jink save?

There's also no reason to believe that the Leman Russ wasn't from an STC. The Predator most assuredly was.

The Age of Technology has the word dark in it because of Imperial Cult Propaganda.

"Although a "golden age" in terms of scientific achievement, because of the catastrophic effects of the following Age of Strife, mankind has since come to regard scientific knowledge as abhorrent and dangerous. The Age of Technology is thus considered "dark" in the Imperium's current age. It is also considered a dark age because mankind in the Age of Technology had come to worship science as God. "

Game mechanic extractions are both pointlessly stupid and asinine. In "real" 40k, a lascannon would have a far greater effective range than even a railgun if the Tau don't have spotters, with the only depending factor being how clear the atmosphere of the current battlefield would be that would dilute the atmosphere.Looking at many modern military lasers of far lesser firepower than the lascannon, it should have about ~10 kilometers depending on the weather.

The thing with the railgun is that it is stronger (the fluff makes it far stronger than on tabletop), Does not dissipate, and tau have very good aiming and optics. The thing to remember about weapon ranges it that it is not the maximum range you need to worry about but the effective range. The fluff gives the railgun a far greater effective range.


Also, humanity at it's highest has never matched the eldar. They are so above the rest of the races it is ridiculous. The only one above them is necrons.

Taffy17 wrote:

Quickjager wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Guyz, that's 5 pages of off-top. Let the thread die, gw hasn't put any greater purpose in tau yet. I'm sure, they will cause the models are selling good but not yet. Wait for a 7-th ed tau codex with ethereal LOW, nerfs and greater purpose.

Yea I'm done talking with them, it has been a while I've seen some people with their heads so far in the ground.

I second this.

I started this thread hoping to look at the big picture, speculate and try to join the dots in the Tau fluff but it seems to have descended into off topic arguing between Imperial and Tau fans sadly.

We answered your question 10 pages ago. There isn't one that has been stated by GW in any clear sense, so make one up if you want. I posit that there isn't or, if there is, whoever is doing it is gambling an awful lot on very, very long odds... and because this is 40K, the results will not be what they expected, not at all. If it's Eldar? It's going to end badly for them, because it almost always does. For a race with prescience, they sure do misread the signs an awful lot. The Tau still exist because Plot Armor permits them to, and no product line since the Squats has ever been ended in the franchise by GW, so it will always be thus. There are many organizations and factions within the franchise that exist only because of Plot Armor, because if the writers followed their lore to its logical extreme, they would have ceased existing a long, long time ago.

Remember, Warhammer 40,000 is not a story, it's a setting. There is never any meaningful advancements in the various narratives that GW weaves into its Codices, simply reports of planets we've never heard of getting destroyed by someone, somewhere, Chapters of Space Marines we will never see or hear from again getting founded, or turning Renegade, or going Traitor or getting destroyed. None of this, overall, matters, because the story isn't going anywhere. There's still Tyranids, and there always will be. There's still Necrons, and there always will be. Orks, Cadians, Catachans, Rough-Riders, the Death Korps, the Space Marines, the Chaos Space Marines, the Daemons, the Eldar, the Dark Eldar, the Sisters of Battle... all of these things will always exist in GW's setting, because GW is not interested in telling you a story, GW is interested in giving you a setting in which to tell your own stories (using their products, available online, from GW stores or your local hobby shop, some restrictions apply, order now for prompt delivery). It has its BL imprint to let other people tell you stories from their personal versions of the 40K setting, and if you want to read those and agree with that author (or disagree with that author) you can. GW is not interested in having a unified, canonical whole to 40K. This is not the Star Wars universe. There is no Leland Chee designing the Star Wars Holocron and assigning everything bearing the Star Wars label a level of canonicity. That's not what this franchise is about.

So questions on these topics that require there to be advancement in storylines, for things to change in the setting... they have no answers. There's no right or wrong answer to the question, because it's not a question that GW cares to ask itself. They don't care if there's a shadowy force behind the Tau. It's not important. The Tau are here, all small, blue, and plucky, with their gundam battle-mecha and their high-tech plasma rifles and their Guilty Spark-like drones, their bland Fantasy Asian brushstrokes and the eternal fan-question "Do Tau girls have boobs?". Anything beyond that is pure speculation on behalf of the fans, where no one is right and, only rarely, is someone actually wrong (in that they are erroneous regarding something GW has explicitly stated... such lore does exist).

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
The thing with the railgun is that it is stronger (the fluff makes it far stronger than on tabletop), Does not dissipate, and tau have very good aiming and optics. The thing to remember about weapon ranges it that it is not the maximum range you need to worry about but the effective range. The fluff gives the railgun a far greater effective range.


Also, humanity at it's highest has never matched the eldar. They are so above the rest of the races it is ridiculous. The only one above them is necrons.

That's if they have spotters. The only time a railgun gets longer range than a laser is if you use it as indirect artillery, only that takes a lot of distance for a railgun to drop off, and like I said, you need a spotter.

Also, with how freakishly powerful the lascannon is as a laser (holy gak that thing's probably got the energy output of a very large missile), certainly far greater than modern lasers), by the range it stops doing significant damage, it's going to be so far off that you're either trying to pop high altitude aircraft or there's a building in the way. Even beyond its effective range, it could still do things like shoot missiles and mortars out of the sky.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EmpNortonII wrote:

Quickjager wrote:
Land Raider was a general purpose battle tank, all forces of the Imperium used it, not just Space Marines.

However the Horus Heresy destroyed many of them and the forgeworlds they were primarily built on, so they became exclusive for the elite of the elite.

So Land Raiders were the normal battle tank in DAoT, a 14/14/14 standard vehicle is already better than Tau. Leman Russes came DURING the Heresy. Please your mega-bias is showing that you don't bother checking other faction's fluff. Also DAoT ISN'T the pinnacle of humanity, kinda why it has the word DARK in it.

EDIT: Correction, apparently some fluff was changed, came during the Crusade.

... except if you look at the weapon systems, or the fact that the Hammerhead hovers. A railgun has over half again the range of a lascannon. On a 4x6 mat, that's not a big deal, but in the kind of open terrain tank battles in 40k would actually take place on, than means the hammerheads get several salvos off before the LR is in range... assuming the Tau can't just back up and keep pounding away, outside of LR weapons range.

... and what's another point of armor versus a jink save?

There's also no reason to believe that the Leman Russ wasn't from an STC. The Predator most assuredly was.

The Age of Technology has the word dark in it because of Imperial Cult Propaganda.

"Although a "golden age" in terms of scientific achievement, because of the catastrophic effects of the following Age of Strife, mankind has since come to regard scientific knowledge as abhorrent and dangerous. The Age of Technology is thus considered "dark" in the Imperium's current age. It is also considered a dark age because mankind in the Age of Technology had come to worship science as God. "

Game mechanic extractions are both pointlessly stupid and asinine. In "real" 40k, a lascannon would have a far greater effective range than even a railgun if the Tau don't have spotters, with the only depending factor being how clear the atmosphere of the current battlefield would be that would dilute the atmosphere.Looking at many modern military lasers of far lesser firepower than the lascannon, it should have about ~10 kilometers depending on the weather.

You got that backwards. A lascannon can only have a greater effective range than a Tau railgun it it has spotters.

As we all know from the Taros campaign, there are areas of technology where the IoM trails behind the US Army (night vision, in this particular instance). That's not merely a game mechanic- it's something FW wrote about... Tau using night to beat the crap out of the Guard, because they don't have night vision equipment.

If the IoM doesn't have the technology to equip their tanks with infrared sensors, I doubt they can target lasers out to ten kilometers.

The targeting laser isn't required to fire a lascannon 10km. While the gunner may not be able to see a target that far away (hence requiring the targeting laser), that does not prevent the beam from going that far. Sure, anything hit by such a beam is more luck than skill, but that's irrelevant to the point.