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We'd be fethed like a prom date.

Tau wins vs. a 'light' company of moderns. There is absolutely no contest.

I appreciate the effort by the OP to present parameters, but the Tau are simply too advanced for the modern humans to have any effect... no matter what the 'Sci-Fi' channel and Science Fiction movies like 'Independence Day' or 'Battle L.A.' say about similar issues.

Uhlan wrote:Tau wins vs. a 'light' company of moderns. There is absolutely no contest.

I appreciate the effort by the OP to present parameters, but the Tau are simply too advanced for the modern humans to have any effect... no matter what the 'Sci-Fi' channel and Science Fiction movies like 'Independence Day' or 'Battle L.A.' say about similar issues.

blah blah. Again-how? how exactly do they stop a tac nuke dropped from an aircraft, coming at them in a missile, or fired from a good old Cold War era artillery tube?

Gamewise their weaponry equal but different to IG. IG wouldn't know a cruise missile from a hole in the ground. Outside of the occasional vortex missile their best weaponry, is strictly WWII variety.

Frazzled wrote:

Uhlan wrote:Tau wins vs. a 'light' company of moderns. There is absolutely no contest.

I appreciate the effort by the OP to present parameters, but the Tau are simply too advanced for the modern humans to have any effect... no matter what the 'Sci-Fi' channel and Science Fiction movies like 'Independence Day' or 'Battle L.A.' say about similar issues.

blah blah. Again-how? how exactly do they stop a tac nuke dropped from an aircraft, coming at them in a missile, or fired from a good old Cold War era artillery tube?

Gamewise their weaponry equal but different to IG. IG wouldn't know a cruise missile from a hole in the ground. Outside of the occasional vortex missile their best weaponry, is strictly WWII variety.

I think the application of tactical nuclear weaponry is outside the bounds of this thought exercise.

Also, the IG's weapons are not equal to ours.

Nope we're good.

Tanks and air support are available, no space ships.

Notes: Tau have only Fire Warriors, Shas'ui allowed per team + their equipment. Same goes for Earth troops, but this time we will count Russia, China, EU. French Foreign Legion and USA.

Let the battle commence....

We would win, if only because of the limitations of the OP. We would outnumber 100 Fire Warriors by a HUUUGE amount, without any support we can sit back and shell them to kingdom come, perhaps even launch a few air strikes or cruise/ballistic missiles depending on whether you want to watch the explosion or not.

There's also the issue of ammunition; without support, the FWs would run out before they've begun to take a toll on our forces.

We simply have far too much long-range and untargettable firepower for 100 FWs to counter.

Frazzled wrote:
blah blah. Again-how? how exactly do they stop a tac nuke dropped from an aircraft, coming at them in a missile, or fired from a good old Cold War era artillery tube?

The Sky Ray Missile Defense Gunship probably has a few ideas.

Avatar 720 wrote:We would win, if only because of the limitations of the OP. We would outnumber 100 Fire Warriors by a HUUUGE amount, without any support we can sit back and shell them to kingdom come, perhaps even launch a few air strikes or cruise/ballistic missiles depending on whether you want to watch the explosion or not.

There's also the issue of ammunition; without support, the FWs would run out before they've begun to take a toll on our forces.

We simply have far too much long-range and untargettable firepower for 100 FWs to counter.

Did you read the OP? 100 of us vs 100 of them.
We lose.
If we include tanks, we suddenly have against us flying, railgun-firing tanks as well as seeker missiles fired by markerlights.
I'd say we still lose
If we take air support, Tau get their far more advanced aircraft, piloted by creatures that have superior senses, reflexes and tolerance for forces involved in dogfighting. 40k aircraft are also armoured to far greater standard.
Tau also get Manta missile destroyers, which are still aircraft, and can most likely engage anything that could possibly hasrm them even from orbit. Where any tau aircraft can go and wait until they need to fight.
I'd say we still lose.

Half decent anti aircraft I'll grant you.
Is it noted for shooting down either incoming missiles or artillery? in 40K..no. in Epic..no. Next. Thats of course assuming it hasn't already been shot down by our plethora of fixed and flexible wing aircraft, or of course those incoming barrages if its playing land hugger.

Again, I'll grant Tau would be much tougher than IG as they are basically advanced humans and take some of our speed advantages away, but the 40K universe doesn't deal well in abstracts outside of a WWII context.

Kallimakus wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:We would win, if only because of the limitations of the OP. We would outnumber 100 Fire Warriors by a HUUUGE amount, without any support we can sit back and shell them to kingdom come, perhaps even launch a few air strikes or cruise/ballistic missiles depending on whether you want to watch the explosion or not.

There's also the issue of ammunition; without support, the FWs would run out before they've begun to take a toll on our forces.

We simply have far too much long-range and untargettable firepower for 100 FWs to counter.

Did you read the OP?

Yes. Did you realise that the '100 of us' is actually in the title, not the OP? So I made a small mistake, big deal. Get off your high horse.

Sorry, and my mistake. Although I find that 100 anything vs Earth to be somewhat ludicurous a scenario. Unless they are immune to nukes 100 anything wont stand much of a chance (Maybe 100 Titans but...)

I think the OP needs to clear up his original intention. When he said 'tanks and air support available' I interpreted that as available on the company level. If he meant ALL POSSIBLE support available, then of course 100 fire warriors will lose against nukes being dropped on their heads by stealth fighters at 30,000 feet, that's no contest (and a boring scenario to discuss). The 100 US marines don't even need to leave their barracks.

Of course thats available in an all context. If we planned on using nukes against the rooskies they would definitely be on the inventory against an alien invader.

But lets even back off that and go with non nuclear. 155s anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

InquisitorVaron wrote:Tau.
A las pistol can blow a mans arm off. Now compare that too ours and thats a sniper rifle or shotgun the most powerful things we have. Now thats AP5 Str 3 is our best. The Tau have good enough armour too protect from that we dont have good enough armour against there weapons. Tau win everytime.

Ummmmm, a well placed .357 will take your head clean off. Just ask Dirty Harry!

Seriously thou, I love it when people think that any of the modern day weapons won't do as much damage as a Lasgun.
Have you ever seen the effect a caseless round has on flesh? Even Tau body armour would struggle to hold back a clip from an AK47. Tau armour is designed with futuristic weapons in mind, Las, Beam etc. To that end, I feel that against an 'outmoded' solid slug weapon with a high enough calibre, it would crumble.

Look at a StormTroopers armour, probably the closest thing to Tau body armour we have seen 'in action'. This struggles to stop even a glancing hit from a Blaster (or Lasgun). How do you think it would fair compared to say, a Minigun or an LMG?
It wouldn't.
So in conclusion, and sitting firmly on the fence, I think we would both be screwed!

Even on a troop basis alone Tau come out on the short end. They strictly have personal arms. They have no heavies. They have no instruments of surpressive fire. They have skimmers that flit about at a speed of 3-4x human speed. Thats moped speed and easy to drop with antitank weaponry.

Props to Frazzled for the Ferris Bueller quote!

master of ordinance wrote:Actually are equitment isnt all that bad.
I reall shouldnt mention this but i can build a rail pistol out of a camera and a car battery-rail tech is actualy quite easy and if it came to it then they do have atleast 2 railgun tank prototypes in Britain. we have rail tech already their just scared to use it...
and i am also think you should know about that new SAS armour-they emptied 10 .50 round from a sniper into the same spot on it and it was undamaged...(this was leaked a while back)

And we get into the usual issues of immature technology. To get an effective rail weapon, we need lots of power, so big batteries. Which weight a ton. I heard of one US destroyer, with one of it's turrets replaced by a 8 Megajoules mass driver prototype, which make it a workable weapon. BUT, the thing need so much power that it couldn't be installed in anything smalller than a warship.

An infantry railgun? It would certainly require more batteries that an human can carry on his back, or it wouldn't be more advantageous than a gunpowder weapon due to lack of power.

finaly if i can ever get hold of the equitment i am quite capable of building a form of power/termie armour aswellas dreadknight equilvalents.

Without your powered armor being leashed with a power cable to an (big) external energy source, or without it being so slow and clumsy it would be a big, fat target and nearly useless? Sorry, not gonna happen anytime soon.

We do have the tech to make rail canons and powered armor. But it's not nearly refined enough to be more than prototypes and concept models for the moment.

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:Props to Frazzled for the Ferris Bueller quote!

The honor, is to serve.

Frazzled wrote:

Uhlan wrote:Tau wins vs. a 'light' company of moderns. There is absolutely no contest.

I appreciate the effort by the OP to present parameters, but the Tau are simply too advanced for the modern humans to have any effect... no matter what the 'Sci-Fi' channel and Science Fiction movies like 'Independence Day' or 'Battle L.A.' say about similar issues.

blah blah. Again-how? how exactly do they stop a tac nuke dropped from an aircraft, coming at them in a missile, or fired from a good old Cold War era artillery tube?

Gamewise their weaponry equal but different to IG. IG wouldn't know a cruise missile from a hole in the ground. Outside of the occasional vortex missile their best weaponry, is strictly WWII variety.

What kind of argument is that? Your argument is no better than mine then. A tac nuke? Why would a unit of 100 moderns have a Tac nuke? Is the combat in an arena owned by some otherworldly force that says 'Hey, ok bring 100 men equipped to the teeth and while your at it, ok, go outside your TO &E... defy your technological mandate even. Here ya are go fight to the death...' As I assume we are talking about book fluff and not the limitations of the forces based on the game which limits everything for the sake of a level playing field... er, more or less. Why limit the Tau to the game lists while we are allowing moderns to go outside their TO & E?

Why even have the exercise as expressed by the OP if such things can be considered? The Tau aren't slowed as far as I know and would not fear to close with the Moderns (what is a 5.56 or 7.62 round going to do against their armor?) to avoid their artillery assets (I'm sure the Tau have far superior EAPS technology) and so unless the moderns wish to sacrifice themselves completely to destroy the Tau it's pointless.

Lol, if you also think that in close combat the moderns are going to whip out their combat knives, clench them between their teeth and jump on the backs of the Tau while beating the midgets into submission, well...

Unlike many people here on the boards (I realize I'm not in an exclusive club, however.), I KNOW what moderns are capable of and while damn proud of my service, intellectually I can extrapolate that the Tau and their weaponry would devastate any modern force... ANY. This isn't the Zulus vs. the British or the American Indians vs. the US Cavalry those were close contests! Heck, it's more like the American Indians vs the MODERN US Cavalry.

A Tau APC, for example, would simply outrun a Bradley, LAV or, for some reason an M1A3 and I doubt that even the new guided kinetic rounds would have much effect on the Tau armor. After all, the Tau fight the IG and the Tau have designed weapons to pierce that armor and armor to defend themselves from those weapons. Do we think that ceramite armor from 40k years in the future as degenerate as it is, is equal to reactively protected modern laminate? Unless some author who writes the fluff decides to personally destroy my argument by insinuating that modern weapons can knock out a Tau vehicle with a 'what if' book. I think my argument stands.

The interesting thing is, the modern US military is nearing a technological cusp. They are getting close to operationally functional armored exoskeletons, next generation firearms, Railguns and heavily drone assisted units. We have tested EAPS technology with guided 50mm rounds for anti-artillery shell and anti-rocket attacks, but it is highly flawed as you might expect. Given another 20-25 years the modern US force will be completely unrecognizable.

Right now though, we would be relatively helpless against any force like the Tau.

true.
lets just splatter them with attrition.
unless of course they get dug in......


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nerivant wrote:

Frazzled wrote:
blah blah. Again-how? how exactly do they stop a tac nuke dropped from an aircraft, coming at them in a missile, or fired from a good old Cold War era artillery tube?

The Sky Ray Missile Defense Gunship probably has a few ideas.

missile defence as in its armed with missiles you fool.
and any way even it has to reload sumtime...

master of ordinance wrote:
missile defence as in its armed with missiles you fool.

Missile defense has a pretty clear definition; any system designed to destroy incoming missiles. It would make sense for the Sky Ray's main role to be shooting down atmospheric craft and incoming warheads.

Also, unprovoked insults are always funny. "Fool" is the weakest one I've gotten, though.

It shoots aircraft. Its a mobile launcher. So's an apache...er color me underwhelmed.

nothing in the codex or rules about shooting down incoming missiles or artillery.

Humans don't really have any advantages. Unlike the IG, the tau use modern tactics. They have there own version of laser detonators, and drones. They even have suppression fire with their carbines. I don't even know if you can give humans the advantage in melee. A fire warrior is bigger then a human and they come with pulse grenades (Flash grenades). Oh, don't forget EMP grenades.

If you're saying carbines are suppressive fire than all the humans would have suppressive fire. Again, you're worried about grenades and HTH?

Avatar 720 wrote:We would win, if only because of the limitations of the OP. We would outnumber 100 Fire Warriors by a HUUUGE amount, without any support we can sit back and shell them to kingdom come, perhaps even launch a few air strikes or cruise/ballistic missiles depending on whether you want to watch the explosion or not.

There's also the issue of ammunition; without support, the FWs would run out before they've begun to take a toll on our forces.

We simply have far too much long-range and untargettable firepower for 100 FWs to counter.

Did you read the main line?

It's ONLY 100 our troops vs. ONLY 100 Fire Warriors.
Beside that they can use their tanks and aircraft...And again - they are not fighting against entire planet, just small force of our troops...

And no nukes, if we really using them like that we would bomb ourself in 1963. So no nukes.

Frazzled wrote:If you're saying carbines are suppressive fire than all the humans would have suppressive fire. Again, you're worried about grenades and HTH?

Carbines have the pinning power, so I figure they can act as suppressive fire. And their drones have carbines. Fly a drone up pin the squad. As for HTH, anytime the tau are with in knife fighting range they can just throw out a pulse grenade. They don't even have to be timed because of their black light filter.

Any thing a modern army has, the tau has a better version of. Except for a few exceptions that aren't allowed in this hypothetical. Sniper rifles, commando teams. The tau has them, but we are limited to only what the fire warriors can do.

nomotog wrote:

Frazzled wrote:If you're saying carbines are suppressive fire than all the humans would have suppressive fire. Again, you're worried about grenades and HTH?

Carbines have the pinning power, so I figure they can act as suppressive fire. And their drones have carbines. Fly a drone up pin the squad. As for HTH, anytime the tau are with in knife fighting range they can just throw out a pulse grenade. They don't even have to be timed because of their black light filter.

Any thing a modern army has, the tau has a better version of. Except for a few exceptions that aren't allowed in this hypothetical. Sniper rifles, commando teams. The tau has them, but we are limited to only what the fire warriors can do.

Tau don't have:
heavy machine guns
light machine guns
heavy artillery (shell or rocket based)
light artillery
personal antitank weaponry
mortars
poison gas
air assets that survive an engagement

I want to know the scenario. Too many people who know nothing about combat go 'X's equipment is better than Y's equipment, therefore Y loses!', which is ignorant at best.


I want to know the ground. Are we city fighting? If so, how good are pulse rifles when it comes to walking round a corner and ending up face to face with a machete wielding Scotsman twice their size? If we're out in the open, does camo become an issue? How good are Tau sensors are picking out humans? How good is their tactical doctrine at night fighting? Is their command and control system good, or are they vulnerable to having the leader assassinated and faltering? What is their morale like? Are both sides well rested? Do they carry house to house fighting equipment? If so, what? How many grenades per soldier?

There are far too many factors here to work it into a simple equation of 'x beats y'.

Frazzled wrote:

nomotog wrote:

Frazzled wrote:If you're saying carbines are suppressive fire than all the humans would have suppressive fire. Again, you're worried about grenades and HTH?

Carbines have the pinning power, so I figure they can act as suppressive fire. And their drones have carbines. Fly a drone up pin the squad. As for HTH, anytime the tau are with in knife fighting range they can just throw out a pulse grenade. They don't even have to be timed because of their black light filter.

Any thing a modern army has, the tau has a better version of. Except for a few exceptions that aren't allowed in this hypothetical. Sniper rifles, commando teams. The tau has them, but we are limited to only what the fire warriors can do.

Tau don't have:
heavy machine guns
light machine guns
heavy artillery (shell or rocket based)
light artillery
personal antitank weaponry
mortars
poison gas
air assets that survive an engagement

Tau have superior Air Support. Poison gas? Super effective *sarcasm*. Artillery is not as effective as you make it out to be. No point in pounding a constantly moving target with superior armor. Even it would prove effective, since Tau have no equivalent, it's no available in this engagement. Light and heavy machine guns are outclassed by your average pulse rifle.

Frazzled wrote:

nomotog wrote:

Frazzled wrote:If you're saying carbines are suppressive fire than all the humans would have suppressive fire. Again, you're worried about grenades and HTH?

Carbines have the pinning power, so I figure they can act as suppressive fire. And their drones have carbines. Fly a drone up pin the squad. As for HTH, anytime the tau are with in knife fighting range they can just throw out a pulse grenade. They don't even have to be timed because of their black light filter.

Any thing a modern army has, the tau has a better version of. Except for a few exceptions that aren't allowed in this hypothetical. Sniper rifles, commando teams. The tau has them, but we are limited to only what the fire warriors can do.

Tau don't have:
heavy machine guns
light machine guns
heavy artillery (shell or rocket based)
light artillery
personal antitank weaponry
mortars
poison gas
air assets that survive an engagement

Heavey macgine guns- They have burst cannons. They come on their devilfish, so they can use them here.
Light machine guns- I think carbines fill this role. Might be wrong. Depends on if a machine gun is defined by RPF or what.
Heavy artillery- Seeaker missiles. Any tau vehicle can have them so they are available here.
Personal antitank weaponry- EMP grenades. Fuses blasters are suit only, so they are not available.
Mortars- I don't think the tau have these. seeker missiles are close, but they can't be carried by troops.
Poison gas- We don't even have this. The tau are aliens you can't just poison aliens. You have a better chance of poisoning them with water then gas
Air assets that survive an engagement- The tau have a lovely collection of air units. They are not in the codex, but some even come with there own drone wing men.