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juraigamer wrote:

BeefCakeSoup wrote:

This is why we need a Warhammer 40K Fluff book dedicated to Bible duty for facts.

We only need it so people that have hard on's for marine uberness can be held in check.

This thread has completely digressed off topic, return to topic already.

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground. With kroot alone, enough can kill a marine, and the ratio of marines to kroot is something like 1 to 100.

Remember too that a kroot warsphere is one of the largest ships known capable of landing on a planet. It's a 9-16 km wide landing craft. (since supposedly warspheres are made larger and larger over time)

Nerivant wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground.

Basically, yeah. They just don't have the numbers to take out an entire empire.

They could do it, but only if they do it smart. They can't take every planet out by hand. What they need to do is hop around the empire destroying trade ships, com relays, and using hit teams to kill eternals. Isolate the planets kill off their leadership and then wait for them to go back to their old habits of killing each other.

nomotog wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground.

Basically, yeah. They just don't have the numbers to take out an entire empire.

They could do it, but only if they do it smart. They can't take every planet out by hand. What they need to do is hop around the empire destroying trade ships, com relays, and using hit teams to kill eternals. Isolate the planets kill off their leadership and then wait for them to go back to their old habits of killing each other.

I sincerely doubt the the Tau would turn to infighting if a few Ethereals were killed off.

It's hard to kill a large subset of any species that's reached the diaspora phase. I've actually expended some brainpower on this, as it once occurred to me that I might not have the matierals or means to eliminate this wretched humanity before it becomes space borne (though so far, it's lack of progress in that direction is buying me time).

The Inquisition has, in fluff, considered a tailored virus targeting the earth caste of the Tau to undermine the empire. This plan is utterly flawed. Once a species exists on dozens of planets, even a disease that can spread while benign and then suddenly become lethal would spread insufficiently for it to have meaningful effect. The same holds true for a virus designed to create errors in replication at the genetic level over successive generations.

When you get down to it, the only workable approach is a scorched earth approach, shattering the planets they inhabit with a relativistic rock (IE the two colliding objects combined impact exceeds the speed of light, from the relative point of the planets surface). However, given the Tau's large scale naval operations, this is also difficult to achieve.

nomotog wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground.

Basically, yeah. They just don't have the numbers to take out an entire empire.

They could do it, but only if they do it smart. They can't take every planet out by hand. What they need to do is hop around the empire destroying trade ships, com relays, and using hit teams to kill eternals. Isolate the planets kill off their leadership and then wait for them to go back to their old habits of killing each other.

Problem is, they Imperium has little to no intel on the inner workings of the Tau Empire.

It would be a bloody maze of death where one mistake could result in a single fleet battle in which the chapter finds itself in the middle of thousands of Tau ships or like the DGC on a Sept world populated by billions.

To defeat the Tau you would need countless Guard Regiments, a vast armada, a chapter of marines, titan support and a solid gameplan of taking worlds one at a time, fortifying them and advancing slowly but steadily.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:

nomotog wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground.

Basically, yeah. They just don't have the numbers to take out an entire empire.

They could do it, but only if they do it smart. They can't take every planet out by hand. What they need to do is hop around the empire destroying trade ships, com relays, and using hit teams to kill eternals. Isolate the planets kill off their leadership and then wait for them to go back to their old habits of killing each other.

Problem is, they Imperium has little to no intel on the inner workings of the Tau Empire.

It would be a bloody maze of death where one mistake could result in a single fleet battle in which the chapter finds itself in the middle of thousands of Tau ships or like the DGC on a Sept world populated by billions.

To defeat the Tau you would need countless Guard Regiments, a vast armada, a chapter of marines, titan support and a solid gameplan of taking worlds one at a time, fortifying them and advancing slowly but steadily.

Exactly. "Assassinate the Ethereals" is a great plan, until you realize the Imperium has no idea where they would be, how many there are, how spread out they are, how well defended they are, or what the Tau would do in response.

Nerivant wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground.

Basically, yeah. They just don't have the numbers to take out an entire empire.

With respect: it's situational.

The Tau are not going to be gathered in any one particular place in numbers enough to prevent a full Black Templar warfleet breaking through and razing a few worlds.

"Razing a world" in 40k is an entirely different thing than "razing a few buildings". They wouldn't be landing troops on the ground, they'd be obliterating any and all life from orbit.

Now, if their goal was to destroy a planet's infrastructure to capture it?
Yeah. They'd be royally boned. If their goal was simply to burn the worlds down and damn the consequences, such as destroying the most valuable commodity in 40k(worlds with resources and able to sustain life), there's not much the Tau can do to prevent it unless they start gathering their fleets at a single planet constantly.

Remember though, everything goes the Tau's way, especially when they mobilise 25 billion Firewrarriors that they don't have.

Assassinating the Etherials isn't out of the Imperium's power though.


a couple of Callidus assassins and they could get the job done in a few years.


they enter the Tau empire, kill and take on the persona of increasingly high ranking officers so they get closer to the Etherials.

once they kill th first one, they can take on his persona and use it to kill each and every etherial one by one.


killing the Etherials would certaintly cause the Tau to splinter apart and form little petty empires like the Farsight enclaves.

they would become more agressive, but not united.

Kanluwen wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground.

Basically, yeah. They just don't have the numbers to take out an entire empire.

With respect: it's situational.

The Tau are not going to be gathered in any one particular place in numbers enough to prevent a full Black Templar warfleet breaking through and razing a few worlds.

"Razing a world" in 40k is an entirely different thing than "razing a few buildings". They wouldn't be landing troops on the ground, they'd be obliterating any and all life from orbit.

Now, if their goal was to destroy a planet's infrastructure to capture it?
Yeah. They'd be royally boned. If their goal was simply to burn the worlds down and damn the consequences, such as destroying the most valuable commodity in 40k(worlds with resources and able to sustain life), there's not much the Tau can do to prevent it unless they start gathering their fleets at a single planet constantly.

I think your making it sound to easy to raze a world. There are going to be guards space defense platforms, protection fleets, parole fleets. It's not like you will find undefended planets. It gets even worse if the tau get advance warning. They can move ships where you are likely to strike maybe even set up a trap. (If you do find a undefended world. You know that is a trap) Finally there is the blue moon events. You jump to a planet to find a massive nid invasion, or ork fleet.

Just nuking it all from orbit is still hard.

iproxtaco wrote:Remember though, everything goes the Tau's way, especially when they mobilise 25 billion Firewrarriors that they don't have.

How many do you think they have.

Grey Templar wrote:Assassinating the Etherials isn't out of the Imperium's power though.


a couple of Callidus assassins and they could get the job done in a few years.


they enter the Tau empire, kill and take on the persona of increasingly high ranking officers so they get closer to the Etherials.

once they kill th first one, they can take on his persona and use it to kill each and every etherial one by one.


killing the Etherials would certaintly cause the Tau to splinter apart and form little petty empires like the Farsight enclaves.

they would become more agressive, but not united.

More then a few years. It's a long term project, but other that that I think it could work.

Edit: Oh wait, how are they going to act like an eternal without being able to do the whole mind control thing? Also It's not that they are hard to find. There are just a lot of them.

Grey Templar wrote:Assassinating the Etherials isn't out of the Imperium's power though.


a couple of Callidus assassins and they could get the job done in a few years.


they enter the Tau empire, kill and take on the persona of increasingly high ranking officers so they get closer to the Etherials.

once they kill th first one, they can take on his persona and use it to kill each and every etherial one by one.

There isn't enough Polymorphine in the galaxy, mate.

Grey Templar wrote:
killing the Etherials would certaintly cause the Tau to splinter apart and form little petty empires like the Farsight enclaves.

they would become more agressive, but not united.

No, it's not certain that would happen. They have someone now that they didn't have then; the Greater Good.

nomotog wrote:
I think your making it sound to easy to raze a world. There are going to be guards space defense platforms, protection fleets, parole fleets. It's not like you will find undefended planets. It gets even worse if the tau get advance warning. They can move ships where you are likely to strike maybe even set up a trap. (If you do find a undefended world. You know that is a trap) Finally there is the blue moon events. You jump to a planet to find a massive nid invasion, or ork fleet.

Just nuking it all from orbit is still hard.

With the firepower of the entire Black Templars fleet, it's not really that hard TBH. All they need to do is make sure they get a "Licence to Virus Bomb/launch Cyclonic Torpedo" from the before they set off. While the doesn't exactly look at the Templars with favour, I'm pretty sure they'd approve of the Tau being wiped out if the Templars are going anyway. There's once again the issue with Imperial interstellar travel being faster than the Tau method, so the Templars could leapfrog from planet to planet, making short stops to get in range for Exterminatus. Since the Tau wouldn't know that the Templars are coming until they're hit, they'd have to somehow catch up to the Templar fleet or retreat to defend the more valuable worlds, in which case the Templars can merrily go home satisfied with the fact that they just decimated the Tau Empire's fighting potential.

Just as someone pointed out a few pages ago, it all boils down to whether the Tau fleet somehow manages to catch up to the Templars or not. If the entire Tau fleet manages to trap the Templar fleet, not even the most devout BT fanboy (read: I) would be able to deny that the Tau would win. If the Templars just play their cards right though, they'd wipe out such a substantial part of the Tau that they'd have problems holding off the Orks and 'Nids.

the Tau can't have more then 10 Billion Fire Caste with even the most liberal numbers.


more realistically, my guess would be on the order of about 2 Billion with only about 1/2 being combat ready. the rest are either too old, too young, or infirm.

this is a low number for the worlds because the Tau make their worlds self-sufficient for food supplies. if they had the equivilants of Hive worlds and Agri-worlds then the number would be higher.

of the ones that are combat ready, they are going to be spread out fairly evenly accross the Empire with concentrations near the Democles Gulf, because of the Imperium, and the eastern fringes, because of the Tyranids and Orks.


if the Tau have 100 worlds and they are spread evenly, then that leaves 10 million Fire Caste per world.

only about a dozen of these worlds are Sept worlds and as such will have low populations, meaning less fire caste in the garrison, unless the world is on the fringe in which case it will probably have a larger one.



the main problem is, the Imperium can simply bypass the outer worlds and strike at vulnerable positions and lead the Tau navy/army on a merry hunt.

the Imperium can cause massive damage to a planet with a single torpedo. 1 Virus bomb won't destroy the planet's ecosystem, but it will certaintly decimate it.

the Imperium could come to a planet, defeat whatever space forces there are, drop a single Virus bomb, the planet's Tau pop is killed, the fleet then heads to the next planet to do the same. the Tau reinforcement fleet arrives to find the planet's population dead and the Imperial Fleet gone with no way of knowing where they are heading next.

I still don't see why the Tau don't have a web of messenger drones that can beam communications across the empire faster than a starship can travel.

But maybe that's only common sense to me.

Nerivant wrote:I still don't see why the Tau don't have a web of messenger drones that can beam communications across the empire faster than a starship can travel.

But maybe that's only common sense to me.

Same reason that Black Templars appearantly doesn't have lance weapons. Because it doesn't say they do anywhere. (And, in the case of the Templars, there's the party-poopers at the Inquisition...)

Nerivant wrote:I still don't see why the Tau don't have a web of messenger drones that can beam communications across the empire faster than a starship can travel.

But maybe that's only common sense to me.

Do you mean like the little drones? I don't think something that small that have a warp drive. They do use trade drones that carry cargo I guess you can drop a message on them, but it's probably quicker and easier to use a waystation's relay.

nomotog wrote:

Nerivant wrote:I still don't see why the Tau don't have a web of messenger drones that can beam communications across the empire faster than a starship can travel.

But maybe that's only common sense to me.

Do you mean like the little drones? I don't think something that small that have a warp drive. They do use trade drones that carry cargo I guess you can drop a message on them, but it's probably quicker and easier to use a waystation's relay.

Not actually deliver the message, but transmit it to the next drone, to the next drone, to the next drone, to the planet you're trying to communicated it.

Nerivant wrote:

nomotog wrote:

Nerivant wrote:I still don't see why the Tau don't have a web of messenger drones that can beam communications across the empire faster than a starship can travel.

But maybe that's only common sense to me.

Do you mean like the little drones? I don't think something that small that have a warp drive. They do use trade drones that carry cargo I guess you can drop a message on them, but it's probably quicker and easier to use a waystation's relay.

Not actually deliver the message, but transmit it to the next drone, to the next drone, to the next drone, to the planet you're trying to communicated it.

Oh that's what the waystations do.

Huh, Deathwatch: Mark of the Xenos is shipping. Supposed to have a heavy Tau and Tyranid focus, so should be some good fluff in there.

Grey Templar wrote:
the main problem is, the Imperium can simply bypass the outer worlds and strike at vulnerable positions and lead the Tau navy/army on a merry hunt.

the Imperium can cause massive damage to a planet with a single torpedo. 1 Virus bomb won't destroy the planet's ecosystem, but it will certaintly decimate it.

the Imperium could come to a planet, defeat whatever space forces there are, drop a single Virus bomb, the planet's Tau pop is killed, the fleet then heads to the next planet to do the same. the Tau reinforcement fleet arrives to find the planet's population dead and the Imperial Fleet gone with no way of knowing where they are heading next.

The problem is the imperium has to fly down a funnel (the aforementioned Damocles Gulf) to hit the inner septs of the Tau. First stop? Heavily fortified and patrolled position, comparable to an Imperial Sector Fortress. Since, if fluff is to be believed, instantly jumping again seems to break Imperial warp drives (and they have no idea which stars have sept worlds and which ones don't past a certain point) they run the risk of instantly jumping right into one of the worlds fortified to withstand the orks, which even though they could take it on, would probably buy more then enough time for the Tau to catch up.

Two, you have to go deep into the gravity well to drop a virus bomb. Since Imperial ships can't just enter the warp wherever (without exploding) this means again you have that long hike in and out system, which gives the tau plenty of time to catch up.

The Tau might lose a world or two, but I doubt it would get further then that.

Citation on "heavily fortified and patrolled position".

Heavily fortified for the Tau is nowhere near the same as heavily fortified for the Imperium.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:
This is why we need a Warhammer 40K Fluff book dedicated to Bible duty for facts.

BaronIveagh wrote:
AMEN

juraigamer wrote:

We only need it so people that have hard on's for marine uberness can be held in check.

I doubt you 3 thought that through.
The moment facts hit the fluff, and it is "fluff as written", a lot of you guys won't benefit from it as you like.
Questionable interpretations and lack of citations aren't what anybody did to you. Its the other way around.


So I'd happily look forward to such a book, if it is sanctioned by GW.

BaronIveagh wrote:
The problem is the imperium has to fly down a funnel (the aforementioned Damocles Gulf) to hit the inner septs of the Tau .

40k is no longer 3 dimensional?

Kanluwen wrote:Citation on "heavily fortified and patrolled position".

Heavily fortified for the Tau is nowhere near the same as heavily fortified for the Imperium.

Star of Damocles, which i don't have handy to give you a page number, it's toward the end of the book. Imperial recon comes back and describes the next world the Imperials have targeted in this manner, so it's the Imperials comparing it to one of their own, not the Tau.

Then I'm calling bull on the author.

Unless the recon unit was from some backwater, there's no way in feth a Tau world is heavily fortified to the extent of an Imperial garrison planet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just went to see if I could get a copy of it and it's "Out of Stock" from Black Library.

So, I'm not going to say that it's "bad canon", but both Damocles Star and Rogue Star are out of stock.

Grey Templar wrote:the Tau can't have more then 10 Billion Fire Caste with even the most liberal numbers.


more realistically, my guess would be on the order of about 2 Billion with only about 1/2 being combat ready. the rest are either too old, too young, or infirm.

this is a low number for the worlds because the Tau make their worlds self-sufficient for food supplies. if they had the equivilants of Hive worlds and Agri-worlds then the number would be higher.

of the ones that are combat ready, they are going to be spread out fairly evenly accross the Empire with concentrations near the Democles Gulf, because of the Imperium, and the eastern fringes, because of the Tyranids and Orks.


if the Tau have 100 worlds and they are spread evenly, then that leaves 10 million Fire Caste per world.

only about a dozen of these worlds are Sept worlds and as such will have low populations, meaning less fire caste in the garrison, unless the world is on the fringe in which case it will probably have a larger one.



the main problem is, the Imperium can simply bypass the outer worlds and strike at vulnerable positions and lead the Tau navy/army on a merry hunt.

the Imperium can cause massive damage to a planet with a single torpedo. 1 Virus bomb won't destroy the planet's ecosystem, but it will certaintly decimate it.

the Imperium could come to a planet, defeat whatever space forces there are, drop a single Virus bomb, the planet's Tau pop is killed, the fleet then heads to the next planet to do the same. the Tau reinforcement fleet arrives to find the planet's population dead and the Imperial Fleet gone with no way of knowing where they are heading next.

Planet Earth - A single planet has about 6.5 Billion?

How do you figure a shorter lived species that most likely reproduces faster due to government control and life span is going to not have that number plenty of times over given they own tons of Septs?

BeefCakeSoup wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:the Tau can't have more then 10 Billion Fire Caste with even the most liberal numbers.


more realistically, my guess would be on the order of about 2 Billion with only about 1/2 being combat ready. the rest are either too old, too young, or infirm.

this is a low number for the worlds because the Tau make their worlds self-sufficient for food supplies. if they had the equivilants of Hive worlds and Agri-worlds then the number would be higher.

of the ones that are combat ready, they are going to be spread out fairly evenly accross the Empire with concentrations near the Democles Gulf, because of the Imperium, and the eastern fringes, because of the Tyranids and Orks.


if the Tau have 100 worlds and they are spread evenly, then that leaves 10 million Fire Caste per world.

only about a dozen of these worlds are Sept worlds and as such will have low populations, meaning less fire caste in the garrison, unless the world is on the fringe in which case it will probably have a larger one.



the main problem is, the Imperium can simply bypass the outer worlds and strike at vulnerable positions and lead the Tau navy/army on a merry hunt.

the Imperium can cause massive damage to a planet with a single torpedo. 1 Virus bomb won't destroy the planet's ecosystem, but it will certaintly decimate it.

the Imperium could come to a planet, defeat whatever space forces there are, drop a single Virus bomb, the planet's Tau pop is killed, the fleet then heads to the next planet to do the same. the Tau reinforcement fleet arrives to find the planet's population dead and the Imperial Fleet gone with no way of knowing where they are heading next.

Planet Earth - A single planet has about 6.5 Billion?

How do you figure a shorter lived species that most likely reproduces faster due to government control and life span is going to not have that number plenty of times over given they own tons of Septs?

we only have 6 billion people because we live so long.

the Human reproduction rate isn't making the population explosion, its because people are living for 80-100 years.

before we had the medical advances we have today, the earth's population was fairly small. in the year 1800, there were around 1 billion people. prior to that date, the pop was even smaller. yet, the birth rates have declined overall since then, but the population grows.

the reason is medical advances making us live longer.

the real answer to so called population problems is to stop keeping old people alive


the Tau, however, are still dying at around 40 despite their technological advances.

this will keep their population density low.

1hadhq wrote:
40k is no longer 3 dimensional?

The stable warp routes into and out of the Gulf form choke points. A ship has to follow a stable route, or most likely, never reach it's destination.

Since the Tau don't depend warp currents, they can ignore this. The Imperium, however, uses the warp currents to move them.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey Templar wrote:


the Tau, however, are still dying at around 40 despite their technological advances.

this will keep their population density low.

Except we don't know what their birth rates are like, either.

the Tau can't have a birth cycle all that different from a Human birth cycle.


they might have a shorter gestation(maybe only 3-5 months), but we can't say for sure.


although, seeing as they are evolved from a bovine-like ancestry we could make educated guesses.


animals like Cows, Deer, Antelopes.... tend to have twins, but they also have specific breeding cycles.


the Tau might usually have twins, but they would have a specific mating season once a year.

so, even if they had a shorter gestation period, they would be locked into having only 2 babies a year. which is perfectly in line with human reproduction.

this gives no specific advantages over humans, aside from a Tau year being about 1/3 shorter then a Terran year.


but the Imperium has countless trillions of people. the birth rate overwhelms the casuality rates in battle so that the Imperium wins battles by drowning the enemy in bodies.

the Tau will have to be the same size of the imperium to hope to match that.

Grey Templar wrote:the Tau can't have a birth cycle all that different from a Human birth cycle.


they might have a shorter gestation(maybe only 3-5 months), but we can't say for sure.


although, seeing as they are evolved from a bovine-like ancestry we could make educated guesses.


animals like Cows, Deer, Antelopes.... tend to have twins, but they also have specific breeding cycles.


the Tau might usually have twins, but they would have a specific mating season once a year.

so, even if they had a shorter gestation period, they would be locked into having only 2 babies a year. which is perfectly in line with human reproduction.

this gives no specific advantages over humans, aside from a Tau year being about 1/3 shorter then a Terran year.


but the Imperium has countless trillions of people. the birth rate overwhelms the casuality rates in battle so that the Imperium wins battles by drowning the enemy in bodies.

the Tau will have to be the same size of the imperium to hope to match that.

There's also the fact that interbreeding between Castes is discouraged. So that's another self-imposed damper on the pool for available mates.

Inbreeding has already caused the Air Caste to lose so much natural bone mass that they can't stay on the surface of a planet for extended periods of time.

they seriously look like toothpicks