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While reading a thread something occured to me.
1: Tau Drive 'skims' the warp, making it slower, with a shorter range, but ultimately safer journey through the immaterium.
2: These Drives are limited in power and take a significant time to recharge after each use.
While this is all well and good, more speed and more range would be beneficial, especially as they move further out on their expansion spheres.

So, my thinking is as follows:
What prohibits them from having multiple drives to increase range and power?

I.E. Where a normal ship would have 1, have say, 3-6 drives. When the warp drive is engaged, as its power reserves reach low, around 5-10% you turn on the next in the sequence. While this one is engaged, the initial one starts charging again, when the next one reaches low power, tick to the next, and have it in a circuit so that by the time Drive 1 is recharged Drive X is reaching the cut off point, and cycle it around for continuous warp travel.

Alternatively, Have them operating in pairs for an increase in speed.

While this would increase the ship size, the Tau have the technology and reasources to do it, assuming there's nothing fluff-wise I missed that prevents it.

Assuming that that was doable, that's still a huge investment of resources. I could see maybe having a few specialist ships with a secondary warp drive, but I'm pretty sure that you'd get more bang for your buck by using additional warp drives to power additional ships, not simply speeding up one single ship.

Nothing really prohibits them, except for the length between Codex updates probably, but the other factor maybe because they really don't see the need to increase the amount of engines, but to create a whole new engine that would have the output of the six previous engines, saving resources and time.

Tau could just adopt the old Battletech method of long-distance travel... set up a "command circuit" of jump ships. Simply have a bunch of ships spaced out at a pre-determined distance 1 jump apart, and transfer jump ships between points. Eliminates the recharge time required, but requires more resources. Still better than having a ship with multiple drives though.

They probably do have ships with more then one drive. Still slow though. Something to reamer is the a warp drive is crazy expensive, crazy big and use crazy amounts of power. Only the large ships actually get warp drive. Most have to be carried by gravity hooks.

Even if it is slow by standard of other races ( except Newcrons ), Tau Warp Drive is far secured means of transportation then going trough Immaterium.
For now it serve the Tau well, enabling them to appear with full force to attack/defend a planet or a Sept. This drive will only become problem when Tau territory became more larger then it is now. They will need to develop new kind of FTL, but I doubt that they will succeed. But then again: GW work in mysterious ways...

As for multiple drives: it is a good idea, but it has it's drawbacks. You will need to many space for those extra drives. And that means less cargo and less troops to transport. Ultimately: you will need a lot more fuel to bring with you being that you now have multiple engines to feed.

Horst wrote:Tau could just adopt the old Battletech method of long-distance travel... set up a "command circuit" of jump ships. Simply have a bunch of ships spaced out at a pre-determined distance 1 jump apart, and transfer jump ships between points. Eliminates the recharge time required, but requires more resources. Still better than having a ship with multiple drives though.

I'm not sure that would work in the 40k setting. The Battletech FTL was a zero time jump from a set point to a set point. Similar to the BSG FTL. That meant that Jump Ship A would show up right next to Jump Ship B and allow for an easy and quick transfer of crew or whatever. Battletech also had the advantage where the (Inner Sphere) jump ships were little more than a jump drive, docking points, and a bridge. Everything that was important was on the drop ships, and it was relatively easy for drop ships to just move their entire selves from one ship to another. In 40k, any transfer of serious amounts of troops would require large numbers of shuttles going back and forth between ships. Not to mention that warp travel isn't the most accurate thing in the world, so you might not arrive close enough for an easy transfer of material.

You've hit a circular argument.

1) jump drives can only go x distance and then have to re-charge
2) why not just take multiple drives (we'll say 3)
3) they can now jump 3x
3) why not just combine those multiple drives into one bigger, more efficient drive that can go farther
4) now you have a jump drive that can jump 3.5x
5) why not have MULTIPLE DRIVES!?

It is easier to keep moving than to get moving, and the more mass you take the harder it is to get moving in the first place. I'm sure they are already optimizing their weight/thrust ratio and jumping as far and fast as they can. Just adding more drives really isn't going to solve anything, as if you could it would make more sense just to consolidate them into a single, more efficient drive that takes you further.

Except my theory isn't simply multiple drives, it was cycling drives as a method of continuous FTL propulsion, 1 drive active, the other drives charging.

Thus my idea WAS to keep it going rather than to simply have multiple drives for quick jump turn around.

It would require a slight redesign of the ships and a significant size increase yes, but

As I understand it Those drives need fuel to work.
You can have that kind of engine work as long as you have fuel to do it.
And in the end it matters not because speed remain the same. The only difference is ability to move further.

Yeah, I understand the fuel limits and that it wouldn't increase speed, but for longer journies and a swifter return it would reduce journey time.

Also, I'd have thought starships on that scale would use some sort of fusion / fission reactor for power?

So if the Tau can improve on their fuel efficiency (or in the case of the OPs comments reduce the recharge period) their drives wll have to spend far less time in real-space, allowing the Tau to get further, faster.

So if they can figure out the efficiency issue (and one thing the Tau are great at is tech) their drives wont be as big a handicap as they are now.

True, without the ability to truly breach the warp they will never be as fast as the Imperium's drives, but as the Astronomicon fades the range and reliability of those drives will diminish considerably, especially on the Eastern Fringe.

So the Tau may, eventually have a local superiority in FTL.

They can but the Tau have heard horror stories about the warp

RAVEN 97 wrote:They can but the Tau have heard horror stories about the warp

And? Tau don't believe that Humans have 1.000.000 and more worlds. Why would they believe them when it comes to Warp?

They have heard horror stories, but their current style of warp drive and their general lack of psychic power has prevented those sorts of incidents.

Asl long as the newer drive technology continues to lay in the "shallow" end of the Warp, even longer stays or more frequent trips that a more efficient drive would bring shouldn't cause significant issues.

Jefffar wrote:So if the Tau can improve on their fuel efficiency (or in the case of the OPs comments reduce the recharge period) their drives wll have to spend far less time in real-space, allowing the Tau to get further, faster.

So if they can figure out the efficiency issue (and one thing the Tau are great at is tech) their drives wont be as big a handicap as they are now.

True, without the ability to truly breach the warp they will never be as fast as the Imperium's drives, but as the Astronomicon fades the range and reliability of those drives will diminish considerably, especially on the Eastern Fringe.

So the Tau may, eventually have a local superiority in FTL.

I believe Tau will develop an FTL drive to probe into the bulk of the Ultima Segmentum, but not enough to explore its entirety. I do not believe they'll develop a multi-drive system because that's not how Tau treat their technology. It seems they try to compress their technologies in order to make more space and save more resources, and it allows for better engineering of star-ships and even Battle Suits.

More than likely the Tau will develop a smaller but more powerful FTL engine capable of putting out yeilds equal to four or six of their old drives.

I know alot of Imperial fans will rise and disagree, but the Tau are constantly adapting and compacting their technologies at a pretty fast clip. It is not unthinkable that with their increasing knowledge of technology that they're bound to slower rates of travel.

Ovion wrote:So, my thinking is as follows:
What prohibits them from having multiple drives to increase range and power?

Alternatively, Have them operating in pairs for an increase in speed.

While this would increase the ship size, the Tau have the technology and reasources to do it, assuming there's nothing fluff-wise I missed that prevents it.

In 40K, a starship's propulsion makes up for 1/3rd of the ship's total length and even more for its mass. As a result, setting up multiple warp drives on ships would indeed greatly increase the ship's size (turning space battles with the Imperial Navy into real turkey shoots), and its weight (hampering its maneuverability - and tau ships are already among the slowest in BFG).
In addition, warp drives are extremely complex to build and maintain for the IoM. They are described as being the most expensive and complex piece of hardware possessed by humanity in the fluff. And Tau warp technology is nowhere near the IoM's.

For those reasons, I don't really see the tau setting up multiple warp drives on their entire fleet. On scout ships, however, that would be a good idea.

But the real problem with tau FTL travel is not their technological limitations, but the fact that they don't have psykers.

In 40K, you can travel in space using three different methods:
1°/ Proper FTL travel. The nids do that. The crons also used FTL travel until 5th ed.

2°/ The Webway. The eldars use it. So do the crons since the newest codex (seriously, I hate Matt Ward with each new codex).

3°/ The Warp. Used by the IoM and Chaos. To navigate the warp, you need psykers, not only to navigate through the Empyrean (the Imperials use the Astronomican as a navigating beacon, chaos followers are guided by their gods) but also to delve far into the warp (and thus make long warp jumps.

Since the tau don't have psykers, no matter how advanced their tech gets, they can't go deep enough into the warp to perform long jumps (hence their "warp skimming" method). In additon, even if they somehow plunged into the deepest reaches of the warp, they would have no way to properly guide themselves.

Brother Coa wrote:

RAVEN 97 wrote:They can but the Tau have heard horror stories about the warp

And? Tau don't believe that Humans have 1.000.000 and more worlds. Why would they believe them when it comes to Warp?

There was an in-store campaign a few years ago that was set on a world that was about to be eaten by a warp storm. The story hook for the Tau was that they were going to set up some experiments to check out the warp and use that data to improve their FTL.

I believe the end story for the Tau was that they did get plenty of data on the Warp, and really didn't like what they had seen.

I don't think adding more drives to their ships solves the problem really. Yes, it would extend their range and allow them to move under speed for longer periods of time but they're still going 1/5 the speed of the average Imperial warp-capable vessel. Note that this isn't 1/5 of the fastest vessel...1/5 of the average. Think about how many ships are in the Imperium that aren't designed for speed at all.

Then there's the whole problem of warp drives being huge, requiring massive amounts of power, ect. It probably isn't even feasible to pack more than two in any vessel without a crazy expenditure of resoures.

I wonder how Tau Warp Drives actually compare in size to their Imperial counterparts?

Also - currently, they go relatively slower, AND have to stop for an extended recharge period past a certain point, not having to do that as often would be beneficial.

daveNYC wrote:

There was an in-store campaign a few years ago that was set on a world that was about to be eaten by a warp storm. The story hook for the Tau was that they were going to set up some experiments to check out the warp and use that data to improve their FTL.

I believe the end story for the Tau was that they did get plenty of data on the Warp, and really didn't like what they had seen.

The Tau expedition's goal, to gather information about the warp, was largely successful; however, analysis of the gathered data, and the fates of those Tau who remained behind, caused Earth Caste scientists to believe that further research would be infeasible. The Fourth Expansion of the Tau Empire was thus delayed in order to further consolidate the recent Third Expansion. Many humans joined the Tau Empire. There were great losses, personified with the loss of Commander Shadowsun's sibling, Shas’el Ty’res.

Ovion wrote:I wonder how Tau Warp Drives actually compare in size to their Imperial counterparts?

Comparable. It's suggested that their drive is based on the Imperial drive. Well, actually it's pretty certain. I can't think of other factions that use warp drives and were definitely in the T'au system pre-'Rise of the Tau'. BFG rules.

1.) Tau don't have a warp drive.
2.) They have little knowledge about the warp, no psykers to lead and navigate them and no Gellar field technology to protect them.
3.) They have a substitute allowing them to just skim the warp without fully entering it, allowing only short jumps, navigated by landmarks and good maps. Skimming is a principle limit to the possible distance they can travel.

You can find a few more details in the Gav Thorpe novel Kill Team.

BTW Kroot have warp drive technology because they ate a Big Mec and that Ork had the technology implanted in his genes (yeah, GW-science). Their war spheres can only travel to inhabited planets by some kind of magic, though.

1) WRONG.

They have warp drives. It is literally written black and white in the fluff! In the BFG extension Armada, it is written that the tau found a crashed alien vessel on a barren moon of their homeworld (later fluff would reveal that this vessel was actually imperial) and copied its warp drives (all this is in page 98 of the extension). However, due to their limited understanding of this new dimension and technology, they were never able to effectively penetrate into the warp (hence the warp skimming method).

Kroothawk wrote:
2.) They have little knowledge about the warp, no psykers to lead and navigate them and no Gellar field technology to protect them.

It is true they have no Gellar field technology, however, I'm not entirely sure if the tau would need it as much as humans to survive into the warp. I read that because the tau were psychic blanks, daemons had some difficulties in sensing their presence. Maybe they could find an alternative to full-fledged gellar fields then?

The above is correct about warp drives but wrong about Gellar Fields. Things can't exist without horrible side effects in the warp without some sort of protection. Daemons love to poke ships.

Then the Tau must have a Gellar field, probably copied from the same ship that provided the sample Warp drive.

The issue with the Tau isn't so much the Jump Drives endurance, its that the drive is fairly slow and they have limited supplies they can carry on their ships. Not to mention the average life span of 40.


They might be able to just activate the next drive, but they still need to resupply. if that first drive can't reach a habitable planet before the food runs out or the Tau onboard get too old to be useful then they really are stuck.

And just giving a ship multiple drives isn't as simple as it sounds. That will make the ship much bigger then it already is and you could be very vulnerable to your engines being damaged in a fight. And then you are years away from help with limited food supplies and a rapidly aging crew.

I don't know. Their current method doesn't involve entering the warp proper...They fling themselves along by partially crossing between dimensions "Skimming the warp" so presumably they don't have to worry about Daemonic pokes. That's also why they're slower. I don't know, GW science, apparently they can enter the space between or only partially into the warp.

BrainDeleted wrote:I don't know, GW science, apparently they can enter the space between or only partially into the warp.

The Webway is also located halfway between Warp space and Real space. its just got permanant walls to keep it stable.

its basically a pocket dimension betwen dimensions, which isn't an issue because there is both no space and infinite space between dimensions.

the Tau just go halfway when they jump.

I always thought it worked by pressing on the warp and then being thrown back out light years from where they start. They never actually enter the warp it's like a cork bouncing on the water