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juraigamer wrote:Never heard of any, besides it's not the tau's fighting style to just wipe things out like that.

The Tau are still fighting for territory, without good FTL drives they need all the real estate they can find. Something would have to scare the hell out of them before they'd consider rendering a planet uninhabitable.

IvanTih wrote:My final words on this subjects that IOM steamrolls Tau(points to Sabbath's World Crusade).

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A Deathwatch Space Marine in the Last chancers novel casually walked through the combined firepower of 3 Crisis Suits (wrecked his armor quite a bit, but he was a-ok) and proceeded to brutally and systematically dismantle said suits. The suits had 3 pulse cannons, a flamer and two weapon systems I can´t remember between them.

Wow, this is soooo funny. Oh wait, it's not. So ultimately you hate Tau because IoM can steamroll them? I guess every reason is good if it works for you.

I just wanted to say that this is just the exact thing why most people find SM boring and lame (this part at least). It's like with superman. It is so interesting when main hero is un-killable and nothing can hurt him or stop him. Not because he is skilled or smart or had a good plan or was lucky or anything interesting. He can just walk and nothing hurts him. Really sets the tension and drama. Or is it making the whole thing really boring? Can't remember which is it..

Agreed, it's the same as if anyone else had created a thread saying "why I hate the Imperium, why I hate Orks, Why I hate Chaos".

The big problem I have with the Tau story relating to their advancement is that it actually makes very little sense, with what we know.

Advancement throughout history has been a direct result of conflict. Without it, there is no push for innovation and technological advancement becomes stagnant. Look at how advanced the greatest warring empires were within their time compared to the rest of the world: Ancient China, Rome at its height, Europe as compared to the Americas and Africa a few centuries ago.

With an entire planet at peace, I have no confidence in their ability to improve, especially as related to their ability to bring war to another race.

Fearspect wrote:The big problem I have with the Tau story relating to their advancement is that it actually makes very little sense, with what we know.

Advancement throughout history has been a direct result of conflict. Without it, there is no push for innovation and technological advancement becomes stagnant. Look at how advanced the greatest warring empires were within their time compared to the rest of the world: Ancient China, Rome at its height, Europe as compared to the Americas and Africa a few centuries ago.

With an entire planet at peace, I have no confidence in their ability to improve, especially as related to their ability to bring war to another race.

Advancement due to the necessity of it is one thing, splitting society into 4 parts and saying "You focus on this, You focus on this, You focus on this and You focus on this" actually causes progress faster.

Take our current world for instance, how far have we gone in 100 years? What was it like in 1910? What is it like now? Now take out all the infighting and imagine if the world was unified and how far we would be.

We would not have had many of the advancements that resulted from the first two World Wars for one.

Look at the International Space Station project. We split it up to different countries and said, "You focus on this, you focus on this, etc." What happened as a result? The US had to build the whole thing.

agnosto wrote:

IvanTih wrote:My final words on this subjects that IOM steamrolls Tau(points to Sabbath's World Crusade).



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A Deathwatch Space Marine in the Last chancers novel casually walked through the combined firepower of 3 Crisis Suits (wrecked his armor quite a bit, but he was a-ok) and proceeded to brutally and systematically dismantle said suits. The suits had 3 pulse cannons, a flamer and two weapon systems I can´t remember between them.

Interesting since there's not such thing as a "pulse cannon". If any of them had plasma cannons, he would have been toast...them being AP2 and rapid fire and all....

In the end books and fluff don't have anything to do with game mechanics. You were reading a book about marines so of course the marines are unkillable agents of destruction. Read a book about eldar and you'll read about a farseer wiping out a whole chapter of marines or some other nonsense.

Meh. this topic has become unfun.

Carry on.

That was an Imperial Guard novel and it was written by Graham McNeill.
Fluff shows us the true capabilities of someone,not some balanced game rules.
In the Path of a Warrior as you say Exarchs do quite well against marines.

IvanTih wrote:My final words on this subjects that IOM steamrolls Tau(points to Sabbath's World Crusade).



Automatically Appended Next Post:
A Deathwatch Space Marine in the Last chancers novel casually walked through the combined firepower of 3 Crisis Suits (wrecked his armor quite a bit, but he was a-ok) and proceeded to brutally and systematically dismantle said suits. The suits had 3 pulse cannons, a flamer and two weapon systems I can´t remember between them.

Points to Damocles Crusade, and Fire Warrior.

Kilkrazy wrote:

IvanTih wrote:My final words on this subjects that IOM steamrolls Tau(points to Sabbath's World Crusade).



Automatically Appended Next Post:
A Deathwatch Space Marine in the Last chancers novel casually walked through the combined firepower of 3 Crisis Suits (wrecked his armor quite a bit, but he was a-ok) and proceeded to brutally and systematically dismantle said suits. The suits had 3 pulse cannons, a flamer and two weapon systems I can´t remember between them.

Points to Damocles Crusade, and Fire Warrior.

Which contradict almost everything else,thus other examples are correct(and remember kids Tau are only truly superior to the Imperium when Andy Hoare writes it,who's space battles also contradict every other source).

Ha Ha, it wasn't your final word!

Kilkrazy wrote:Ha Ha, it wasn't your final word!

Yeah.

I love how this boils down to "i agree with fluff only as far as it agrees with me"

Retribution wrote:I love how this boils down to "i agree with fluff only as far as it agrees with me"

No it doesn't,I don't use a source if it particulary contradicts majority of sources.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:Agreed, it's the same as if anyone else had created a thread saying "why I hate the Imperium, why I hate Orks, Why I hate Chaos".

Who could possibly hate orks?!!?!?? They're so loveable, in that killing blood thirsty way.

The only race I "hate" are necrons, and that's only because they're creepy....

I do believe this thread should end soon. We aren't getting anywhere, and we've begun to repeat things already previously stated. Unless anyone has something new?

IvanTih wrote:

Retribution wrote:I love how this boils down to "i agree with fluff only as far as it agrees with me"

No it doesn't,I don't use a source if it particulary contradicts majority of sources.

So you don't agree with fluff that doesn't agree with you, yes? The Tau Codex is fluff (DUH), IA:Taros is fluff, Fire Warrior is fluff (as much as 40k novels can be counted as fluff)

Geeze if we took every published piece of artwork, novel and so on as legit fluff we would have such a huge headache.

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that really counts as fluff is whats in the core 40k rulebook and in any of the codexes. Anything else is fanfiction.

Retribution wrote:

IvanTih wrote:

Retribution wrote:I love how this boils down to "i agree with fluff only as far as it agrees with me"

No it doesn't,I don't use a source if it particulary contradicts majority of sources.

So you don't agree with fluff that doesn't agree with you, yes? The Tau Codex is fluff (DUH), IA:Taros is fluff, Fire Warrior is fluff (as much as 40k novels can be counted as fluff)

Everything in 40k is cannon,but some things are not used like that charge in DOW intro.



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juraigamer wrote:Geeze if we took every published piece of artwork, novel and so on as legit fluff we would have such a huge headache.

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that really counts as fluff is whats in the core 40k rulebook and in any of the codexes. Anything else is fanfiction.

Then you are wrong.


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In general, newer edition stuff > Older edition stuff

Codexes and main book > fluff books (like 13th crusade) > white dwarfs > novels by main dudes > other novels > other stuff > game stats (which are only useful in really, really simplistic things like 'tau have better armor than Impguard').

I think that general is how it goes.

Except, of course, that that is your opinion on the "ordering" of canon.

There is NO official line on canon.

Erm... have you ever heard of the 'Division of labour'? Well, it makes people very efficient. Tau have been using Division of labour for most of their existence, and haven't spent time and energy trying to kill other tau and decimate tau cities. Thus they acquired better technology faster. This is awfully easy to understand, and thus makes the "oh, i hate tau because the tau backstory does not make sense hurr durr" invalid.

+EDIT+
And hating the tau because the IoM are better means you should hate everyone but the necrons and chaos- beacuse they are clearly the two strongest forces in 40k.

juraigamer wrote:Take our current world for instance, how far have we gone in 100 years? What was it like in 1910? What is it like now? Now take out all the infighting and imagine if the world was unified and how far we would be.

War is great for science, technology and industry.

WW2 led directly to computing.

If not for the cold war it's likely that no-one would have gone to the moon.

Diversity drives innovation.


Of course, this could be a human trait - alien races with utterly different psychologies might do their best R&D under better circumstances. I think it's unlikely though. The ability to adapt and innovate whilst under pressure/hardship is a survival trait. The ability to do that when everyone's happy is not.


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Bossasaurus wrote:Erm... have you ever heard of the 'Division of labour'? Well, it makes people very efficient. Tau have been using Division of labour for most of their existence, and haven't spent time and energy trying to kill other tau and decimate tau cities. Thus they acquired better technology faster. This is awfully easy to understand, and thus makes the "oh, i hate tau because the tau backstory does not make sense hurr durr" invalid.

A caste system is not the same as division of labour. We don't have enough details on their working practices to determine if they have always used division of labour working practices (or if they use them at all).

On the contrary, assigning people to particular stations because of their caste - not because of their aptitude - is inefficient.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Except, of course, that that is your opinion on the "ordering" of canon.

There is NO official line on canon.

I know,but I wanted to use that as a unofficial guideline.

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Bossasaurus wrote:Erm... have you ever heard of the 'Division of labour'? Well, it makes people very efficient. Tau have been using Division of labour for most of their existence, and haven't spent time and energy trying to kill other tau and decimate tau cities. Thus they acquired better technology faster. This is awfully easy to understand, and thus makes the "oh, i hate tau because the tau backstory does not make sense hurr durr" invalid.

+EDIT+
And hating the tau because the IoM are better means you should hate everyone but the necrons and chaos- beacuse they are clearly the two strongest forces in 40k.

I hate Tau because they require industrial amounts of plot armor to stay alive.

Retribution wrote:
So you don't agree with fluff that doesn't agree with you, yes? The Tau Codex is fluff (DUH), IA:Taros is fluff, Fire Warrior is fluff (as much as 40k novels can be counted as fluff)

juraigamer wrote:Geeze if we took every published piece of artwork, novel and so on as legit fluff we would have such a huge headache.

+1 to the second quote.

Seriously, if firewarrior counts, all the bad things coming from DoW count too. Plus razorbacks can tranform into land raiders ...
I'd consider the novels descending from computergames as canonical as any fanfic. The reputation of those series isn't positive.

Commonly agreeable sources:

- rulebook
- codices
- expansions ( apoc. planetstrike, spearhead, IA )

more often than not accepted sources:
- BL novels

inacceptable sources:
- certain authors,
- fanwank

Ivan - then if you agree it is only unofficial (your opinion) then saying "you're wrong" is a little harsh, as they are not objectively wrong.

Fearspect wrote:The big problem I have with the Tau story relating to their advancement is that it actually makes very little sense, with what we know.

Advancement throughout history has been a direct result of conflict. Without it, there is no push for innovation and technological advancement becomes stagnant. Look at how advanced the greatest warring empires were within their time compared to the rest of the world: Ancient China, Rome at its height, Europe as compared to the Americas and Africa a few centuries ago.

With an entire planet at peace, I have no confidence in their ability to improve, especially as related to their ability to bring war to another race.

Um that's the whole point.

The entire "rapid-tau-advancement-story", from its surprising speed, the mightly convenient warp-storm cutting them off, the "sudden appearance" of the Etheral to top it off with a reliable, "irresistable" command; the thing was explicitly made to look fishy and imply that someone's been tinkering with the.



Also:

I am amazed at how much hate Tau are getting simply because they couldn't steamroll the Imperium in a head-on fight (not like any other 40K faction ever stood a snowball's chance in hell of doing it either, but, well, nevermind).

A good galactic (background-)story doesn't necessarly need that. In fact, I would argue that a fair bit of Tau Empire background takes major inspiration from Asimov's Foundation Series, specifically the "thousand year plan"as implemented by Hari Seldon for, to quote him in Asimov's book, "The Greater Good"...

In other words, both stories deal with galactic civilisations that got an artificial boost in technology, knowledge, as well as societal traits (inclusive of other races, fairly unaffected by the Warp, in case of the Tau) not with the objective to "beat" the big galactic empire on the decline, but, at least in Asimov's version, to mitigate the negative effects of the galactic empires inevitable collapse and to, quote, "reduce 30,000 years of Dark Ages and barbarism to a single millennium".

In this sense, the Tau Empire is (IMO) meant to conjur certain parallels to Asimov's "second Empire" in the 40K universe; they are not meant to beat the Imperium of Mankind or the Nids or whoever in a one-on-one fight. Rather, their purpose is that they've been "made" to "keep things going" after the Imperium "inevitably" collapses (lacking the Foundation series psychohistory, the plan would have to be made up by someone with future-sight/precoginition in 40K; which in turn would support the link to Eldar from Xenology). The Tau are thus more akin to a sort of pan-galactic insurance policy so that the galaxy does not fall to the crazies should the Imperium ever give out.

Also, assuming these parallels to Asimov hold, there would perhaps even be multiple "Tau Empires". Not necessarly the same biological species or the same technology, but certainly multiple minor civilizations that got tinkered with and who are now ringfencing the Imperium of Man to hedge against the catastrophe of its likely/inevitable/probable collapse.


Of course, it should be noted that the thousand-year-plan in Asimov's books crashes and burns. The same might be true for 40K.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Ivan - then if you agree it is only unofficial (your opinion) then saying "you're wrong" is a little harsh, as they are not objectively wrong.

And for the love of god provide that damn BL quote?
Official stance is that everything is cannon.

IvanTih wrote:Everything in 40k is cannon,but some things are not used like that charge in DOW intro.

Everything in 40k may be cannon, but not canon
Since C.S.Goto we know that some sources are just too dumb to be considered true.

1hadhq wrote:

Retribution wrote:
So you don't agree with fluff that doesn't agree with you, yes? The Tau Codex is fluff (DUH), IA:Taros is fluff, Fire Warrior is fluff (as much as 40k novels can be counted as fluff)

juraigamer wrote:Geeze if we took every published piece of artwork, novel and so on as legit fluff we would have such a huge headache.

+1 to the second quote.

Seriously, if firewarrior counts, all the bad things coming from DoW count too.

This is an interesting one, because of course one of the commonly quoted anti-Tau passages is from DoW.

Except that it isn't.

What people quote is an interpretation of the information given in DoW, altered to make Tau seem as evil as the IoM.

If you go back to the original source, it is different.

Of course, if we dismiss DoW as a source of canonical fluff, it is all irrelevant.

Ivan- please provide a quote that "everything" is CANON.

@KK:

DoW is a computer game and has to adapt the story to the needs of such product.
Novels based on PC-games may not follow the background of 40k itself as close as a book meant to support the tabletop or just the 40k-verse would.

I don't think we should dismiss DoW ( and any other 'software' based 40k ) as part of the fluff, but consider it as questionable source and therefore
I agree it is possibly not canon. Now, canon is defined by authority, and since GW seems to subscribe to "possible futures" and "everything we told you is a lie",
lack of quotes to base : a) this is canon and b) this is not canon
leads directly to the conclusion:
1) if an agreement of the fanbase decides what is canon and what is not, it is still reached without official consent and will be most likely ignored by GW if they don't
like ( copypaste ) it.
2) canon is a term used for sources exclusively used, 40k may have more than 1 universal truth, so canon would be fine when used for teachings of the ecclesiarchy
but isn't acceptable to sort the background as none of the GW (and its subcompanies) publications may be 'holy books'.
3) some authors should be forgotten. Good example Kroothawk brought up: C.S.goto.



believing the lies of xenos is treason. Failure to discomfort the enemy will be dealt with accordingly!

Kilkrazy wrote:

1hadhq wrote:Seriously, if firewarrior counts, all the bad things coming from DoW count too.

This is an interesting one, because of course one of the commonly quoted anti-Tau passages is from DoW.
Except that it isn't.
What people quote is an interpretation of the information given in DoW, altered to make Tau seem as evil as the IoM.
If you go back to the original source, it is different.
Of course, if we dismiss DoW as a source of canonical fluff, it is all irrelevant.

First we were talking about the Fire Warrior novel, which is not that bad for an ego-shooter novelization and if you keep in mind that the main character is a totally unusual Tau under weird circumstances.

On DoW: The so called quote (actually Tau haters never quote sources because they know quite well that there are no quotes, check the threads if you don't believe me) happens in a world that doesn't exist in 40k. In 40k it is an Imperial planet, not a Tau planet. Just an artifact of having to provide an alternatve ending for every race winning.