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Moving faster doesn't do much good when you are horribly outclassed in terms of weaponry and durability. It only lets you run away.

 Desubot wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
The tau definitely had plasma tech before they met humans. There is a thing in the timeline about them perfecting the first pulse rifle.

I though first contact was rocks and sticks, then after a sudden warpstorm they came out as plasma tech society no?

Dammit, I keep forgetting things. I should say "before they met humans after the warp storm died down."

 Grey Templar wrote:
Moving faster doesn't do much good when you are horribly outclassed in terms of weaponry and durability. It only lets you run away.

A thought that keeps the candle of Tau civilisation alive, I suspect

Which fails when they finally realize they don't have an advantage in terms of those things either.

Sure, their basic troops have better weaponry and gear than Guardsmen. But it doesn't matter that your basic gear is twice as good as your opponent when he's got 100 dudes to your 1. And when the elite troops and tech of your opponent also blows your elite troops and all tech out of the water...

I've always thought that Tau's rapid advancement is their blessing as well as their curse. If they were too much bigger it would warrant a full imperial assault to destroy them (assuming that there wasn't to much else going on).

 Grey Templar wrote:
Which fails when they finally realize they don't have an advantage in terms of those things either.

Sure, their basic troops have better weaponry and gear than Guardsmen. But it doesn't matter that your basic gear is twice as good as your opponent when he's got 100 dudes to your 1. And when the elite troops and tech of your opponent also blows your elite troops and all tech out of the water...

Which would be a point, if Tau tech was stagnant like the Imperium, and the Imperium wasn't riddled with heretical cancers, under assault from a whole host of other aliens, and daemons weren't spilling out of the Eye of Terror every couple of generations.

And you know they're pretty darn close to having a robot rebellion. And they're going to be in big trouble when that happens.

OT, I'd say that most imperial archeotech is human technology. The actual STCs were pretty damn good at design.

Redseer wrote:
The imperium is not as advanced as it was in the dark age and that tech is mostly lost or destroyed. Current imperial tech is not quite as good as the tau. If you want an example look at plasma technology that can blow up killing the shooter. Just last week I saw a Space marine get enveloped by his own weapon. I can only see that happen with tau on experimental weaponry. Now I think the IoM and tau are technologically close but on weapons I think the tau win given pulse technology, rail weapons etc.

Just two weeks ago I played a game against Tau where their commander and his body guards slammed into the ground so hard they died instantly (deep strike mishap) and the Riptide did itself more damage than I managed to, but you know their tech is 100% reliable.

 Grey Templar wrote:
And you know they're pretty darn close to having a robot rebellion. And they're going to be in big trouble when that happens.

That would actually be pretty entertaining, considering that a single drone is only about as intelligent as a squirrel.

That may very well be the case.

Though I suspect the philosophy of the Greater Good might actually result in cooperation or organic-AI synthesis.

Three possibilities that are distilled awesome. A Cylon War, the possiibility of attrition wars for the Tau, or a noblebright Mass Effect ending? Yes Please.

 GreaterGoodIreland wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Which fails when they finally realize they don't have an advantage in terms of those things either.

Sure, their basic troops have better weaponry and gear than Guardsmen. But it doesn't matter that your basic gear is twice as good as your opponent when he's got 100 dudes to your 1. And when the elite troops and tech of your opponent also blows your elite troops and all tech out of the water...

Which would be a point, if Tau tech was stagnant like the Imperium, and the Imperium wasn't riddled with heretical cancers, under assault from a whole host of other aliens, and daemons weren't spilling out of the Eye of Terror every couple of generations.

You seem to be under the impression that the Imperium has to make a choice between hold back the Eye/Orks/other aliens and squish the Tau.

Its not that way though.

Its really a choice between, squish the Tau and have slightly less resources to fight the Tyranids OR have more resources to fight the Nids and let a minor annoyance continue to annoy.

The Tau really aren't worth the Imperium's time. They have plenty of resources and could easily crush the Tau and continue to survive. But its worth more in the long run to have those resources face down actual threats.

What happens on the table-top is not, generally speaking, in line with how the fluff presents things.

Otherwise, most SM armies would be a single squad, and handily defeating hordes.

ETA: The above in response to

Just two weeks ago I played a game against Tau where their commander and his body guards slammed into the ground so hard they died instantly (deep strike mishap) and the Riptide did itself more damage than I managed to, but you know their tech is 100% reliable.

Mavnas wrote:

Redseer wrote:
The imperium is not as advanced as it was in the dark age and that tech is mostly lost or destroyed. Current imperial tech is not quite as good as the tau. If you want an example look at plasma technology that can blow up killing the shooter. Just last week I saw a Space marine get enveloped by his own weapon. I can only see that happen with tau on experimental weaponry. Now I think the IoM and tau are technologically close but on weapons I think the tau win given pulse technology, rail weapons etc.

Just two weeks ago I played a game against Tau where their commander and his body guards slammed into the ground so hard they died instantly (deep strike mishap) and the Riptide did itself more damage than I managed to, but you know their tech is 100% reliable.

Will people stop using games as a level of tech!

However, the fact that the Riptide can damage itself with its overcharge indicates a, at best, "field testing" level of design for the weapon or, perhaps, a change in philosophy regarding the value of the pilot over the value of the weapon.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You seem to be under the impression that the Imperium has to make a choice between hold back the Eye/Orks/other aliens and squish the Tau.

Its not that way though.

Its really a choice between, squish the Tau and have slightly less resources to fight the Tyranids OR have more resources to fight the Nids and let a minor annoyance continue to annoy.

The Tau really aren't worth the Imperium's time. They have plenty of resources and could easily crush the Tau and continue to survive. But its worth more in the long run to have those resources face down actual threats.

No, I agree with all that as well. Though just handing worlds to the Tyranids alone will cost you far more than you'd gain by crushing the Tau.

Everyone knows that the Tau only live because of the multitude of other, far more serious threats to the Imperium. The problem is that every year that goes by without it happening lends itself to the Tau being less naive and more technologically advanced....

DAMN IT GW, ADVANCE THE STORYLINE PAST 999.M41 ALREADY.

 Psienesis wrote:
However, the fact that the Riptide can damage itself with its overcharge indicates a, at best, "field testing" level of design for the weapon or, perhaps, a change in philosophy regarding the value of the pilot over the value of the weapon.

Field testing for the greater good!

 GreaterGoodIreland wrote:

 PhillyT wrote:
Oh god, we haven't now moved to trying to claim Tau are better than the NEcron have we?

No, actually.

The Necrons sit atop the roost of tech as far as I'm concerned. I just claim that they are so because of their study and manipulation of the warp, and that the Tau are the head honchos of what one could call the sciences of the Materium.

TLDR:
Necrons: Good science + good magic.
Tau: Excellent science + terrible magic.

The Imperium is largely ahead of the Tau for the same reason; the Warp. They are outclassed entirely in material sciences because the AdMech don't believe in science...

Also, dealt with the Celestial Orrery in another post. Read back there lad.

The necron are no more able to manipulate the warp than tau. They don't use magic. Their technology is so advanced as to allow them to rip what they need from the warp. They have no psykers.

Necron are the undisputed masters of science. Next would likely be the dark age humans, followed by eldar and dark eldar, then the Tau.

No, Even their height, humanity never surpassed the eldar in all there glory. Maybe the eldar now, but i doubt it. What should be remembered is that for max tech the:scale is"
1. Necrons
2. Eldar
3. Imperium
4. Tau

But for median tech it is:
1. Necrons
2. Eldar
3. Tau
4. Imperium

Indeed. DAoT Humanity is said to have rivaled the Eldar, but not surpassed them (perhaps in some areas, not in others, and so, in the balance, may have matched them).

If the Necrons were unable to manipulate the warp, they would all be dead: They were fighting warp-creatures, psychic creations of said warp-creatures and any number of other things. For eons, potentially. Their pylons would not hold back the entire freaking Eye of Terror. They don't require psykers to use the warp either. The Tau didn't require that to build ether drives, and they've only been at it a few hundred years at best. The Necrons had star gods helping them, and had who knows how long.

Dark Age Humans aren't around in the 41st Millenium, the Eldar's technological advantage spawns from their psychic ability, and where on Earth you got the idea that the Dark Eldar are superior to the Tau in terms of technology, I do not know. The DE can't even exploit their old civilisation's cornicopia tech because it would draw Slaanesh's attention. They have plenty of tricks, but even the Tau have more substance, and that's saying something...

The Necrons did with Science what the Old Ones did with magic. That's what the Necrons represent, as previously mentioned. They possess the technology that Clark's Law references, that is, "any technology, suitably advanced, will appear as magic to the unlearned". The Necron use magic-level grades of technology.

Like Trazyn's Tachyon Arrow, a single-shot weapon (per battle) that has Infinite range. You could, provided LOS, shoot a model four tables over.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
No, Even their height, humanity never surpassed the eldar in all there glory. Maybe the eldar now, but i doubt it. What should be remembered is that for max tech the:scale is"
1. Necrons
2. Eldar
3. Imperium
4. Tau

But for median tech it is:
1. Necrons
2. Eldar
3. Tau
4. Imperium

I was referring to science based technology. Eldar science is linked and boosted inextricably by their immense psyker abilities.

And what constitutes medium tech? Pound for pound, space marines alone are equal to tau and surpass them in many ways.

 PhillyT wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
No, Even their height, humanity never surpassed the eldar in all there glory. Maybe the eldar now, but i doubt it. What should be remembered is that for max tech the:scale is"
1. Necrons
2. Eldar
3. Imperium
4. Tau

But for median tech it is:
1. Necrons
2. Eldar
3. Tau
4. Imperium

I was referring to science based technology. Eldar science is linked and boosted inextricably by their immense psyker abilities.

And what constitutes medium tech? Pound for pound, space marines alone are equal to tau and surpass them in many ways.

Median tech. What does the middle individual have? I use medium because it is more fair than average for this purpose, but you would probably get what I was saying if Isaid average tech.

And no, space marines are not higherr tech than, I don't know, crisis suits. Riptides. Even stealth suits.

 PhillyT wrote:
And what constitutes medium tech? Pound for pound, space marines alone are equal to tau and surpass them in many ways.

Except numbers. There a roughly 1 million space marines right? The Fire Caste probably numbers more than a billion.

Numbers have never meant much to the Space Marines. These are the guys that supposedly topple planets with a squad.

Not a tau one, they get a rare disease called holesinachestus.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Necrons did with Science what the Old Ones did with magic. That's what the Necrons represent, as previously mentioned. They possess the technology that Clark's Law references, that is, "any technology, suitably advanced, will appear as magic to the unlearned". The Necron use magic-level grades of technology.

Like Trazyn's Tachyon Arrow, a single-shot weapon (per battle) that has Infinite range. You could, provided LOS, shoot a model four tables over.

There's also that melee weapon that mass scattered a planet from a Necron lord swinging it.

 Pendix wrote:

 PhillyT wrote:
And what constitutes medium tech? Pound for pound, space marines alone are equal to tau and surpass them in many ways.

Except numbers. There a roughly 1 million space marines right? The Fire Caste probably numbers more than a billion.

Sure, and there are countless trillions of guardsmen. Billions of tanks and aircraft. Millions of star ships. etc...

 GreaterGoodIreland wrote:




Which brings me to the Celestial Orrery. I have had a theory about this for a long time. The Necrons are manipulators of the warp, they use warp portals all the time to teleport. All they would need to do to cause a supernova is open up a small warp portal on a star, wait a bit, then close it. Doing so would strip the star of some of its mass, thus causing a supernova by reducing the gravity of the star relative to the force of its reaction. Not sure how you'd blow up a star otherwise, but that would certainly be an easy way in a universe with teleportation technology based on transitioning through the warp. They could just teleport a bit of the sun away, and voila, supernova. The Tau could do it if they had higher understanding of warp-tech. The supernova thing wouldn't be the problem, the galaxy-wide near-instantaneous communication to machines capable of causing supernovas would be; something that would be possible with warp manipulation.

The Necrons do not use the Warp. They have never used the Warp, and have no Warp based technology because as it turns out, you have to be psychic in order to use psychic tech.
The best they could do is hack the web-way, and that's only possible through pure-science dimensional nonsense, and even then if they don't move fast enough they will get destroyed in there, as they do not have the tech to handle it.

Stop making incorrect assumptions about the Necrons and read their codex. No where does it say that they use the Warp, and says they are incapable of doing so without cheating (ie. The Dolmen Gates. Coincidently the Dolmen Gates are also the most stupid thing about the new lore. Go figure)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Exergy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I believe the Necron FTL method involves bending space. Much like how Star Trek "warp" drives work.

Thus you never ever actually exceed the speed of light, but cross vast distances. And no time distortion either.

And so the Necrons can cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye without using the Warp.

and yet if they can move faster than entities that use the warp, how is it that they lost?

The Old Ones cheated. You can move as fast all you want, but that's not going to help when your enemy knows exactly what your next move will be.
So the necrons cheated even harder with the C'tan.