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Kilkrazy wrote:At first glance, it looks as though there is every reason why Tau can improve their tech and no reason why they can't. Supported by fluff.

I may have ingested something alcaholic myself beings as I could have sworn I'd posted these reasons before (maybe it's just to hard for some people to read) and that to me it seems perfectly logical that given the fluff based reasons posted in this thread the Tau have absolutly no problem producing their tech.

I don't know maybe "Lasguns are cheap" is some kind of galactic power phrase that trumps absolutly everything.

No of course they can improve tech, who cant? (IoM cuz of all their regulations and superstitions)

I have searched and I found no evidence of the Tau having TROUBLE producing their tech. This is something I never said however. Atleast I dont remember it. I said the IoM can produce their tech faster cuz its simple. This was found BY ME on multiple occasions ESPECIALLY about the lasgun.

The important thing isn't simplicity, it is production capability.

Silicon chips are some of the most complex devices ever produced, yet a competent factory can stamp them out so fast that they aren't worth picking up if you drop them down a crack in the floor.

what the heck are we even talking about? Seems like everyone is just rigorously agreeing with each other...

I agree with myself the most, I'll have you know.

agnosto wrote:I agree with myself the most, I'll have you know.

Well I can't argue with that.

I know who I don’t agree with. Anything that looks like pollinating flower.

agnosto wrote:I agree with myself the most, I'll have you know.

Nuh uh!
Now let's have a 12 page argument over that, now.

On-topic: We never said Tau has difficulty producing tech. We just said that their technology isn't feasible to produce for 16,000,000,000,000,000 guardsmen.

in the Tau codex, a letter from one of those crazy admech dudes from Mars to the conclave of crazy admech dudes on Mars (page 20) goes on about the advanced manufacturing technologies of the Tau and how it should be stamped out (construction and agricultural in particular) because it doesn't pay enough homage to the machine god or some nonsense. So if the crazy dudes on mars are impressed with their manufacturing capabilities and say that they're better than IoM....maybe they could make enough flashlights for a bazillion guardsmen.

the techs good enough, they just dont have millions of planets to make pusle rifles for a bizzlion guards.

agnosto wrote:in the Tau codex, a letter from one of those crazy admech dudes from Mars to the conclave of crazy admech dudes on Mars (page 20) goes on about the advanced manufacturing technologies of the Tau and how it should be stamped out (construction and agricultural in particular) because it doesn't pay enough homage to the machine god or some nonsense. So if the crazy dudes on mars are impressed with their manufacturing capabilities and say that they're better than IoM....maybe they could make enough flashlights for a bazillion guardsmen.

Why not quote it?
Maybe its not excatly as you say and the Ad mech dude insisted to get rid of the Tech because it is an affront versus the omnissiah?
So just to throw in the 'facts'.
-the ad mech representative never said "better".
-the ad mech representative never said anything about production capabilities

Again, no point good sir.

Yeah, an empire that encompases over 300 light years of space and numerous alien populations of varying capabilities and technology (codex, page 6) would be incapable of advanced manufacture on a large scale.

Seriously, I'll just stand by what I said earlier. Haters gonna hate. You've made up your mind and we could throw cannon at you all day and it wouldn't change anything; that's cool, it's better if you don't like every army in the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

1hadhq wrote:

agnosto wrote:in the Tau codex, a letter from one of those crazy admech dudes from Mars to the conclave of crazy admech dudes on Mars (page 20) goes on about the advanced manufacturing technologies of the Tau and how it should be stamped out (construction and agricultural in particular) because it doesn't pay enough homage to the machine god or some nonsense. So if the crazy dudes on mars are impressed with their manufacturing capabilities and say that they're better than IoM....maybe they could make enough flashlights for a bazillion guardsmen.

Why not quote it?
Maybe its not excatly as you say and the Ad mech dude insisted to get rid of the Tech because it is an affront versus the omnissiah?
So just to throw in the 'facts'.
-the ad mech representative never said "better".
-the ad mech representative never said anything about production capabilities

Again, no point good sir.

Geez, I'm not about to type out the whole page nor is it my job to prove to you that it's actually in there. Don't believe me, get a codex and look at the page I referenced.

"The heresy of these aliens reaches it's zenith when one looks at their technology. While admittedly, its performance can match and occasionally exceed Imperial manufacture, it displays none of the proper obeisances to the holy spirit of the Mahine God."

agnosto wrote:Yeah, an empire that encompases over 300 light years of space and numerous alien populations of varying capabilities and technology (codex, page 6) would be incapable of advanced manufacture on a large scale.

If you care to post the whole context, its 8 Sept worlds.
Sorry but 8 major holds aren't that impressive.
The BRB of 5th ed expands this to:

- 8 major Sept
- 9 minor sept.
- 3 kroot worlds
- 4 farsight enclaves

Still not really big.

agnosto wrote:
Seriously, I'll just stand by what I said earlier. Haters gonna hate. You've made up your mind and we could throw cannon at you all day and it wouldn't change anything; that's cool, it's better if you don't like every army in the game.

Back to the all encompassing 'hater' argument? Its as convincing as 'but we have railgunz'.
Seriously, either tell the whole story or be prepared to have someone point at the missing parts.

FWIW, I'm still waiting to see cannons thrown. Maybe post a vid?

agnosto wrote:
Geez, I'm not about to type out the whole page nor is it my job to prove to you that it's actually in there. Don't believe me, get a codex and look at the page I referenced.

"The heresy of these aliens reaches it's zenith when one looks at their technology. While admittedly, its performance can match and occasionally exceed Imperial manufacture, it displays none of the proper obeisances to the holy spirit of the Machine God."

As I own every codex, I may prefer to see a reference and nobody expected whole pages quoted.
But look, it was not so much work to post the line youre talking about, wasn't it?

Just curious but if all is being said is that the Tau Empire coulden't produce enough of there tech to supply it to IG. What exactly is the point in saying that? What could that possibly have to do with the discussion beings as the Tau aren't out to supply their enemy.

If what is being said is in referance to those masses of IG one day being members of the Tau Empire it still dosen't apply because the Tau still woulden't make pulse rifles for the guardsmen. They would allow them to continue using their own tech with upgrades just like they do gue'vesa.

Directly to OP, ignoring other conversations in this massive thread
-You are held up on your paradigm which limits your thinking. You in no way can believe the tau and their progress. Why not? Because it is beyond your believed possibilities, the laws you have set for your own universe, and the Tau are beyond that. It is science fiction, anything is possible. Anything claimed to be 'impossible' is just a limitation of a paradigm. Things that have become so excepted, they become law. It is entirely possible that Tau have advanced that quickly as they aren't human. You are thinking from a human standpoint. Yes, humans apparently couldn't ever evolve that fast. However, you don't know everything about the tau. Maybe their conditions where more harsh and their genetics more easily mutable. Thus, allowing for quicker evolution and expansion. Just because humans aren't like that, doesn't mean tau can't be like that either.

Mewiththeface wrote:Directly to OP, ignoring other conversations in this massive thread
-You are held up on your paradigm which limits your thinking. You in no way can believe the tau and their progress. Why not? Because it is beyond your believed possibilities, the laws you have set for your own universe, and the Tau are beyond that. It is science fiction, anything is possible. Anything claimed to be 'impossible' is just a limitation of a paradigm. Things that have become so excepted, they become law. It is entirely possible that Tau have advanced that quickly as they aren't human. You are thinking from a human standpoint. Yes, humans apparently couldn't ever evolve that fast. However, you don't know everything about the tau. Maybe their conditions where more harsh and their genetics more easily mutable. Thus, allowing for quicker evolution and expansion. Just because humans aren't like that, doesn't mean tau can't be like that either.

Dam straight

^3 posts above.

The point of production capability. The IG is completly different from Tau.

IG gets troops as a tithe of planetary governments. Tau may have a centralized organisation to recrut and train.
Where one has to keep standards low enough to be met by millions of worlds ( from stoneage to modern ), the other has only some worlds to care for
and can focus on best equipment. Thus Tau are capable to support their limited numbers of troops in a dense cluster of worlds.
The IoM is spread across the Galaxy. Organization, communication and transport are important factors.
Tau would face the same problems. They just benefit from beeing a small efficent empire. The IoM has to deal with its own size, thus cannot be as effective
as smaller empires. The stretch to the military defending borders and ruling a vast empire are burdening the IoM as such things do the last 40k years to any
Imperium of noticable size.

Rest assured, the IoM will never join the Tau, so no need for technical support.
Plus, the concept of Gue'vesa has been dropped by GW. I doubt it ever returns. More xenos would be what I would expect for the future.

Mewiththeface wrote:Directly to OP, ignoring other conversations in this massive thread
-You are held up on your paradigm which limits your thinking. You in no way can believe the tau and their progress. Why not? Because it is beyond your believed possibilities, the laws you have set for your own universe, and the Tau are beyond that. It is science fiction, anything is possible. Anything claimed to be 'impossible' is just a limitation of a paradigm. Things that have become so excepted, they become law. It is entirely possible that Tau have advanced that quickly as they aren't human. You are thinking from a human standpoint. Yes, humans apparently couldn't ever evolve that fast. However, you don't know everything about the tau. Maybe their conditions where more harsh and their genetics more easily mutable. Thus, allowing for quicker evolution and expansion. Just because humans aren't like that, doesn't mean tau can't be like that either.

Then please, educate us.

From what I read he is simply saying that how can you pass judgement on something of which you have no knowledge. Its like saying X alien cannot do Y because Z alien cannot do Y. It’s S T U P I D.

In context, X is tau. Y is advancing fast and Z is humanity.

Mordoskul wrote:

Mewiththeface wrote:Directly to OP, ignoring other conversations in this massive thread
-You are held up on your paradigm which limits your thinking. You in no way can believe the tau and their progress. Why not? Because it is beyond your believed possibilities, the laws you have set for your own universe, and the Tau are beyond that. It is science fiction, anything is possible. Anything claimed to be 'impossible' is just a limitation of a paradigm. Things that have become so excepted, they become law. It is entirely possible that Tau have advanced that quickly as they aren't human. You are thinking from a human standpoint. Yes, humans apparently couldn't ever evolve that fast. However, you don't know everything about the tau. Maybe their conditions where more harsh and their genetics more easily mutable. Thus, allowing for quicker evolution and expansion. Just because humans aren't like that, doesn't mean tau can't be like that either.

Then please, educate us.

On what sir?

Tau have tech, IG have numbers. you could have an modern trooper with an M16 vs a couple hundred people with sharpened rocks...

haters hate, people hate, everyone hates... science fiction is sometimes illogical. yadda yadda yadda...


I hope that sums this thread up.

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:Tau have tech, IG have numbers. you could have an modern trooper with an M16 vs a couple hundred people with sharpened rocks...

haters hate, people hate, everyone hates... science fiction is sometimes illogical. yadda yadda yadda...


I hope that sums this thread up.

Agreed, but we both know it won't stop at that.

The tau are abomination! i mean seriously anyone wanting a freaking peace treaty with every race!
Come-on!

Well, it works very well with imperial worlds, and they've learned orks and necrons are not in a talking mood.

Mr Nobody wrote:Well, it works very well with imperial worlds, and they've learned orks and necrons are not in a talking mood.

That's why they made a military pact with The Dark Eldar. I'm sure nothing bad will happen.

1hadhq wrote:
If you care to post the whole context, its 8 Sept worlds.
Sorry but 8 major holds aren't that impressive.
The BRB of 5th ed expands this to:

- 8 major Sept
- 9 minor sept.
- 3 kroot worlds
- 4 farsight enclaves

Still not really big.

The sept worlds are Tau only. Not sure where the 3 kroot world thing came from, I can't recall seeing it in the codex. You're being fair by counting the farsight enclaves since, technically, they aren't really a part of the Empire.

The thing that gets me is the typically bad GW writing. They start the codex by talking about how dense and compact the empire is and that it controls over 300 lightyears of space that has a higher than average density of habitable worlds. Then it talks about how the Tau settle every available space they find like moons, asteroids and planetoids.

I really wish they would hire real writers someday or create something like xenology (but without the bias) that would discuss all the factions. It's not as if they don't already change fluff when it suits them anyway so it can't be because they're afraid to lock-in the story of the 40k 'verse...

1hadhq wrote:
Back to the all encompassing 'hater' argument? Its as convincing as 'but we have railgunz'.
Seriously, either tell the whole story or be prepared to have someone point at the missing parts.

I said it once, tongue in cheek and then referenced it once. Please don't confuse me with others you don't agree with. FWIW maybe develop a sense of humor and stop taking this stuff so seriously because, you know, life is short and if you get worked up over plastic army men, I'd hate to be the guy that cuts you off on your morning commute. Also, there were no missing parts from my paraphrasing of the codex as my later quote confirmed. I'm not sure what your educational background is but paraphrasing is a legitimate form of quoting large sections of text especially when a source is cited.

1hadhq wrote:
As I own every codex, I may prefer to see a reference and nobody expected whole pages quoted.
But look, it was not so much work to post the line youre talking about, wasn't it?

You're worse than an ex-girlfriend I had. "I know the answer but I want to try and force you to jump through hoops anyway".

Relax, man, it's going to be a nice day....somewhere.

Don't now your girlfreind ,but beeing worse isn't good


The first number of 8 septs is part of the codex page you have referred to.
The second listing comes from the map of the Tau empire in the 5th ed rulebook. Did forget the vespids, tough.
So +1 world of insectiod allies.

BRB already expands the empire. But it is also is not going to tell us details as most Empires are shown incomplete, just the objects of interest ( ie wellknown worlds ).

1hadhq wrote:Don't now your girlfreind ,but beeing worse isn't good


The first number of 8 septs is part of the codex page you have referred to.
The second listing comes from the map of the Tau empire in the 5th ed rulebook. Did forget the vespids, tough.
So +1 world of insectiod allies.

BRB already expands the empire. But it is also is not going to tell us details as most Empires are shown incomplete, just the objects of interest ( ie wellknown worlds ).

I guess we'll have to wait for the Codex: Earth Caste before we learn about the Tau version of forge worlds.

It's actually well over 20 septs at present and each sept is not 1 world but an entire system; doesn't make a huge difference but....
(page 6) "Soon the Tau Empire stretched over a little more than three hundred light years and incorporated eight heavily settled systems known as septs." (emphasis mine)

This is especially relevant when one considers this (page 10): "The Tau empire encompasses a dense yet astrographically small area of space. Many hundreds of star systems exist within this region, and an unusually high proportion harbour an environment conducive to life. As the Tau steadily expand the borders of their empire, they continue to encounter other races. The empire now encompasses over twenty septs - fully developed Tau systems - and a large number of vassal alien homeworlds."

So, they started with 8 and now have over 20 plus "a large number" of alien worlds. As I mentioned earlier, fluff being as scarce as it is, there's no telling how many "a large number" is but it would be safe to assume that it's more than just the Kroot and Vespid.

I thought the Tau Empire was 100 planets...where'd I get that number from?

I ont think any of the Tau support understands what Im saying. The lasgun is dirt cheap and simple, the pulse rifle is better and more complicated in the way it works. I have read this on the lexicanum!
Give a Tau engineer the bluprints to a lasgun and im sure it would make it quicker than it does a pulse rifle. (well maybe not at first it would have to know the human parts.)