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So it's established that the Tau use FTL-capable messenger ships to deliver comms across systems, but I feel like this is kind of a silly anachronism given their advanced understanding of computing and the general level of AR and data-integration they use in conflict. Rather than store specific information on specific ships and task them with delivering it to a specific location, it seems far more sensible for them to set up comm buoys in every system and have all FTL-capable ships automatically download/upload information to fill in gaps according to time and space. Messenger ships would still be the fastest way to send specific messages to specific places, for sure, but if there is indeed a dedicated "Interstellar Tau Postal Service" then it'd probably be a lot more effective to just run them back and forth between neighboring systems, updating the local comm buoy with information from the nearest system, which in turn is updated by a more coreward (in the political sense) comm route. Depending on the range of their comm satellites and accuracy of their FTL, it's even feasible that they would set up halfway points between systems to minimize the time-lag between updates.

Hell, this sort of thing is presumably basic enough to automate with specialized drones, which should give the Tau a significant edge in interstellar comms and reaction times, even against races that rely on astropathic communication, since data can be directly and reliably transferred at (comparatively) speedy rates to every corner of the empire.

It still takes light.... traveling at the speed of light... years (often several of them) to go from one star to its nearest neighbor. Accelerating light, by itself, faster than it normally goes is much harder than accelerating some other object (especially because the only faction that does this does it by means of Super-Science, everyone else uses space-magic).

So if you have Systems A, B, C and D, each with 10 LY distance between them, using, say, a comm-laser system, it takes 10 years for a message from System A to reach System B, then 10 years for System B to send it to System C, and 10 more years for it to reach the ship in System D. By that time, whatever is in that message is obsolete.

If you have a ship capable of FTL travel, getting a message from A to B or A to D is much, much easier.

 Psienesis wrote:
So if you have Systems A, B, C and D, each with 10 LY distance between them, using, say, a comm-laser system, it takes 10 years for a message from System A to reach System B, then 10 years for System B to send it to System C, and 10 more years for it to reach the ship in System D. By that time, whatever is in that message is obsolete.

If you have a ship capable of FTL travel, getting a message from A to B or A to D is much, much easier.

Right, but I wasn't suggesting simply beaming information across the stars. Rather, instead of operating a very silly and inefficient "postal service" the Tau have the technological capacity to just have all ships within range of a comm buoy automatically upload/download the relevant infotraffic which synchronizes that system with the latest news from abroad. Of course, since all that needs to happen in order for these updates to be received is that an FTL-capable ship make the requisite jumps, it should be totally possible to use specialized "data drones" who have gravitic drives and preprogrammed routes to automatically jump to the nearest system and receive updates from the Tau "internet" while simultaneously uploading the news from the frontier to the more coreward comm buoy. This process would still take a fair bit of time, of course, and some systems are naturally going to be more constantly informed than others, but it does dramatically improve the rate and reliability of data transfer within the Empire and effectively removes the spectre of "Tau space outgrowing its communication network."

That's still using transmissions which travel at at or near the speed of light.

Think about how small a light year actually is. Its a little over 4 light years between Sol and Proxima Centuri.

Using this hypothetical relay network of drones would be worse than having the ship itself go to a planet because no relay platform is going to be able to service more than one system.

Anyway, the problem Tau have is not outgrowing their communication. Its getting trapped by the very limited range of their jump drives, fuel capacity, and their own lifespans.

The Tau empire occupies a cluster of densely packed stars, which are still a stretch for them to jump between. The rest of the galaxy is must more loosely packed. So their only real options for expanding out from where they are now is long term stasis jumps and what basically amounts to a 1 way trip.

 Grey Templar wrote:
That's still using transmissions which travel at at or near the speed of light.

Shouldn't matter since they're going to be in range of the comm buoy and that thing is naturally in range of (if not the central hub of) the comm network in the system.

Using this hypothetical relay network of drones would be worse than having the ship itself go to a planet because no relay platform is going to be able to service more than one system.

I say comm buoy, you say relay platform, what we're talking about here is an orbital structure housing a bunch of servers sitting around the important system feature, be it a colony or military outpost, whatever. Point here is that every ship near the important part of the system is automatically updating the system's network and simultaneously updating their shipboard databanks. Sure drone ships only service their system and the system they are programmed to jump to, but the beauty of the network is that it relies on every system also using drones to receive and send data constantly, so news from the core expands to the periphery very quickly and vise versa.

Anyway, the problem Tau have is not outgrowing their communication.

It's one aspect people generally harp on, at least.

Its getting trapped by the very limited range of their jump drives, fuel capacity, and their own lifespans.

Expansion kind of handles all of these problems by its nature - continually providing new forward bases, resources, and people. That said, obviously there are other significant challenges they face, but this issue shouldn't be considered one of them.

No, you misunderstand me.

Its the fact the Tau will soon literally be unable to reach any more stars period. Expansion is impossible if you literally cannot reach anywhere else to expand to.

The only way to solve this is to have the ships make multi-generational voyages at sub-light speeds. Which just means those ships will be easily destroyed by anyone who finds them.

That method works fine when you aren't trying to maintain a cohesive empire, but the Tau are trying to maintain a collective.

 Grey Templar wrote:
No, you misunderstand me.

Its the fact the Tau will soon literally be unable to reach any more stars period. Expansion is impossible if you literally cannot reach anywhere else to expand to.

The only way to solve this is to have the ships make multi-generational voyages at sub-light speeds. Which just means those ships will be easily destroyed by anyone who finds them.

That method works fine when you aren't trying to maintain a cohesive empire, but the Tau are trying to maintain a collective.

I'm not educated enough in the astrography of the Galactic East Side to debate your assertion (though I do doubt it), but it's not really central to the topic of this thread.

Postal ships work, how do you think the Britsh built an empier before cable comunications, Packet ships.

 Ribon Fox wrote:
Postal ships work, how do you think the Britsh built an empier before cable comunications, Packet ships.

Yeah they "work," in the sense that they can actually deliver information from planet to planet, but they're a silly anachronism by Tau technological standards.

No, not realy.
They have no form of FTL-Comms. No astropaths, no web way comms, no nothing.
It is a sulotion that is simple yet very effective. it is probably how the DAOT empier did interstella comunications, it is how we will do interstella comunitations if we every get out of this system.

Comm Buoys would still make sense, as instead of dedicated "postal" ships, every ship in the Tau fleet does some part of that duty, as when they are leaving or entering systems they load/unload relevant data at a comm buoy, which then stores/transmits further into the system to planets/stations even if that ship is not necessarily going to the same spot.

Pretty much all Tau tech seems to me like it's explained best by comparing it to "normal" mundane sci-fi human tech in novels and movies, just with a bit of warp-involvement (or rather skipping) during between-system flights.

Though you could add in something like the Omnius update ships from the Machine Crusade trilogy of Dune, which would basically be continuing a tradition of GW robbing from the Dune universe, lol.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Comm Buoys would still make sense, as instead of dedicated "postal" ships, every ship in the Tau fleet does some part of that duty, as when they are leaving or entering systems they load/unload relevant data at a comm buoy, which then stores/transmits further into the system to planets/stations even if that ship is not necessarily going to the same spot.

Pretty much all Tau tech seems to me like it's explained best by comparing it to "normal" mundane sci-fi human tech in novels and movies, just with a bit of warp-involvement (or rather skipping) during between-system flights.

Though you could add in something like the Omnius update ships from the Machine Crusade trilogy of Dune, which would basically be continuing a tradition of GW robbing from the Dune universe, lol.

I am not very familiar with the Dune series, but having Google'd these update ships, it's similar to what I've described, though obviously in the Tau case it's going to be computers instead of goopeople or whatever.

 Grey Templar wrote:
That's still using transmissions which travel at at or near the speed of light.

Think about how small a light year actually is. Its a little over 4 light years between Sol and Proxima Centuri.

Using this hypothetical relay network of drones would be worse than having the ship itself go to a planet because no relay platform is going to be able to service more than one system.

Anyway, the problem Tau have is not outgrowing their communication. Its getting trapped by the very limited range of their jump drives, fuel capacity, and their own lifespans.

The Tau empire occupies a cluster of densely packed stars, which are still a stretch for them to jump between. The rest of the galaxy is must more loosely packed. So their only real options for expanding out from where they are now is long term stasis jumps and what basically amounts to a 1 way trip.

Where is this info from exactly?

 Kali wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Comm Buoys would still make sense, as instead of dedicated "postal" ships, every ship in the Tau fleet does some part of that duty, as when they are leaving or entering systems they load/unload relevant data at a comm buoy, which then stores/transmits further into the system to planets/stations even if that ship is not necessarily going to the same spot.

Pretty much all Tau tech seems to me like it's explained best by comparing it to "normal" mundane sci-fi human tech in novels and movies, just with a bit of warp-involvement (or rather skipping) during between-system flights.

Though you could add in something like the Omnius update ships from the Machine Crusade trilogy of Dune, which would basically be continuing a tradition of GW robbing from the Dune universe, lol.

I am not very familiar with the Dune series, but having Google'd these update ships, it's similar to what I've described, though obviously in the Tau case it's going to be computers instead of goopeople or whatever.

Yeah, there it was a copy of the most current OS of the central AI, so that all the copies of itself were as close to current with each other as possible, because the Space-Folding didn't exist yet. (the "goopeople' was probably "Gelcircuitry" which is what AI brains are made of. An update ship would have a current copy of the AI overmind onboard, which would get copied over the old one on the planet it arrived at to have a up-to-date copy present.)

So the Tau would actually have a leg up in that field as they have limited FTL.

That makes sense to me, a bit like the outernet in the Long Earth. You wouldn't get the info immediately, but it isn't going to take years to get there.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
That's still using transmissions which travel at at or near the speed of light.

Think about how small a light year actually is. Its a little over 4 light years between Sol and Proxima Centuri.

Using this hypothetical relay network of drones would be worse than having the ship itself go to a planet because no relay platform is going to be able to service more than one system.

Anyway, the problem Tau have is not outgrowing their communication. Its getting trapped by the very limited range of their jump drives, fuel capacity, and their own lifespans.

The Tau empire occupies a cluster of densely packed stars, which are still a stretch for them to jump between. The rest of the galaxy is must more loosely packed. So their only real options for expanding out from where they are now is long term stasis jumps and what basically amounts to a 1 way trip.

Where is this info from exactly?

The Tau codex.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
That's still using transmissions which travel at at or near the speed of light.

Think about how small a light year actually is. Its a little over 4 light years between Sol and Proxima Centuri.

Using this hypothetical relay network of drones would be worse than having the ship itself go to a planet because no relay platform is going to be able to service more than one system.

Anyway, the problem Tau have is not outgrowing their communication. Its getting trapped by the very limited range of their jump drives, fuel capacity, and their own lifespans.

The Tau empire occupies a cluster of densely packed stars, which are still a stretch for them to jump between. The rest of the galaxy is must more loosely packed. So their only real options for expanding out from where they are now is long term stasis jumps and what basically amounts to a 1 way trip.

Where is this info from exactly?

The Tau codex.

Could I have a page number? I'm not trying to be rude or anything, I'm genuinely interested.

It was the old Tau codex. I don't have a page number, but its the general description of Tau space as it currently stands. And the part stating what the limitations of the Tau warp drive are.

Putting that information together leads to the dense nature of Tau space being the only thing which allowed their rapid expansion.

Huh, I guess the only thing is whether they make strides towards longer distance ships.

I see your point: If you can accelerate ships past the speed of light, you might as well accelerate photons.

However, in sci-fi FTL is no more no less than a plot device. It can work according to whatever set of rules you decide upon it. I.e, if you want your heroes hopping across the galaxy in their starship without ever getting annoying emails from home, you can settle for some sort of Alcubierre warp drive that works by folding space around a physical object. Or perhaps your story is about two separated siblings, or maybe lovers: One stays on Earth, the other embarks on a slower-than-light ship bound for another star. In this case, you may opt for giving them Scott Card-style ansible FTL comms and sprinkle it with light doses of near-C time dillation for maximum drama. Maybe you want your space empires shooting plasma beams at each others' mighty battlecruisers instead of lobbing asteroids at each other's planets through wormholes. Or, if the point is to satirize the Cold War, it may be a good idea to have your warring planets linked by an interstellar red telephone.

It's your story. Pick the space-magic that suits it best.

As a fictional universe 40k is wildly inconsistent, but one thing's for certain: The only way to send data from point A to point B is by means of space-wizard, aka Astropaths. Writer's choice. They could have written it so all planets were communicated by some pan-galactic internet of sorts but chose not to, maybe because 40k borrows mostly from sources that predate the Internet as we know it by one or two decades, maybe because the authors felt that instant, reliable FTL communication would spoil their universe's unique medioeval feel.

Now, the Tau aren't bound by the aesthetic constrictions the writers placed upon the Imperium and all the other races. They are the scifi-ish, hitech faction. Moreover, they are purposefully written so they don't have access to the space-magicky things that enable other races to work their space-magic, and must use a workaround instead. Objectively, there's no reason why they shouldn't have a comms network like the one you describe in the OP, and maybe someday one or another author will surprise us with a Shas'O instantly receiving orders from his superiors on T'au through a next-gen Tauphone. But at the same time, there's no reason why they should.

Sci-Fi and Shirow are not the Tau's only sources of inspiration. Hence, Tau technology has a virtual ceiling: It can only be as advanced as their character and role within the 40k universe (that of a highly decentralized empire of macchiavellian revolutionary imperialists whose exploits vaguely mimic 17th Century naval strategy, 20th Century geopolitics and 19th Century gunboat diplomacy) allows it to be. Using courier ships is certainly an anachronism, but given the Tau's place in the story, it's a necessary one.

If they can achieve FTL UPS Brown trucks, why not have a FTL interstellar vacuum tube system? Seems a lot less resource intensive. By this I mean:

You have a "distribution node" which is like a mix between a hadron collider and a cannon, which accelerates an object (the tube) containing all the data relevant to the receiving end at the same speed as a Tau vessel can achieve, then using their advanced targeting computers (basically their most powerful and well researched technology) to fire the object at a much larger receiving station, in another system, fitted with a "catcher's mitt" of sorts that decelerates the object, collects it and relays that information by conventional tight beam or direct physical uplink to Tau ships in the area. There would be protocols on when Tau captains would be required to check the nearest network for updates and if the distribution and receiving stations were the same structure, you could feasibly send out the message much faster than with ships as each datacore could include instructions on where the next datacores should be fired to, making the system completely automated with one Tau organization on the home world writing publishing and sending out the news via ground based datacore projector that would fire at the nearest in system receiver and spread exponentially from there.

Am I wrong or do the Tau already have something like this?

The Tau have two means of information distribution.

Inside their own packed star cluster for most information (i.e. non-urgent things), they have a comm buoy system that transmits information along a line of relays between each sept. The map of the Tau Empire in the current codex actually shows you these links between septs.

The other means of communications is by comm-drone, essentially a drone with a good ether drive. Tau FTL is only about a fifth as fast as Imperial models, as the Tau cannot enter the Warp, only skim it. However, this is far faster than the comm buoy network as well as being far more resource intensive, so this method tends to be priority-only messaging. Mentions of this method are numerous throughout Tau canon, from the story about Pech in the 3rd Edition codex to the Ciaphas Cain Novel "For the Greater Good" which has a Tau fleet coordinating with an Imperial force by this means.

Also, since it was brought up, Tau FTL speeds aren't so slow as to limit their expansion to their own neighbourhood alone. 20% of Imperial speeds is more than enough to get anywhere they want to go, albeit requiring engineering changes if they wanted to hop segmentums in one go (which is something most Imperial ships don't usually do themselves anyway). Warp-skimming is also almost entirely reliable and has no real time dilation effect that has ever been mentioned in canon as far as I'm aware.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bear in mind that the Tau have cyrogenic freezing tech...

You have a "distribution node" which is like a mix between a hadron collider and a cannon, which accelerates an object (the tube) containing all the data relevant to the receiving end at the same speed as a Tau vessel can achieve, then using their advanced targeting computers (basically their most powerful and well researched technology) to fire the object at a much larger receiving station, in another system, fitted with a "catcher's mitt" of sorts that decelerates the object, collects it and relays that information by conventional tight beam or direct physical uplink to Tau ships in the area. There would be protocols on when Tau captains would be required to check the nearest network for updates and if the distribution and receiving stations were the same structure, you could feasibly send out the message much faster than with ships as each datacore could include instructions on where the next datacores should be fired to, making the system completely automated with one Tau organization on the home world writing publishing and sending out the news via ground based datacore projector that would fire at the nearest in system receiver and spread exponentially from there.

Because the Tau cannot use the Web-Way, and Warp Drives are frickin' huge, that's why they only go on relatively big ships.

Without a way to pierce the veil/membrane/whatever that separates Realspace from the Warp, you're limited to relativistic speeds... which is plenty-fast within a single star-system, and woefully inadequate for anything outside of the local system.

Warp-skimming is also almost entirely reliable and has no real time dilation effect that has ever been mentioned in canon as far as I'm aware.

Meaning the Tau do in weeks what the Imperium does in days, months what takes the Imperium weeks, and years what takes the Imperium months. Safer, yes, but comparatively very slow.

 Kali wrote:
So it's established that the Tau use FTL-capable messenger ships to deliver comms across systems, but I feel like this is kind of a silly anachronism given their advanced understanding of computing and the general level of AR and data-integration they use in conflict. Rather than store specific information on specific ships and task them with delivering it to a specific location, it seems far more sensible for them to set up comm buoys in every system and have all FTL-capable ships automatically download/upload information to fill in gaps according to time and space. Messenger ships would still be the fastest way to send specific messages to specific places, for sure, but if there is indeed a dedicated "Interstellar Tau Postal Service" then it'd probably be a lot more effective to just run them back and forth between neighboring systems, updating the local comm buoy with information from the nearest system, which in turn is updated by a more coreward (in the political sense) comm route. Depending on the range of their comm satellites and accuracy of their FTL, it's even feasible that they would set up halfway points between systems to minimize the time-lag between updates.

Hell, this sort of thing is presumably basic enough to automate with specialized drones, which should give the Tau a significant edge in interstellar comms and reaction times, even against races that rely on astropathic communication, since data can be directly and reliably transferred at (comparatively) speedy rates to every corner of the empire.

Page 20 of the 6th Ed codex. They do use comm relay buoys.

In the same paragraph, it mentions that messages can take months, not years, to cross distances, meaning they possess FTL communication that doesn't rely on the Warp.

 Psienesis wrote:
Meaning the Tau do in weeks what the Imperium does in days, months what takes the Imperium weeks, and years what takes the Imperium months. Safer, yes, but comparatively very slow.

Of course, we're talking about only 20% of the speed. The Imperium has a huge advantage.

However, that's not really the point I'm trying to make. It is still fast enough to reach other parts of the galaxy without great difficulty. It was implied elsewhere in this thread that the Tau wouldn't be able to leave their immediate star cluster due to their engines being too slow. That is nonsense.

 Grey Templar wrote:
No, you misunderstand me.

Its the fact the Tau will soon literally be unable to reach any more stars period. Expansion is impossible if you literally cannot reach anywhere else to expand to.

The only way to solve this is to have the ships make multi-generational voyages at sub-light speeds. Which just means those ships will be easily destroyed by anyone who finds them.

That method works fine when you aren't trying to maintain a cohesive empire, but the Tau are trying to maintain a collective.

1) The Tau travel faster than light by skipping across the Warp, rather than passing through it.

2) Tau have excellent cryogenic technology, meaning multi-generational ships wouldn't be necessary Shadowsun was brought out of stasis and was a contemporary of Farsight's, remember?

3) The third sphere is already expanding into human territory. Remember? Mu'gulath Bay? Page 19?

Edited by AgeOfEgos

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Huh, I guess the only thing is whether they make strides towards longer distance ships.

Pagte 18, Tau Codex. The third sphere is being conducted with ships much faster than those of the second expansion, which was done with ships faster than those used for the first. Tau haven't stopped progressing, technologically.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:

You have a "distribution node" which is like a mix between a hadron collider and a cannon, which accelerates an object (the tube) containing all the data relevant to the receiving end at the same speed as a Tau vessel can achieve, then using their advanced targeting computers (basically their most powerful and well researched technology) to fire the object at a much larger receiving station, in another system, fitted with a "catcher's mitt" of sorts that decelerates the object, collects it and relays that information by conventional tight beam or direct physical uplink to Tau ships in the area. There would be protocols on when Tau captains would be required to check the nearest network for updates and if the distribution and receiving stations were the same structure, you could feasibly send out the message much faster than with ships as each datacore could include instructions on where the next datacores should be fired to, making the system completely automated with one Tau organization on the home world writing publishing and sending out the news via ground based datacore projector that would fire at the nearest in system receiver and spread exponentially from there.

Because the Tau cannot use the Web-Way, and Warp Drives are frickin' huge, that's why they only go on relatively big ships.

Without a way to pierce the veil/membrane/whatever that separates Realspace from the Warp, you're limited to relativistic speeds... which is plenty-fast within a single star-system, and woefully inadequate for anything outside of the local system.

Warp-skimming is also almost entirely reliable and has no real time dilation effect that has ever been mentioned in canon as far as I'm aware.

Meaning the Tau do in weeks what the Imperium does in days, months what takes the Imperium weeks, and years what takes the Imperium months. Safer, yes, but comparatively very slow.

Depends what you mean by days. The Tau do have the advantage in that they can reliably request assets be sent somewhere and the request happens in a reasonable time frame. Something that takes hours in the Tau hierarchy can take months in the Imperium, with a negligible chance it'll be lost or incorrectly sent, requiring the paperwork to go back to start... as happens in the Imperium.

... and then, it's possible that whatever ship humanity sends arrives 10,000 years in the future, because it's the Warp.

Don't compare the Tau Empire to the Imperium when it comes to communication across interstellar distances. While they are allied with telepathic species, it is unlikely that they have the range to pass messages as astropaths do. On the other hand, they are generally on decent terms with their neighbors, and might contract to have messages passed via webway or Rogue Trader.

Also, lets not overstate how dangerous warp travel is. The failures get press because of Grimdark. The vast majority arrive successfully and within a reasonably similar amount of time.

 carldooley wrote:
Don't compare the Tau Empire to the Imperium when it comes to communication across interstellar distances. While they are allied with telepathic species, it is unlikely that they have the range to pass messages as astropaths do. On the other hand, they are generally on decent terms with their neighbors, and might contract to have messages passed via webway or Rogue Trader.

The Nicassar are said to be the most psychic race in the galaxy, possibly above even the Eldar in that regard. They are not numerous and would be hunted down mercilessly by the Imperium however, and don't have warp engines either. They drift through space in hibernation.

It is technically conceivable that they could act as astropaths, though doing so would probably expose their presence to the Imperium, something the Tau are eager to avoid. Probably because they know how uppity the aul Imperials get about that sort of thing. They also couldn't become Tau Navigators though, because the Tau have no Astronomican and who knows whether or not they could use the human one to navigate the warp.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PhillyT wrote:
Also, lets not overstate how dangerous warp travel is. The failures get press because of Grimdark. The vast majority arrive successfully and within a reasonably similar amount of time.

Failures occur enough to make Tau FTL very noticeably more reliable.

A little speed boat may be more reliable than a massive Clipper ship. I still know which I'd rather cross the Atlantic in.