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Just another general question thread. How is intelligence gathered by the different armies in 40k, who dose the gathering and how good are they at it. All sides considered even the ones who don't look like they would do it. After all even orks own scopes.

Why do people say "fractions"?

It's "factions".

Anyways...

Intelligence gathering isn't done like you'd expect. There's very little in the way of "personal" sources like you see now(not very many James Bonds sneaking around in Ork camps), most of it is done via remote sources like sensors, psykers, drones, and things of that nature.

Intelligence? 40k? Hah!

But for real, factions with psykers have scrying and future seeing and such, Eldar being the strongest of them at farsight. More conventional forces have scouts and such for combat situations. Chaos factions have turncoats and infiltrators, alien factions might have disguises or holofields or magic for infiltration, Imperials have Callidus assassins, the Inquisition, and more conventional spys and such.

Eldar:
- farseers > visions = general overview.
- rangers > scouting = forward recon dutys.

DEldar:
- no psyker....
- infiltrate and use mercenaries and espionage.

Necrons:
- sensors
- scarabs


chaos:
- sorcerors, demons = visions
- AL, cultists = infiltrate, espionage.

Tyranids:
- trial and error
- lictors

IoM:
- IG > guardsmen = scouts
- IN > sensors
- Astartes > scouts
- Ad mech > sensors, drones
- crusade > tacticae , scouts and sensors of the participants
- Inq > emperors tarot and other psyker stuff. Espionage.
- GK > focused on demonic incursions. Seems to work rather accurate.

Tau:
- pathfinder = scouts
- their intel has a slight FF identification issue in 5th....

orks:
- grots as all purpose unit...
- kommandoz

I might as well share some about the tau. In combat they have the pathfinders and the stealth suits, so they kind of dual book there infiltration. Though I imagine that stealth suits don't do much scouting and that they run silent most of the time. I am also not sure about the logic behind pathfinders. You want your army of hover tanks, jets and deep striking battle suits to depend on foot troops? You think they would pick something faster like a scout plane? *shrug*

In the more CIA style, I imagine that the water cast gets to play James bond working under a form of diplomatic immunity to hack computers and steal files.

Tyranids also have genestealers as well as lictors, though I think their job is more sabotage.

Alot of times you will see space marine librarians use their scrying abilities to predict attacks and such.

IG intel sources:
Sentinels
Tauros
Salamander scout vehicles
Rough Riders
Imperial Navy
Inquisition

What is a tauros?

It depends, do you mean military intel or political intel? Both are equally important to success but entirely different by their nature.

Military = troop movements and concentrations, weapons, equipment, which unit is where, what they are doing, etc.
Done largely the same way we do it now...

Political = What is a faction hoping to achieve, war aims, political stance regarding other factions, new research, etc.
Pretty much non-existent in M41

-Imperium: Templars Psykologis & Inquisition
-Eldar: Seer's and Rangers
-Chaos: Cultists
-Orks: lulz
-Tau: Some kind of modern military intelligence branch & Stealth Suits
-Necrons: Intelligence is irrelevant
-Tyranids: Genestealers

1haq basically summed it up.

The factions are very keen on what they use.
Now space marine chapters it varies.

nomotog wrote:What is a tauros?

Dark Angels capture and interrogate the enemy.

Mr Nobody wrote:Dark Angels capture and interrogate the enemy.

Not really.

They capture and interrogate the enemies who they think will lead them to the Fallen.

They don't go around grabbing Ork Boyz to ask them "WHO'S DA BOSS?!" or grab Kroot to ask where the Shaper is. It's usually a very well planned and executed operation, to the extent that they've snatched people out from under the Inquisition's noses.

Let's face it, by the time you've called in most factions that exist on the tabletop in 40k you're way beyond intelligence gathering.

The only people with rules on the tabletop who might do anything of the sort beyond simple battlefield reconnaissance are Eldar Farseers, Tau Pathfinders, and Inquisitors.

I don't know if Eldar or DE can be disguised as humans. They exactly need hats to cover their ears...
And human spies can infiltrate only to human factions. We know that there are Chaos agents in the Imperium but less is known about Imperial spies in Chaos worlds.
P.S. My IG Colonel is a Tzeentch spy in disguise...

Let's get something straight right here and now, because it always spirals into this segway about spies.

"Intelligence gathering" is not necessarily "espionage".

Troops operating in a scout role are involved in intelligence gathering, but not necessarily espionage.

To give an example:
Imperial Armour 8 details the Raven Guard's operations preparing for the Kastorel-Novem raid. The Raven Guard had teams of veteran Scouts operating for long periods of times on Ork held worlds.
They were not going around dressed like Orks asking "Who's Da Boss?" or "Where are we gettin' all dis Dakka?".

They were watching, recording everything and transmitting it back to the Raven Guard.
That's "intelligence gathering".

Even if you do want to branch out into espionage, then most of the races in 40k engage in intelligence gathering/espionage. Eldar may not be able to 'fit in' with humans, but they can certainly use human catspaws to do their spying for them. And by the time Tyranids arrive on a planet, the Genestealers that paved the way for them already have a lot of tasty, tasty intelligence just waiting to be sucked out of their skull like a data slurpee.

For a good view of ork intelligence gathering ops, read Iron Inferno, by CL Werner, in the short story compilation Fear the Alien.