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Tl;dr: tau suits and vehicles should have a bs3+ to reflect more experience and better a.i. support. But with that increase points by 5 maybe 10 per model.

I have noticed that there is no such differrence of the ranks in tau beyond basic named warrior(ie breacher fire warrior), 'ui, and 'vre. I've been a lore fan of tau since i could preorder my 3rd edition codex way back in the yonder years of 3rd edition.

The basic warrior, the fire warrior, now either strike or breacher used to hold the rank of 'la, which is essentially private to corporal. The 'ui designation showed that the fire warrior has experience and qualification for his trial by fire which when passed he obtained the rank 'ui which would be the Sergeant rank. Then we come to the grizzled veterans of the Cadres the 'vre rank. The 'vre have also passed their trial by fire and are considered the elites of skill and leadership only under commanders, the 'el and 'o ranks. The 'el rank is a designation of a junior commander, think between platoon and company commander because hunter cadre are organized to be self-sufficient in whatever specific mission they will fulfill. The 'o are anywhere between a hunter cadre commander to the supreme commander of the campaign.

Looking at this rank structure I feel there is a clear missed opportunity to expand on this. At the moment a fire warrior sgt ('ui) is the same rank as a crisis suit pilot. There should be a differrent rank designation for the standard suit pilot as the people chosen to be one would have been chosen fron the ranks of 'ui then given training to become a pilot.

If there is a clear distinction of troop ranks then the tabletop rules could reflect the lore better. The battlesuits and vehicles have highly advanced a.i. support systems, but then why is it that the humble kroot can fire his weapon at the same BS as a crisis suit? Or a hammerhead? The rules are not represented effectively because when the Tau get new things or when there is new rules or an edition GW hamstrings the Tau's flow of the stats in codexs by leaving the crisis team members and vehicle pilots on the same bs as the lowest tier and least experienced and least supported tau warriors.

I dont mind if i see a 5 or 10pt increase on all suits and vehicles to increase their BS by 1 increasing it to a 3+. This would show veterancy amd the support of a.i. functions from lore supporting rules on the tabletop. How do tau 'vre go from a 4+ to hit to a 2+ to hit just by being promoted to commander?

So I'll start by saying I'm not necessarily opposed to this idea, and I agree it's a little weird that suit pilots seem to jump from BS 4+ to BS 2+. Given that markerlights are a thing, I could see it being an intentional decision to prevent players from combining markerlights with a ton of BS 3+ base units, but I'm not sure that concern invalidates your suggestion. Now that out of the way, I'm going to spend the rest of this post playing devil's advocate.

* You could argue that piloting a suit takes a dramatically different set of skills than being a rifleman. It's possible that all that extra training goes into teaching them how to pull off flight maneuvers and operate the weird lazy-eyed blink-click interface of the suits. Or simply learning how to operate ion/plasma/missile weapons safely instead of their old pulse weapons. Ditto tank pilots; spending time shooting a rifle doesn't necessarily make you better at lining up shots with a hammerhead.

* The AI targeting could be argued to already be factored into their BS4+. Or you could argue that the targeting programs don't really kick in until you provide them with markerlight data.

* Hammerheads already have the Targeting Array special rule to represent the tech assisting their pilots in shooting.

* Being a higher rank doesn't necessarily make you a better shot among other factions, so we don't necessarily need to make tau an exception. Terminators and sternguard have the same BS3+ that tactical and assault marines do.

* Reasonable people could probably make the argument that the gap between a BS2+ commander and a BS4+ cirsis suit is solved equally well by making commanders BS3+. After all, the fireblade is 3+, presumably due to his experience with pulse weapons. Maybe BS3+ (not 2+) is what happens when tau have time to accrue experience.

* Aren't tau (including crisis suits) considered pretty good at the moment? Do we need to power the faction up right now?

Crisis suits have always been good but i see what you mean for the tanks targetting array. Maybe it would make sense if the crisis suit stay at bs4+ but get rerolls built into the suit. Maybe 1 reroll per like how the tanks get.

But the markerlight portion about it making the tau systems all of a sudden work does kind of make sense because the snipets of chatter from marines and guard alike from the domacles campaign and beyond talk about seeing essentially laser pointers on their guys then BAM a railgun hole where the chest cavity should be. But in that sense it talks about how the tau fight like ghosts and the move shoot move was the hallmark of original crisis suit special rules, because everyone had jump packs that moved 12" but the tau had jet packs that moved 6" in both movement phase and combat phase.(charge and combat used to be 1 phase)

I know that the current iteration has this as a strategem strike and fade and it would be broken to have every jet pack trooper but i think a WL trait or maybe a commander ability would have been perfect to represent this.(i dont really like how strategems work in game.)

The bodyguards are veteran crisis suit pilots as well so it would make sense for them to hit on 3+ though. They should be in the same league as a astra militarum command squad. Cause these guys are just run of the mill humanoids that just happen to have a bit better tech.

And on the note of giving them a bit of power but also shifting points should be fine i think the broadsides are in a good spot now that they are not core. But the bodyguards, especially now that the bodyguard rules is significantly nerffed could use this boost, they already cost 5 more points than standard suits and lose the support system slot, so if you want a support system or two they have to sacrifice weapon slots for them. But like i mentioned in the first post increase their points 5 or 10 or make adding more suits the same points hike like adding same weapons on the same suit.

Giving bodyguards BS3+ would make plenty of sense. I just worry about them being so similar to non-bodyguards that one ends up making the other redundant.

As for jump-shoot-jump, my eldar just got theirs back, and in a more fiddly and time-consuming form than I expected. So I'm not sure a return to JSJ for tau is out of the question.