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*prepares for the inevitable AT-AT vs Titan thread*

Brother Coa wrote:

-Loki- wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:

-Loki- wrote:Come on, everyone knows Tau Railguns are the best weapons ever created.

Angels of Death, Doomsday Monolith, Exterminatus bomb, Blackstone fortress, Bloodtide machine, Nova Cannon...
Should I continue?

Not necessary. But I think it's necessary you start reading entire posts before replying. Because in the very next sentence, I had the following.

-Loki- wrote:... The projectile moves so fast, it hits you before it leaves the barrel. And how is this possible by today laws of psysics? If I am 1000km away how can the projectile hit me before it exit the barrel? This doesen't make sense at all, like starting an engine before using keys...

They should totally make a special rule for it in the game where if you fire it on turn 6, you will actually hit the enemy on turn 3.[/b]

I leave it to you to figure out why reading the rest of that post would have an effect on the first sentence.

First of all - this question is regarding the fluff - not table rules.
Second off all Tau Railguns, aldo awesome guns, are not the BEST WEAPON EVER CREATED IN 40k UNIVERSE. They can't blow entire planet, they can't move at lightning speed, they can't tear down enemy to molecules etc...

AS you can see, I was implementing to fluff, not table. And even on table Railguns are not the ( again best weapon reference ), personal teleportes are.

For feths sake. Do you have a sarcastic bone in your body? It was fething oozing from my comment.

It is the same sort of idea.Massive walkers with impenatrable armour,advancing,while being harried by aircraft and foot soldiers.

There also several massive differences between the two situations.

I am not saying they are the same.It just reminds me of it.

If this was a real life battle, the logical thing to do would be to focus all effort into gaining superiority in space then blasting the Titans from orbit. But that wouldn't make for an epic ground battle, and 40k is all about epic ground battles. So I imagine swarming the carapace with jump troops armed with every Fusion Blaster in the Tau Empire could take a Titan down. It would also look ridiculous.

it would look awesome.And be problematic for other Titans.Do they let the titan get over run,or blast it ourselves?

Let the anti-boarding parties and close in defenses handle it. Not that they're going to easily blast through a Titans armour with a Fusion Blaster.

iproxtaco wrote:He wasn't being serious, Coa. He was being sarcastic.

It's hard for me to see those things....you know, English not being my primary language...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

-Loki- wrote:
For feths sake. Do you have a sarcastic bone in your body? It was fething oozing from my comment.

I apologize, I didn't know you were being sarcastic.

Deadshot wrote:it would look awesome.And be problematic for other Titans.Do they let the titan get over run,or blast it ourselves?

Walk through the next building and brush them off seem to be a course of action taken before.

Hahaha.Never thought of that.

My answer is, they wouldn’t have to. Tau don’t place much value on holding ground and therefor have little reason to engage Titans in combat. Tau Codex mentions Mantas exchanging fire with Titans of some type, which points towards the fact that a Manta is somewhere close to a Reaver in power, but much more common. Other than Mantas, Tau would use seeker missiles to overwhelm Void shields and attack weaker areas with massed railgun fire and more missiles. The Tau also use EMP warheads (fired by spacecraft), that could be used to disable Titans while ground forces move in for the kill.

Massive range of Titans is of no consequence, as Tau would attack from concealed emplacements, by dropping from space aboard Mantas or when Titans are being deployed to avoid their great range.

The Tau have no good counters for a Titan legion, but as mentioned, Tau would likely avoid engaging it in combat, and focus instead on destroying vulnerable fuel depots, auxiliary units or even simply engaging starships capable of transporting Titans to strand them on one planet. I think that Tau warp jumps are faster than Imperial equivalents on small, interplanetary scale due to Imperium needing to plot course by Astronomican, while Tau wouldn’t have to. Thus, Tau could still hold the system Imperium attacks, forcing Titans to be deployed separately so they can be taken down.

TL, DR: Tau would avoid direct battle with titans.

Which whilst sound tactically in one respect, is idiotic in another. Leaving a Titan Legion, let alone a single one to wreak havoc uncontested by any stern resistance isn't clever.

TrollPie wrote:If this was a real life battle, the logical thing to do would be to focus all effort into gaining superiority in space then blasting the Titans from orbit. But that wouldn't make for an epic ground battle, and 40k is all about epic ground battles.

Well, realistically, you don't want to be doing that either. Unless you're fighting on the planet for pure survival (say, against a Tyranid swarm), then you really don't want to be indiscriminantly bombarding the planet you're trying to win. You want its land and resources for your own use. They touch on this in one of the Gaunts Ghosts novels - why not bombard the planet from orbit? Because they want the planet, not a smoking ruin.

Obviously some of the fluff is glossed over to emphasise giant ground battles. Tyranids, for example, have the ability to make spores that kill all life that isn't Tyranid. Simply covering the planet in this, then harvesting the goo left is preferable to ground war that costs them. Against a Necron Tomb World, it's not likely they're going to fight on the ground, as those worlds tend to be little more than a barren rock. But that does tend to limit the ability to make up scenarios and fluff concerning those races.

Hashbeth wrote:A round fired in a straight line at 12x the speed of sound is a waste of energy for a kinetic round. If anything, it shows that tau misuse technology, as a ballistic trajectory would do far more damage far easier.

At 12 x the speed of sound, air doesn't start wrapping around a projectile like a blanket. If anything it would be pressure expansion in the tank (caused by disturbing the atmosphere inside the vehicle) rather than pulling everything out of the tank.

You're forgetting the GW has absolutely no idea what a railgun does. According to them there is no explosion.

The other problem is with the space superiority tactic is that Tau ships are also not designed to hold ground in space. they are more adept at launching fighter craft and torpedos rather then engaging their enemy ship to ship. this isn't condusive to forcing naval control of the skies.

I also doubt the Tau have Space to Surface weapons other then torpedos. I have never had mention of them conducting orbital bombardments. Ion Cannons and Railguns don't strike me as ideal bombardment weapons.



@Kallimakus: Tau space travel is actually much slower then Warp Drives. In addition they can't make huge jumps. this means their ships must resupply often and they can't reach places much further then the Damocles gulf. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tau#Tau_and_the_Warp

Grey Templar wrote:The other problem is with the space superiority tactic is that Tau ships are also not designed to hold ground in space. they are more adept at launching fighter craft and torpedos rather then engaging their enemy ship to ship. this isn't condusive to forcing naval control of the skies.

I also doubt the Tau have Space to Surface weapons other then torpedos. I have never had mention of them conducting orbital bombardments. Ion Cannons and Railguns don't strike me as ideal bombardment weapons.



@Kallimakus: Tau space travel is actually much slower then Warp Drives. In addition they can't make huge jumps. this means their ships must resupply often and they can't reach places much further then the Damocles gulf. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tau#Tau_and_the_Warp

Which brings us back full circle to the fact they would be forced to engage in gorilla tactics, attack the suporting units and the machine will sucome to war of attrition, howcan it fire without ammo? "well then it'll just stomp around,duh!" well then it will run out of fuel.

Kallimakus wrote:The Tau have no good counters for a Titan legion, but as mentioned, Tau would likely avoid engaging it in combat, and focus instead on destroying vulnerable fuel depots, auxiliary units or even simply engaging starships capable of transporting Titans to strand them on one planet.

The titan(s) may give you a bloody nose but if your on an entire planet thats about all they can give you because they can't be everywhere at once, thats why guerrilla warfare is so effective.

Newabortion wrote:
Which brings us back full circle to the fact they would be forced to engage in gorilla tactics, attack the supporting units and the machine will sucome to war of attrition, how can it fire without ammo? "well then it'll just stomp around,duh!" well then it will run out of fuel.

Run for the hills!
They use gorilla tactics....

The machine is the impersonification of the omnissiah.
The omnissiah provides, so it can never run out of ammo nor fuel.

BTW, some weapons may use ammo, but some don't. Same with fuel. Giant flamers may use fuel, but the engine isn't running on gas...

Newabortion wrote:
The titan(s) may give you a bloody nose but if your on an entire planet thats about all they can give you because they can't be everywhere at once, thats why guerrilla warfare is so effective.

Guerilla warfare depends on the target interested in preserving installations and civilians.
The imperium may be willing to sacrifice both...
A slow but steady advance and levelling everything at sight isn't out of question.

1hadhq wrote:
The machine is the impersonification of the omnissiah.
The omnissiah provides, so it can never run out of ammo nor fuel.

BTW, some weapons may use ammo, but some don't. Same with fuel. Giant flamers may use fuel, but the engine isn't running on gas...

Well TBH I don't/didn't know they are omnipresent infinite resource machines of uberdeath/giveupnow, Sorry for my ignorance.

1hadhq wrote:Guerilla warfare depends on the target interested in preserving installations and civilians.
The imperium may be willing to sacrifice both...
A slow but steady advance and levelling everything at sight isn't out of question.

They could go for the latter but if the tau acomplised the task of forceing the Imperium to "police the grounds" from one end of a continent to another I would say they did a damn fine job of tieing up massive resources of the imperium and I would hope the tau empire could/would take advantage of this and counter-attack elsewhere in the system.

Newabortion wrote:

1hadhq wrote:
The machine is the impersonification of the omnissiah.
The omnissiah provides, so it can never run out of ammo nor fuel.

BTW, some weapons may use ammo, but some don't. Same with fuel. Giant flamers may use fuel, but the engine isn't running on gas...

Well TBH I don't/didn't know they are omnipresent infinite resource machines of uberdeath/giveupnow, Sorry for my ignorance.

A lot of the titans weapons draw power from the reactor. And they arent using promethium to power a titan, they have their own on board reactor. Which TECHNICALLY should allow them to run effectively forever, but I dont know about coolant restraints and the like. Its been said that they have to return to 'refuel', or some such, I forget the actual phrasing. Of course, megabolters and the like will have ammo reserves that can be depleted. But if the ammo is depleted, think how much damage its already done. At that point, killing the titan is almost certainly a pyrrhic victory.

Grey Templar wrote:The other problem is with the space superiority tactic is that Tau ships are also not designed to hold ground in space. they are more adept at launching fighter craft and torpedos rather then engaging their enemy ship to ship. this isn't condusive to forcing naval control of the skies.

I also doubt the Tau have Space to Surface weapons other then torpedos. I have never had mention of them conducting orbital bombardments. Ion Cannons and Railguns don't strike me as ideal bombardment weapons.



@Kallimakus: Tau space travel is actually much slower then Warp Drives. In addition they can't make huge jumps. this means their ships must resupply often and they can't reach places much further then the Damocles gulf. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tau#Tau_and_the_Warp

Actually, railguns ARE good for bombardment, and ship-mounted RGs are lance counts-as in BFG.

-
Ion cannons would also be fairly ideal.

Newabortion wrote:Which brings us back full circle to the fact they would be forced to engage in gorilla tactics, attack the suporting units and the machine will sucome to war of attrition,

Guerilla warfare only works when the civilian population will support and feed you. If the civilian population is Tau, they will be exterminated by the Imperium and cannot offer support. If the civilian population are is Human, there's a good chance they support the mighty God-Emperor of Mankind over the Great Good of the Tau. Even if they do support the Tau, the Imperium will come down hard on them. Without support from local population, the Tau will not be able to find food and such. Not to mention that that would require the Imperium to not defend its supply lines, and leave any command centres of the Tau vulnerable to being wiped out.

howcan it fire without ammo? "well then it'll just stomp around,duh!" well then it will run out of fuel.

As said, many of its weaponsd raw power from the reactor. Which, by the way, will not run out of fuel (or at least, not any time soon).

Randomonioum wrote: Its been said that they have to return to 'refuel', or some such, I forget the actual phrasing.

I would assume that they return for maintanence (if they've been in battle, or simply to check) and also to refill any solid ammunition. I'm not sure if the crew need sleep, or how much they would need if they do.

Also, according to an old White Dwarf magazine Imperator Titans are powered by a "minature sun" and are capable of "dealing death to whole armies at a time". I love the hyperbole of Games Workshop. Interestingly, it also says that Emperor Titans are only 25 to 40 metres tall.

Of course, megabolters and the like will have ammo reserves that can be depleted. But if the ammo is depleted, think how much damage its already done. At that point, killing the titan is almost certainly a pyrrhic victory.

Which aren't their most powerful weapons, unfortunately for the Tau.

1hadhq wrote:
Guerilla warfare depends on the target interested in preserving installations and civilians.
The imperium may be willing to sacrifice both...
A slow but steady advance and levelling everything at sight isn't out of question.

With a Titan legion (so around 30-50 titans) it would take centuries. A planet of a few billion would be almost impossible to eradicate by advancing slowly, since they would retreat faster while slowly chipping away at the invasion force.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

-Loki- wrote:

TrollPie wrote:If this was a real life battle, the logical thing to do would be to focus all effort into gaining superiority in space then blasting the Titans from orbit. But that wouldn't make for an epic ground battle, and 40k is all about epic ground battles.

Well, realistically, you don't want to be doing that either. Unless you're fighting on the planet for pure survival (say, against a Tyranid swarm), then you really don't want to be indiscriminantly bombarding the planet you're trying to win.

Except you don't have to bombard indiscriminately to kill a handful of targets. A single nuke or lance barrage while they're manouvering between cities and it's problem solved-a few miles of already unused land off the map isn't a bad price to pay for destroying multiple, near irreplaceable god machines.

TrollPie wrote:
With a Titan legion (so around 60-80 titans) it would take centuries. A planet of a few billion would be almost impossible to eradicate by advancing slowly, since they would retreat faster while slowly chipping away at the invasion force.

Centuries?
A city is levelled in minutes.
Imperial positions may take some time, because their fortified but still centuries is far off.
A lonely group of regiments from krieg bombed a renegade hive into oblivion and beyond in 10 years,( one who died in 8 and 2 years were spent to make sure...)
Titans simply outrange a lot of things, so they can take their time and clear the path before the masses of skitarii swarm in.

The issue is:
- would the titan legio just kill everything on sight?
- if so, guerilla tactics don't work as there be nothing to hide.

And TrollPie statement involves another question: How would Tau deal with ~50 Titans in the same time?
They only faced max 4 in a battle so far ( not sure about numbers in Damocles but 4 were on Taros ).

And by the Emperor please don't post " they would use 50 gazillion Railguns there" answer...

1hadhq wrote:

TrollPie wrote:
With a Titan legion (so around 60-80 titans) it would take centuries. A planet of a few billion would be almost impossible to eradicate by advancing slowly, since they would retreat faster while slowly chipping away at the invasion force.

Centuries?
A city is levelled in minutes.
Imperial positions may take some time, because their fortified but still centuries is far off.
A lonely group of regiments from krieg bombed a renegade hive into oblivion and beyond in 10 years,( one who died in 8 and 2 years were spent to make sure...)
Titans simply outrange a lot of things, so they can take their time and clear the path before the masses of skitarii swarm in.

Combat potential is simply the end result of well thought out logistics. The logistics involved in transporting 50 massive Titans to every single population centre on an entire planet-as in, hundreds of millions of square miles of land-would make your head explode.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Brother Coa wrote:And TrollPie statement involves another question: How would Tau deal with ~50 Titans in the same time?
They only faced max 4 in a battle so far ( not sure about numbers in Damocles but 4 were on Taros ).

And by the Emperor please don't post " they would use 50 gazillion Railguns there" answer...

They wouldn't deal with them at the same time. Seperate them, drain their resources, outmanouvre them and hit them when they can't respond are the easiest ways of dealing with big targets.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

Randomonioum wrote: Its been said that they have to return to 'refuel', or some such, I forget the actual phrasing.

I would assume that they return for maintanence (if they've been in battle, or simply to check) and also to refill any solid ammunition. I'm not sure if the crew need sleep, or how much they would need if they do.

Also, according to an old White Dwarf magazine Imperator Titans are powered by a "minature sun" and are capable of "dealing death to whole armies at a time". I love the hyperbole of Games Workshop. Interestingly, it also says that Emperor Titans are only 25 to 40 metres tall.

Sounds to me like a fusion reaction by any other name. Which by all sci-fi standards would be enough to power a titan. Maintenance of it would be an issue, while servitors and self repair systems can keep it functional for extended periods of time, they are going to run out of materials and/or fuel/coolant to keep it operational. Although for the most part, we can assume its going to last the battle. I also seem to remember somewhere that the plasma weapons draw their material directly from the reactor. Sort of relevant, also cool.

On the guerilla warfare front, do you really expect the legio to walk their titans into an area without scouting first? At the very least, they will walk in warhounds ahead of the group, to auspex and keep an eye on likely areas on attack, and possibly deal some damage ahead of the pack. More likely the supporting skitarii or guardsmen are going to advance ahead of the column some, and either spring the ambushes or be able to support directly when they are sprung. Hit and run attacks are pretty much out of the question too. Either they have to sneak up, and get detected by the support groups, or they go in hard and fast, get detected at long range by the titans powerful scanning gear (They ARE using some of the best auspex equipment available to the IoM, and thats saying something) and picked off before they reach visible range.

TrollPie wrote:If this was a real life battle, the logical thing to do would be to focus all effort into gaining superiority in space then blasting the Titans from orbit. But that wouldn't make for an epic ground battle, and 40k is all about epic ground battles. So I imagine swarming the carapace with jump troops armed with every Fusion Blaster in the Tau Empire could take a Titan down. It would also look ridiculous.

Kind of a non-answer, anyway. If anyone can get a completely secure position in orbit, any WH40K ship could just bombard whatever the hell they felt like for as long as they want. If you don't have any space resistance, and if you don't mind reducing the planet to a smouldering heap, and if you have nothing else to do with three kilometers of death on a plasma engine, then yeah, go nuts, but it doesn't favor any one faction over the others.

TrollPie wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

Brother Coa wrote:And TrollPie statement involves another question: How would Tau deal with ~50 Titans in the same time?
They only faced max 4 in a battle so far ( not sure about numbers in Damocles but 4 were on Taros ).

And by the Emperor please don't post " they would use 50 gazillion Railguns there" answer...

They wouldn't deal with them at the same time. Seperate them, drain their resources, outmanouvre them and hit them when they can't respond are the easiest ways of dealing with big targets.

Hm, true. But Titans are very hard to separate when they operate in these numbers. And they always have Guard and Mechanicus support.
Tau just luck recourse to deal with that kind of battle force.

Arturius wrote:

TrollPie wrote:If this was a real life battle, the logical thing to do would be to focus all effort into gaining superiority in space then blasting the Titans from orbit. But that wouldn't make for an epic ground battle, and 40k is all about epic ground battles. So I imagine swarming the carapace with jump troops armed with every Fusion Blaster in the Tau Empire could take a Titan down. It would also look ridiculous.

If you don't have any space resistance, and if you don't mind reducing the planet to a smouldering heap, and if you have nothing else to do with three kilometers of death on a plasma engine, then yeah, go nuts, but it doesn't favor any one faction over the others.

-Loki- said a similair thing earlier on. Here:

TrollPie wrote:

-Loki- wrote:

TrollPie wrote:
If this was a real life battle, the logical thing to do would be to focus all effort into gaining superiority in space then blasting the Titans from orbit. But that wouldn't make for an epic ground battle, and 40k is all about epic ground battles.

Well, realistically, you don't want to be doing that either. Unless you're fighting on the planet for pure survival (say, against a Tyranid swarm), then you really don't want to be indiscriminantly bombarding the planet you're trying to win.

Except you don't have to bombard indiscriminately to kill a handful of targets. A single nuke or lance barrage while they're manouvering between cities and it's problem solved-a few miles of already unused land off the map isn't a bad price to pay for destroying multiple, near irreplaceable god machines.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Brother Coa wrote:

TrollPie wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

Brother Coa wrote:And TrollPie statement involves another question: How would Tau deal with ~50 Titans in the same time?
They only faced max 4 in a battle so far ( not sure about numbers in Damocles but 4 were on Taros ).

And by the Emperor please don't post " they would use 50 gazillion Railguns there" answer...

They wouldn't deal with them at the same time. Seperate them, drain their resources, outmanouvre them and hit them when they can't respond are the easiest ways of dealing with big targets.

Hm, true. But Titans are very hard to separate when they operate in these numbers. And they always have Guard and Mechanicus support.
Tau just luck recourse to deal with that kind of battle force.

Without seperating it would take decades to sieze a planet. Millions of square miles of land can't be taken in a Guardsman's lifespan by a single blob.