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Just something that started bugging me today.

Has it been mentioned anywhere who does the maintenance on all the suits during a military campaign? Is the shas'ui himself responsible for the functionality of his suit sans any massive damage that would render it useless. Or is there a bunch of earth caste engineers following each hunter cadre in order to keep the suits functioning. The way I see it the 3 smaller suits could probably be maintained by the Fire Warriors with the aid of drones but what about the Riptide? That thing is so massive I'd wager it would need scores of earth caste just to get it going on the 4th day of the campaign.

EDIT: And the whole caste thing, maybe the Fire caste just knows how to pilot the suit but dont have a clue as to how to repair the thing. Keep the castes apart but still functioning together.

There isnt much information given on this subject but i would say thats the fire caste members would all care for their own wargear, especially battlesuit. The tau are a very technologically advanced race after all and most would be competent enough to repair a battle suit.

Fire caste might know enough to jury rig a battlefield repair, but for proper repair and maintenance they would need earth caste engineers. No reason why earth caste repair crews wouldn't follow the front line troops around provided they don't end up in the firing line too much.

1.) As said, not much explicit official info on that, but I have no doubt that Earth caste is responsible for that. Gav Thorpe's Kill Team novel features a storage hall with suits, but I think there is not much info to find.
2.) Here a fan's vision (Golden Demon winner):

3.) Personally I use this Earth Caste Dropship for transport and maintenance of Crisis Suits (OOP Battletech Leopard):

Not my model, mine will be converted a bit with a.o. the Skyray turret on top and painted in Sac'ea scheme.

I imagine the Earth Caste gives everything a tune-up before the Cadre is deployed from orbit or nearby Kor'Vattra.
After the battle, the Earth Caste begins repairs once the Cadre returns.

Tau don't sit around holding ground or cruise about looking for fights. They withdraw (presumably back to orbit where their wargear is repaired) and then redeploy.
There's no need to drag Earth Caste Engineers around when
1)They have self repairing tech, and
2)They probably don't spend much time away.

But that's just my guess based on what we know.

I agree with archonate. They probably deploy from space where they get suited up and everything then return after a fight.

From the codex there is something saying that cadres will retreat if to many casualties will happen. In my opinion that could mean if battle suits are damaged out of repair by the fire castes ability.

That being said I'm sure in the midst of a battle the fire caste who is piloting the suit has some ability to maintain his suit. An army this advanced wouldn't send it's troops out without at least some basic knowledge of how to repair their suits and war gear .

On the other hand the codex also mentions that some crisis suit pilots go through many suits. This might mean that the suits themselves are irreparable if damaged to much and might just be used as scrap metal by the earth caste. I would imagine that their bases have a large number of suits available for the fire caste to use while the earth caste engineers repair the ones that were damaged in the battle because I would imagine it would take time to repair the high tech equipment even with the help of drones.

chiefbigredman wrote:

That being said I'm sure in the midst of a battle the fire caste who is piloting the suit has some ability to maintain his suit. An army this advanced wouldn't send it's troops out without at least some basic knowledge of how to repair their suits and war gear .

This is a big one I think, I'm sure crisis suit pilots are more than enthusiastic enough about their jobs and rigs that they learn the ins and outs of it, enough to be able to do field repairs and whatnot, but simply don't have the tools or equipment to do advanced maintenance. I wish we could get a book with some of the nitty gritty about Tau technology. A whole bunch of cool stories, some advanced descriptions and basic principles for the community to theorycraft with, something along the lines of Xenology.

In the tau codex there is the chart for the forces participating in the mugalath bay expedition. In one of the boxes there is an earth caste support group with combat maintenance as their mission that arrives with the second wave. So presumably the fire caste pilots keep their suot in a workable condition until the area is suitably pacified and the earth caste can arrive and do a more comprehensive repair.

I bet that the Ethereals attempt to separate the responsibilities of the castes as much as possible to prevent rebellions. I remember reading that in the previous Tau codex it was divided up that way at least in part so that for there to be any large scale Tau rebellion it would require the cooperation of at least 3 of the castes (fire to fight, earth to repair, and air to actually move them anywhere).

As such I could see it being very possible that fire caste pilots aren't instructed in any kind of mechanical underpinnings of their suits beyond the most basic of "this is how your suit works. Here are the most common things that can go wrong with it. here is how to fix those things in combat."

That said, i would imagine that at least some percentage, perhaps even a majority, of pilots would be interested enough in their suits to look up more information/try to observe the Earth caste repair teams. I imagine that most information is available relatively freely in the Tau Empire, as long as it has been approved for public consumption and doesn't present the Empire negatively, so a fire caste suit jockey getting a hand on the earth caste tech manual for his suit could probably be done reasonably easily.

In closing, I imagine it would be pretty similar to the military pilots of our modern military. They go through training about how their gear works and how to use it (although I don't think they get as much aerodynamics/flight theory knowledge as an actual aerospace engineer) as well as some brief maintenance instruction, but a pilot pretty much never does any actual work on his plane.

A modern soldier can maintain and even field strip a rifle and put it back together. Most of the time that is all it needs, routine maintenance, but there may be a time where there is a critical failure, and you need new parts to rebuild the rifle. There may be one soldier in your unit that can do this, but they would just go to an armorer.

XV8s are pretty advanced, I can see a pilot popping off armor and checking sub systems, but anything beyond that it would be earth caste.


A similar idea came up in the Robotech universe (old rpg or fiction). Pilots were trained to be pilots and that was it. even the most basic repair was the realm of robotechnology engineers. Paranoid mindset of a post civil/global war. if a pilot went rogue, it was only a matter of time before his mecha was offline and he could not repair it.

In a society as rigid as Tau, I can see these clear divisions being maintained for control.


Last point, in the fiction about Farsight "The Arkunasha War" he bargains with the earth caste. Basically the Earth caste told him he had cut back his training exercises, because the repair/maintenance time was cutting into the productive time of the Earth caste. Farsight asked that his fire warrior be shown how to do the basics and he would have his firewarriors help the earth caste with the mining operation. This implies up to that point they did no regular maintenance on thier own and just handed it off.

I can believe that the average Fire Caste member knows how to fix the sort of everyday wear and tear their equipment is going to suffer, with Earth Caste contingents being kept behind the lines for intensive repairs.

I also expect that specially adapted drones would be kept handy closer to the front lines for repair duties.

Basic maintenance skills.

You cant train to use and fight in advanced tech like a battle suit and not know basic maintenance skills to make at least small repairs.

I agree that there are probably some sort of repair drones that would make sense but as I said before they must do some on their own maintenance but nothing that would pose a threat to the Earth caste's job

Repair drones, modular suit systems, smart repair routines, even limited self repair are all likely part and parcel to Tau support units, and the Tau do not routinely return to orbit after engagements, they maintain a on planet prescense, although likely highly mobile.
My guess would be since in the new codex they allow vehicles to mount a self repair upgrade, there may even be modified devilfish that act as mobile repair bays.

Fire warrior pilots may know how to switch weapon pods, replace fuel rods, or basic repairs, but likely any major battle damage will be turned over to the proper specialist, just as in our modern militaries.