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I understand humans wearing no helmets because they are space marines. But tau vision is BAD. Like able to see slightly broader wavelengths, but their eyes take longer to focus. The helmets probably augment their vision and act like glasses. Why do the fire warrior shas'ui not wear helmets, which is like me charging into battle with no glasses firing a gun. Essentially, Tau Shas'ui don't make sense.

There was a good point made in another thread that the primary reference for Tau having bad eyesight is the Uplifting Primer, that also describes them as being afraid of hairy people...

They evolved as hunters and as they are never described as having supernatural hearing abilities or other kinds of hunting senses one must conclude that they can actually see pretty well.

Alternatively, contact lenses.

 Flinty wrote:
There was a good point made in another thread that the primary reference for Tau having bad eyesight is the Uplifting Primer, that also describes them as being afraid of hairy people...

They evolved as hunters and as they are never described as having supernatural hearing abilities or other kinds of hunting senses one must conclude that they can actually see pretty well.

Alternatively, contact lenses.

The Tau codex states that they are genetically adapted for shooting. Going along with what you've said, crummy eyesight would not be a genetic adaptation for shooting/hunting. Why they are BS 3 can only assumed to be due to 'game balance', because the fluff certainly supports better than that.

That the fire warriors spend their entire lives training...and fall short of an imperial guardsman, with a week's worth of intense training, on a ship, on the way to war zone X, in terms of raw, unequipped capability, just goes to show how "well adapted" they are. They're naturally poor warriors. They might have good hunting instincts, but they kinda suck at war, hahaha!

 Fos Kenos wrote:
That the fire warriors spend their entire lives training...and fall short of an imperial guardsman, with a week's worth of intense training, on a ship, on the way to war zone X, in terms of raw, unequipped capability, just goes to show how "well adapted" they are. They're naturally poor warriors. They might have good hunting instincts, but they kinda suck at war, hahaha!

And with the exception of close combat, Tau are as good as Cadians, who learn to strip rifles before they can walk and are generally recognized as the Imperium's finest line troopers. With the relatively limited range of stats in 40k you can go to 2 extremes for this kind of thing.

Pretty much. The Tau fire caste are better fighters than your average Imperial Guardsman.

Also, the helmet thing is only a visual thing to mark them as a shas'ui in the TT game.

I'm just going to consider this entire thread flamebait, personally.

The 40k lexicanum wiki expressly says: "Tau vision is considered slightly superior to that of humans - their visual spectrum extends a little more into the ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. However their pupils do not dilate, giving poorer depth perception and providing slower vision focusing reflexes than humans" They focus slowly and their depth perception, thus how well they can aim guns, is awful.

I always assumed tau just kinda threw they helmets down after they where damaged

SirSertile wrote:
The 40k lexicanum wiki expressly says: "Tau vision is considered slightly superior to that of humans - their visual spectrum extends a little more into the ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. However their pupils do not dilate, giving poorer depth perception and providing slower vision focusing reflexes than humans" They focus slowly and their depth perception, thus how well they can aim guns, is awful.

Citation needed. The Physiology section of Lexicanum says:

" Their eyes can see into the infrared and ultraviolet. Tau eyesight is good, but they focus on distant objects slower than humans. "

And even that has no citation of source material.

 Flinty wrote:

SirSertile wrote:
The 40k lexicanum wiki expressly says: "Tau vision is considered slightly superior to that of humans - their visual spectrum extends a little more into the ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. However their pupils do not dilate, giving poorer depth perception and providing slower vision focusing reflexes than humans" They focus slowly and their depth perception, thus how well they can aim guns, is awful.

Citation needed. The Physiology section of Lexicanum says:

" Their eyes can see into the infrared and ultraviolet. Tau eyesight is good, but they focus on distant objects slower than humans. "

And even that has no citation of source material.

WD October 2001. First article about Tau. ( Index Xenos. )

Neato, citation accepted

Having said that though, just because ther eyes might react more slowly than humans doesn't give them bad eyesight.

Then again, if the eyesight is very slow to focus, how would one adjust to enemies at different distances.
For example, if a Tau Shas'ui is shooting an ork across the battlefield, and then the orks start a head-on charge, the Shas'ui would have to be constantly refocusing, which would take a lot longer, and decrease how accurately the Tau could shoot. Essentially, the Tau would have a handicap on the battlefield. Bad idea.

 Fos Kenos wrote:
That the fire warriors spend their entire lives training...and fall short of an imperial guardsman, with a week's worth of intense training, on a ship, on the way to war zone X, in terms of raw, unequipped capability, just goes to show how "well adapted" they are. They're naturally poor warriors. They might have good hunting instincts, but they kinda suck at war, hahaha!

With that line of thinking, Imperial Guard are only slighter stronger and tougher than a cowardly goblin half their size.

Also by the same coin, a mighty 8 foot tall space marine is only equal in strength to two tiny goblins, each of which is maybe a quarter of his size and no-where near as physically built.

The stat ranges in 40k are just estimates; there can be a big difference between the actual strength of models with the same actual strength. For instance Orks have arms literally the same size as a Guardmen's body, but they're both still strength 3?

SirSertile wrote:
Then again, if the eyesight is very slow to focus, how would one adjust to enemies at different distances.
For example, if a Tau Shas'ui is shooting an ork across the battlefield, and then the orks start a head-on charge, the Shas'ui would have to be constantly refocusing, which would take a lot longer, and decrease how accurately the Tau could shoot. Essentially, the Tau would have a handicap on the battlefield. Bad idea.

But it doesn't say that they take "very long" to focus. The text says that they have good eyesight but focus more slowly than humans. It doesn't define how much slower this occurs and by the statement that they have good eyesight one must conclude that its not really a significant difference.

Tau w/o helmets make as much sense as any other race w/o helmets. It's an option that GW provides for people to visibly identify their squad leaders who aren't given a differentiated paint job.

I'm forced to wonder if the OP has ever even seen a Tau Shas ui, since the vast majority of them are depicted as wearing the same helmet as the rest of the squad, only painted to match the Sept color rather than the armor color.

I have seen some Shas'ui helmets, but I guess the rarity of the unhelmeted Shas'ui is due to the fact that they all died in battle. RIP Shas'ui without helmets