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Since Tau doctorin dictates f&m in most circumstances I don't see why faceing a titan would be any differnt. Depending on a defencive role I'm sure the Tau commander would displace from any fixed position and skirmish the titans' retinue until its no longer combat effective. I see and I'm sure any commander would view a titan as any other vehical or suport weapon. Sure the damage it can bring is unimaginable but just like any unsuported unit it will eventually be overrun. Imperial guard and Mech commaners would know that aswell and would eventually withdraw when the time came. Sure, you can have guns that level cities but when you have squad/platoon size engagements it would be horribly cost ineffective to fire those big guns. General George S. Patton once said "Some goddamn fool once said that flanks have got to be secure. Since then sonofabitches all over the globe have been guarding their flanks. I don't agree with that. My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I'll be cutting the bastard's throat." He was also quoted saying "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." With no special "Anti-titan" weapons on hand, surgical strike teams would be sent to isolate the titan from its retinue and/or "lines" if not just left alone and ignored alltogether.
When the Tau are attacking and the imperium employing the titan in a defensive posture would be to hard to judge options avaible there are to many variables to consider for a vague fourm post.

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.

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.

1hadhq wrote:

TrollPie wrote:

That's my point-contact to the suppliers is never secured thanks to the Imperium's Warp reliance.
The Krieg artillery is only described vaguely so we have no idea of how constant and heavy the bombardment was. The Kriegians also had total control of the planet and so had a constant supply of resources.

How about an example of units runninng low on fuel / ammo?
See, if you find one, its an event when the unit is cut off.
Thus its not the standard.
Krieg was sent as a backup to secure compliance and had most likely no support from the planet.
The rebels were shelled until they were dust. And then some more.
As funny as it is, your point of "!no supplies constantly!" when I point at the masses who produce and transport all the neccessary material followed up by "!but the had control over the planet and thus constant supplies!" reveals the flaw in your argument.
Can't have it both ways.

Kreig is a seige based army, an army litterily bred for attrition warfare. Kreig armys also take years to deploy and that's at an uncontested landing zone, ia4(?) I belive. Krieg armys would be deployed with a surplus of suplys from the getgo due to the nature of their doctorin, fething terrible example of a "logistics arn't a problem for the imperium."

Who is to say you need to have space superiority to deliver a MAC round or two on a planetside target and bug out? I'm sure the tau fleet (if the ground situation was bad enough.) Would break off a taskforce to distract&detain while a speciaised ship delived its rounds down range. Concerning accuracy, the Tau have markerlights for their rifles, why wouldn't they have a combat air controler(space in this example)with equipment to target interatmosphere targets?

Unless I missed something I wasn't saying they do have better planetary bombardments, from what I read it seems the arguement was if it could be done. I was just sugesting that they would not need complete space supremacy to deliver rounds down range at an inner atmosphere target. The more I look at past posts I guess I really am missing your point? I'm not trying to be a dick or sarcastic but could you elaborate?

1hadhq wrote:
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.

Ok, so this rules out Static defence against Titans.

Randomonioum wrote:

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.

Ok, at the polor opposite which is guerrilla warfare has been smacked down as a possible solution.

Grey Templar wrote:the general method of Titan operations is fairly fluid.


Main Battle Titans like Reavers and Warlords will form the main line and will pound enemy positions from dozens of kilometers away, warlords can even engage from over the horizon with their ballistic weaponry like Vortex Missiles.

Warhounds form the advance force. They are grouped in pairs that are given an enormous amount of personal libery in their prosection of the enemy. they never remain still for long and their rapidly moving forms will be difficult for Tau stealth teams to sabotage by climbing on, much less track down in the first place.


Warhounds are small enough to take advantage of actual cover, 45 feet high at rest. Buildings and Trees can provide large amounts of concelment.

Ok, so now any possibility of any kind of stand up fight has now been debunked as unwinable, so if the tau can't defeat the titan on the ground they must resort to attacking with something that cant be retalilated against, or if it can then you must make your attack count. So lets bomb the fether from space.

Arturius wrote:Alright... basically? People have been saying that the answer to "how would Tau deal with a titan legion" is "orbital bombardment."

My response is that, in WH40K, anyone can deal with anything via orbital bombardment. It's a non-answer. If they're in a position to sit in orbit and bombard the hell out of a planet, it doesn't matter which faction you're talking about or what the target is. 40K spaceships carry apocalyptic levels of firepower as a rule. It makes these sorts of questions meaningless, because any "how would faction X deal with situation Y" could be answered with "mass orbital bombardment."

However, what I'm getting from the books and the games suggests that quick, single shots from orbital bombardment isn't even very good for taking out titan-level threats. It can be a useful assist for your ground forces, but even if you can hit anything from orbit (and there's always a pretty good chance of scatter), the rules for an orbital bombardment hit seem hugely unlikely to take out even a warhound-scale titan.

I thank you explaining, I finally got what you when while I was takeing a shower. Basicly if it was so easy to orbital bombard someone/something it would be done all the time.
I have to disagree with you, you can't always deal with a tactial problem via barbardments, why the feck would you destroy the land your trying to aquire, so by the arguement that "It can't be that easy/simple because if it was everyone would be doing it

It makes these sorts of questions meaningless, because any "how would faction X deal with situation Y" could be answered with "mass orbital bombardment."

all races could and do have the ability to bombard or presision bombard but they don't do it because it pretty much destroys the land or objective you are trying to gain. They don't do it because it wouldn't acomplish their objective for them and would be horrible over kill.

Now the objective of the Tau trying to take down a Machine that "Can't be hurt due to shields, run out of ammo, run out of gas, and can FIRE WEAPONS FROM ACROSS THE HORIZON WTF. I would say the Tau would find it pretty reasonable to employ a bombardment from space to kill it.