If Tau are so adavanced?

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**darkcloud92**

IcedAnimals wrote:My personal opinion on the tau is that they aren't really that "high tech". Sure they produce a really good gun for their basic infantry. But that means a lot less when they have to "mass produce" a few million guns and their entire species is equiped.

If the imperiums army was as tiny as the tau then every guardsman could have a meltagun or a plasma gun too. But when you have untold billions of soldiers that just isn't possible.

Yeah the tau have some cool tech. Mini plasma rifles and such. But is that tech any further developed than the imperiums? no. The imperium just developed it differently. For example both races have the same plasma technology. It is just that the imperium lets it be more destructive while the tau limit it for safety reasons.

Not to mention that if the tau keep advancing their drone technology their entire civilization as a whole is going to collapse. There is a reason why the imperium of man puts animal spirits inside of titans. Because true AI is basically a giant beckon to daemons saying "come possess me". The tau are dangerously close to having the exact same discovery the imperium did over 16000 years ago.

The tau match the imperium in some areas, are thousands of years behind in other areas and the only reason they look advanced is because they have a higher "tech per person" ratio. Which the imperium simply can't match due to it unaccountably high population. Keep in mind a single hivecity has more people living in it than an entire tau sphere.

Its not a higher tech per person ratio, its better tech period lol

Imperium makes machines, they turn into iron men and kill them
Tau make machines (drones) and they assist them

Imperium uses plasma, it blows up in their face
Tau use plasma and look dead enemy

Imperium of man creates an ideology of worshiping a God-Emperor and demands all heretics who don't worship him must die. The end goal is to have everyone working underneath the Imperium's bureaucracy slaving away their whole lives for their God
Tau create philosophy of everyone working for the common good, killing where need be, but the goal being worked towards is an integrated society where all can live in peace

Hmmmmm whose more advanced???

Also the drones going insane and becoming sentient AI that will destroy the tau mentioned thing is total BS with no lore to back it up, just fyi

**Iur_tae_mont**

Avatar 720 wrote:
lost_soul wrote:Well I take a razorwing also, so which is more of a threat to you? choose wisely cause the wrong choice could be very bad for you. And my 6 man squad of reavers can do a number on almost any unit on the field.

Considering that I will have ~8+ Crisis Battlesuits alone on the field, I think I can cope

Only 8? I usually run about 10-13 depending on my mood.

Edit: forgot the important part.

The Tau Codex has plenty of nice wargear.

You assault my Piranhas. Ok, well they attack first. Instant hit wound on a 4.

You shoot my devilfish 18 inches away sitting in the middle of an terrain empty board? 4+ cover save.

Blacksun filters allow railguns to in theory fire at MAX range in night fighting.

Oh and did I mention I can take 9 S10 AP1 72 inch weapons that are twinlinked?

Is the Tau Codex WTFBBQ with extra Pwnsauce? Nope. But they do have plenty of nice tech.

**Avatar 720**

Iur_tae_mont wrote:
Avatar 720 wrote:
lost_soul wrote:Well I take a razorwing also, so which is more of a threat to you? choose wisely cause the wrong choice could be very bad for you. And my 6 man squad of reavers can do a number on almost any unit on the field.

Considering that I will have ~8+ Crisis Battlesuits alone on the field, I think I can cope

Only 8? I usually run about 10-13 depending on my mood.

It was meant to encompass most of the Tau armies you find around, which can vary in the number of suits. 8+ Seemed a decent enough average.

**LunaHound**

From what little I know about their fluff. I was under the impression that Tau are not advanced at all, atleast not compared to the Lost Technology Imperium have.

What Tau does have, are ground up understanding of how their technology work, and wield them efficiently.
(unlike imperium praying to machine and anointing oil on them LOL )

**Exergy**

lost_soul wrote:If tau are so advanced why does most of their war gear suck so bad? Yes their battlesuits are pretty baller butt thats about it. They are no better at shooting then IG unless they have marker lights. In my opinion IG are way more versitile and their weapons and armor options blow Tau off the battle field literally. For the Imperium posing the biggest threat to them you would think that their weapons would be more geared to defending against them. Let me know what you think.

Tau are not advanced, they simply invest a lot per warrior. Being wealthy and advanced are different.

The Imperium could concievably arm entire divisions of IG with power armor, power swords, jump packs and plasma rifles/meltaguns/grenade launchers. Nothing there is particularly exotic or advanced by imperial standards but they dont because of cost.

Terminator armor and relic blades on the other hand can no longer be produced in the imperium as I understand. They are advanced.

Tau have a different idea of what the right amount of resources to spend per soldier is, probably because of their society's wealth coupled with their small numbers. Human lives are very common, so you can forgive the imperium for fielding guardsmen with bows and arrows.

**Savageconvoy**

Tau space travel doesn't involve a galactic witch hunt to find 1,000 victims per day to slaughter to a gold plated toilet that the emperor stole/modified from another more advanced civilization

Tau tech is better

**rockerbikie**

Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Nah. That prize goes to Chaos Space Marines. They are second weakest though.

**ZebioLizard2**

rockerbikie wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Nah. That prize goes to Chaos Space Marines. They are second weakest though.

Tau codex is actually under CSM, as shown through tournament settings with them.

**Sasori**

rockerbikie wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Nah. That prize goes to Chaos Space Marines. They are second weakest though.

CSM is a much stronger codex currently than Tau are.

**Zweischneid**

Well, GW isn't trying to "rank" different Codexes on a "tech-level" basis. Nor would they have the "more advanced" factions be better in the game than the "less advanced" races.

The difference rather, is that Tau are "technology-themed" army. The Codexes of the Imperial Factions don't try to convey a "technology-based" sci-fi army. They try to convey a WWI/WWII/Vietnam army in space. Or a Knight's Order in space. And some of the shoehorning they do to make the theme stick "in Space" may well imply "more advanced technology". But that isn't the intent. Rather, it is the consequence of the easiest hand-wave provided to explain that stuff without eating up too much text in the Codex that should go to thematic battle-descriptions of heroic Space Marine charges or grizzled Guardsmen perseverance.

Tau in contrast is a "technology-themed" army that clearly aims to appeal to people who enjoy "high-tech/sci-fi-looking" models and units. Almost by default however, that also means that some descriptions of Tau tech must make it "seem" less advanced, so that "technology-theme" is still visible and recognizable. Other armies, Eldar or Necrons for example, do not need to have the "visibility" of the technology and can just work with the old, cranky clichee of "technology-so-advanced-it-seems-like-magic". Doing the same with the Tau would, in effect, likely even contradict their appeal to "futuristic technology-minded-40K players".

**Cerebrium**

rockerbikie wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:The Tau codex is the weakest in the game.

Nah. That prize goes to Chaos Space Marines. They are second weakest though.

Nope, that could be Chaos Daemons.

**lost_soul**

Ok so lets compair Tau and IG. I used to play IG and did pretty well. The Tau players I played against did not fair very well against battle tanks, hell hounds, bane wolfs, or regular guardsmen for that matter. I guess it all comes down to the player and their play style, but it makes since to me that if the IOM is the Tau's biggest threat it should be alot easier for them to walk all over IG or SM.I realise that the game needs to be balanced but its not. Look at ork and nid hoard armies and GK or BA, not balanced at all if you know what you are doing.

**SomeRandomEvilGuy**

darkcloud92 wrote:
Imperium makes machines, they turn into iron men and kill them
Tau make machines (drones) and they assist them

Tau Drones are no way near as advanced as the Iron Men were. If they do become so, we don't know if they'll rebel or not.

Imperium uses plasma, it blows up in their face
Tau use plasma and look dead enemy

It rarely actually blows up - mostly it just vents. Also, Imperial hand-held plasma weapons are much more powerful than Tau ones.

Imperium of man creates an ideology of worshiping a God-Emperor and demands all heretics who don't worship him must die. The end goal is to have everyone working underneath the Imperium's bureaucracy slaving away their whole lives for their God
Tau create philosophy of everyone working for the common good, killing where need be, but the goal being worked towards is an integrated society where all can live in peace

Ultimately it comes to a similar thing. There isn't much of a difference between slaving under the Greater Good or the Emperor.

Tau space travel doesn't involve a galactic witch hunt to find 1,000 victims per day to slaughter to a gold plated toilet that the emperor stole/modified from another more advanced civilization

Tau faster-than-light travel is significantly slower than Imperial faster-than-light travel. This witch-hunt is also very necessary to protect Imperial planets. There's a quote about Enslavers (in the Rulebook I think) that mentions that one untrained Psyker brought down an entire world.

Really, Games Workshop should explore what's been happening with untrained Psykers on Tau-held worlds.

**lost_soul**

Yes I would love to hear how the Tau deal with their psykers for the greater good. The Tau are more barbaric then they let themselves appear.

**CthuluIsSpy**

lost_soul wrote:Yes I would love to hear how the Tau deal with their psykers for the greater good. The Tau are more barbaric then they let them selves appear.

They would get someone like this

**Zweischneid**

lost_soul wrote:Yes I would love to hear how the Tau deal with their psykers for the greater good. The Tau are more barbaric then they let themselves appear.

They invent some technology to deal with it.

**lost_soul**

Ya like a lobatomy. The Tau are still young as a race. They still have the potenal to become complete savages, they just havent made allies with the right race yet.

**Nurgle**

Guass weapons are better than silly rail guns!!! but I think its because in the game the fluff has less and less effect due to the new rules and codex writer/s

**Buttons**

Well lets check everything out,
Pulse Weapon>Bolters and Lasguns (same AP as bolters, higher strength)
Hammerhead>Vanquisher (submunition and markerlights)
Tau Basic Armour>Flak Armour (4+ vs 5+ save)
Battlesuits>Power Armour (More mobile, bigger weapons, and increased strength and toughness)
Hunter-Killer Missiles>Seeker Missiles (don't need marker light)
Plasma Rifle>Plasma Gun (-1 str no gets hot)
Missile Pod=Autocannon (-12" range, assault 2 instead of heavy 2)

A lot of their equipment is in fact superior to their Imperial counterparts both on the tabletop, and as far as fluff is concerned.

**Zweischneid**

Tau "use" technology to win their battles. Other factions don't.

IG "win" battles by shelling everything to rubble and walking over it with a million boots.
Marines "win" battles by carving a bloody path through the enemy and ripping the opponent commander's throat out in a heroic duel as the sun sets against some scenic, gothic ruins.
Eldar "win" battles by the foresight of their Space-Elf-Wizard and the battle-widom of their "ancient race".
Necrons "win" battles by the relentless advance of metallic skeletons that refuse to stay down no matter how much you throw at them.

Tau, in contrast, "win" their battles with superior technology.

Try writing a 40K short story about how the Imperial soldiers put the heat on the Tau thank to advanced technology, but the Tau prevailed, perhaps even triumphed thanks to their determination, grit or heroic last-minute charge. The BL editor will laugh at you all the way to the door.

The story only works the other way.. Tau will put the Marines/Guard on the defensive by their "fearsome technology", but Marines/Guard will come back by heroic effort, true grit, whatever.

Noone cares if that doesn't hold down to some attempt to truly unpick the "technology" that goes into their guns or space ships. The respective narrative roles are defined that way in 40K.

**Skriker**

lost_soul wrote:If tau are so advanced why does most of their war gear suck so bad? Yes their battlesuits are pretty baller butt thats about it. They are no better at shooting then IG unless they have marker lights. In my opinion IG are way more versitile and their weapons and armor options blow Tau off the battle field literally. For the Imperium posing the biggest threat to them you would think that their weapons would be more geared to defending against them. Let me know what you think.

But Tau are advanced. Their basic troops get good weapons. Their rail guns are top notch. The battlesuits are interesting, but too fragile. All of their vehicles are skimmers. The list goes on. The difference is that "advanced" does not necessarily mean unkillable or uberkilling. It just means advanced. The fancier it is, the more that can go wrong with it and more easily it can break. IG can get a lot more vehicles than Tau which definitely enables them to be nastier. Nothing is scarier than your prize baneblade being lit-up with major amounts of marker lights and blown to pieces on the first turn. It happens.

As for the Imperium posing the biggest threat, the Tau have only recently come in contact with the imperium and it makes zero sense for them to have developed a combat technology through their culture's existence that would crush a foe they didn't even know existed until now. If Space Marine equivilants invaded our planet right now, they would become our biggest threat, but since we've never seen them before we would have to fight them with the technology we have now.

Skriker

**Avro**

Despite being the youngest and smallest race in the galaxy, the Tau have made incredible advancements in technology in a short time frame.

*Well, 4000 years time frame to be exact, but a much shorter time frame compared to the Eldar or the IoM.*

Tau weapons and vehicles can (more or less) compete when fighting toe-to-long-distance-shooting with the rest of the races in 40k right now. So in a few 100 years or so (4 months our time) imagine how much more advanced the Tau would be?

**IcedAnimals**

Deadnight wrote:
IcedAnimals wrote:
Not to mention that if the tau keep advancing their drone technology their entire civilization as a whole is going to collapse. There is a reason why the imperium of man puts animal spirits inside of titans. Because true AI is basically a giant beckon to daemons saying "come possess me". The tau are dangerously close to having the exact same discovery the imperium did over 16000 years ago.
.

if a daemon can posess a sword.... then its got nothing to do with having an AI.

regarding the AIs, read into the imperium a bit more. their mentality is one of the dark ages in space. they distrust AI. they distrust technology. cleaning your boltgun appeases the machine spirit. the machine spirit rewards you by firing true, straight and not jamming. its got *nothing* to do with the crud that will clog up the barrel. the ammo counter on your gun is the machine spirit communicating with you. that is how the average imperial's mind works. machines are dangerous. humans distrust them, because apparently, in the pre-imperial times humans were hugely advanced, and then they fell from grace. So now, instead of vastly intelligent AIs, you get their degenerate descendents plugged into human brains and other tissue, with all those weird pipes and tubes sticking out. its their way of putting a human in charge. thats what controls a titan, not an animal spirit.

While it is true the Daemon can possess pretty much anything. It is guaranteed that it will possess any form of true AI.Oh, and then move around and kill you. Because it now has a fully functioning body. A daemon doesn't exactly like possessing a sword where it can't move. I highly suggest you take your own advice and read into the Imperium more. The machine spirit is very much real. It isn't some hogwash the admech makes up to get people from messing around with tech. While a Titan has a priceps "piloting" the thing they are constantly losing a battle against the titan machine spirit. The human part of the machine is there to guide and calm the animal. The tau "AI" is no more advanced than a servo skull. But if it ever gets to dark age of man tech levels they are in for a very rude awakening.

**lost_soul**

The Tau came in first contact with man in 789.M35, yes they were primative but there were still aware. In my opinion they should have been wiped out. lol

**Lobokai**

lost_soul wrote:The Tau came in first contact with man in 789.M35, yes they were primative but there were still aware. In my opinion they should have been wiped out. lol

If they weren't the Emperor's secret project to fighting Chaos, they would have been [/common speculation]

**Zweischneid**

lost_soul wrote:The Tau came in first contact with man in 789.M35, yes they were primative but there were still aware. In my opinion they should have been wiped out. lol

They were. You missed the crucial part.

Codex Tau Empires p. 4 wrote:
... the world was earmarked for routine cleansing and colonisation. Seeding ships were dispatched to begin the colonisation of T'au but, before they arrived, freak warp storms of unimaginable fury engulfed them and, despite the presence of highly skilled navigators and captains, every vessel in the colony fleet was lost. Rather than simply blowing themselves out, the warp storms continued to make space travel impossible for light years in all directions, and many whispered that this was a sign that the planet was cursed.

And later...

Codex Tau Empires p. 4 wrote:
Sebastian Thor was elected Ecclasiarch. The rebuilding of the Imperium was to take many hundreds of years and, while the work was under way, the warp storms cutting T'au off from Imperial scrutiny continued to rage, concealing the nascent development of the Tau race.

The IoM clearly tried to do away with them. They just could not do it even as they tried.

**ZebioLizard2**

While it is true the Daemon can possess pretty much anything. It is guaranteed that it will possess any form of true AI.Oh, and then move around and kill you. Because it now has a fully functioning body. A daemon doesn't exactly like possessing a sword where it can't move.

Actually from what's been seen, daemons don't exactly like possessing tech so much as warm living bodies, because daemons always go plumb

nuts after possessing anything tech related, even for chaos. I mean they have to chain dreadnoughts and defilers down after so they don't come rampaging after them, while daemons at times possessing bodies will "tolerate" chaos for sometime.

**Avatar 720**

Chaos Dreadnoughts aren't possessed; they're still operated by space marines, but they've been driven bat-crap crazy by the seclusion and the fact that they're not looked after like loyalist Dreadnoughts.

Chaos Marines see being interred into a Dreadnought as the ultimate torture by the Chaos Gods, as they live and kill without ever feeling themselves do it; they can't feel their weapons or look their enemies in the eyes as they die.

The sarcophagus is disconnected from the Dreadnought body, dragged away and chained down because the marines inside are so psychotic that there's a large fear that they might go on a bloody rampage if left unchecked.

A Chaos Dreadnought is just a CSM that even a Bloodthirster would think twice about pissing off.

**ZebioLizard2**

Except they not only chain up the marine outside of the Sarcophagus, they chain down the dreadnought as well, as if it's living fury would come after them even without a pilot.

And I wouldn't put it past it.

**imrandomghgh**

lost_soul wrote:If tau are so advanced why does most of their war gear suck so bad? Yes their battlesuits are pretty baller butt thats about it. They are no better at shooting then IG unless they have marker lights. In my opinion IG are way more versitile and their weapons and armor options blow Tau off the battle field literally. For the Imperium posing the biggest threat to them you would think that their weapons would be more geared to defending against them. Let me know what you think.

Because they are outdated and underpowered. In the fluff they dominate IG for shooting.