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So I plan on doing some concept sketches for Tau Auxillary suits.

Why? It doesnt suit the tau. I say it does

1. The Tau have control of the suits, and get recon from them. (kill switch safeties built in)

2. With the recent exorbitant loses the Tau took in the Damocles warzone the Tau are down 50% of there own forces. Needing the ramp up the Auxillaries.

3. More troops and suit troops that have specialized roles.


Kroot suits:
Tall and Slim, designed for stealth in heavily forested areas (often confused for trees when they stalk there foes). These suits are often accompanied with a recon drone. Often tasked with abduction of a target alive or dead, Kroot store a worthy foe they think the shaper might favour.

-Slightly taller than Crisis suits, slimmer
-Thin, long legs
-Designed with a specialized air filter that filters out toxins, but thats it, so they can still follow scent trails.
-A Kroot rail rifle hybrid, along with a Tether net, can be used to attempt to pin a single target, or the three suites can create difficult terrain for land based infantry
-a small compartment, cage like, built into the back of the suit
-cannot do sustained flight, only small jumps, or breakfall landings.
Quick sketch



Vespid Brood Mother Suits:
Modified and sealed version of the stormsurge. This suit is designed to be a network hub for the drones and vespid drones alike, improving there coordination and efficiency. It carries only close quarters defensive weaponry except for a single hunter killer missle. It also has emergency bays built in, to replenish the drone quntity, (10 drones or 6 vespid) These suits are often used for corralling enemies, defending bases, or clearing out urban/dense enviroments.

-only equip with a twin linked pair of cqc weapons and a single hunter killer missle.
-can network hub up to 20 drones max, giving them a reroll to hit
-gun drones, vespid drones, maybe purchased up to a quantity of 20. you can mix and match, benefits for either have pure groups of gun drones or vespid drones.
-these drones must remain within 12" of the brood mother, or they become independant squads and loose the networked hub bonus.
-If they remain within 6" they gain the swarm special ability, if the enemy fails to reroll to hit successfully, instead of the brood mother taking the hit, it may sacrifice a drone instead.

Vespid Strain Guard:
These Vespid when not in combat are the Elite guards of the Strain leaders. With the loses the Tau had, they've requested more elite troops, with the promise and guarantee of customized Suits for them. Thus the Vespid have been actively training more elite Strain Guards. These suits also give injured Vespid the chance to perform active combat rolls again. Their suits were developed with the Vespid Crystal technologies in mind, with tau and vespid scientists working to develop a artificial means to activate the crystal. These suits are deployed as fast attack strike forces, inadditon of gaurding the Vespid brood mothers. They are almost always in on constant flight and are never in one area for to long. They have Vespid Neutron crystals built into the suit, and weapon systems, creating powerful anti armor units, that fly in and shred artillary and tanks alike before fleeing.

-suits have a customized jump jet that arches over the shoulders, similar to the vespid wings. This allows them the additional lift, and speed, to fly in and out, if only rarely to touch the ground.
-the are equipped with a Neutron Canon,( a improved heavy variant of the Neutron blaster, however the range is limited.) or a Cyclic Neutron heavy blaster, and a cqc twin linked weapon system that includes a twin linked neutron blaster.
- Similar in size to the crisis suits, streamlined for flight. The cockpit is noticeably deeper to make room for the vespid wings.
- Also developed for these suits were the artificial sonic vibrations to activate the crystals, as a result, anything within 6" of these suits have there senors jammed. Giving them a chance to escape.

Heavy Vespid Infantry
These suits are made specifically for injured veteran Vespid infantry (if there wings are damaged) and Vespid that have the unfortunate role of deploying into heavy resistance areas, and void combat. They are armored personal flight suits, an enclosed enviromental suit with flight capabilities, not power armor.

-orginal concept was made off of a modified XV25, but later with a shruken Strain guard suit jump system.
-These elite shock troops often prefer the cyclic neutron blaster, but will use tau weaponry if required.
-these suits also incorporate the artificial harmonic tech. Which gives them a bonus to escape if entered in CQC.


(notabale issues with the Vespid Harmonic tech
- is that it vibrates everything in close proximity. Turning deserts into quicksand, pushing up gales of snow. These suits are never to be used in close proximity to any allied troops as they also distort and damaged allied infantry sensors. - for lore purposes not game?

-It is difficult to shield the interior compartment from these vibrations and the noise. as a result, any non vespid species that have attempted to use this tech have become disoriented and pass out after exposure of an hour or more.)


Tallerian Dog soldier suits:
NO IDEA, shock troops? CQC experts?


I am asking for your help and suggestions. I don't know the lore to well and would like peeps to drop some knowledge if I'm incorrect.

I've seen some cool things done with this concept, such as:



One thing I'd like to see more of though is the use of auxiliaries as more than just extra Tau. We already have things like the Knarloc, but what about the Vespid? Clearly they can't all be foot soldiers, and their ability to fly would make them rather good assassins, so maybe some form of flyboy snipers there?

Do you have any ideas for the human auxiliaries?

This guy is doing a Tau styled Dark Mechanus force. There may be some useful inspiration to be found.

http://advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=24147&sid=878f9b9279b049e35f472ca1f28a8069

jer155 wrote:Do you have any ideas for the human auxiliaries?

RIght now I don't, the reason being is, any human suits might confuse people. (what space marine is that?) I'd keep humans in the lore and off the table top for the tau. I'd focus on the Vespid, Kroot, and other prominent xenos in the tau empire. Especially because they could just say Trained humans are now using crisis suits, with little modification to the interior systems. (similar size, and physiology, 2 arms, legs, wise)

Jefffar wrote:This guy is doing a Tau styled Dark Mechanus force. There may be some useful inspiration to be found.

http://advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=24147&sid=878f9b9279b049e35f472ca1f28a8069

Thats pretty awesome.

I added two more ideas for the Vespid troops, feed backand suggestions are welcome. As I always to try figure out what the suits should have before doing concept sketches.




@tinkrr I've seen them before, But I'm thinking Tau suits purpose built for Kroot, enclosed.

Liking the sounds of the Kroot Suits, I question the Gauss rail rifle hybrid, where would they get the gauss weaponry from, Necrons? A rail rifle could be good by itself, perhaps a longshot pulse rifle, given that Kroot can have sniper rounds as it is? Or just a Kroot Gun from the Krootox? or a bigger slug throwing gun still!

I query the use of the Brood Mother suit and drones. The Drone net VX1-0 in Mont'Ka basically does this, so in theory, drones are already capable of being a self sufficient network without the need for a base station. Other than that, an interesting concept! Maybe just make the rules applicable to Vespids? Be a bit like a Tervigon, but Vespids. The main issue I have with this, is a stormsurge is very...static. Vespids are not. It limits the engagement ranges of any vespids/drones that are attached to this unit. I would point you towards the Drone Harbinger from Dawn of War Dark Crusade for what I think it should do as well.

Vespid strain guard, this I love. Be like a FMC! Perhaps the Neuroweb Systems Jammer style thing for the weapons effect? It is a signature system though... This is an awesome concept though, and a realistic one, like the Kroot suit!

Heavy infantry idea is a curious one. It seems to do near enough the same thing as the strain guard, but without...guarding. Perhaps combine the two, but do an XV8 style thing, with XV* and XV8 Bodyguard.

Dog soldiers would be awesome, but, Kroot have the CQC covered, and have Kroot hounds. Maybe just stupidly tough, stubborn units. Ideal for following orders, but not very capable on their own.

I look forward to seeing the sketches myself!

I think the kroot suits could almost be a really good place to put the pathfinder special weaponry. maybe they cost an extra few pts each?

Or better yet, the kroot or vespid could be melee suits, ion fields around the blades could make them power weapons or something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have ALWAYS wanted like, samurai drones(because tau wont waste life in melee if they can avoid it) but better equipped kroot or vespid makes more sense, probably cheaper than a drone too lol

I also recall some Sentinels converted with Crisis/Broadside parts and weapons as Gue'vesa Battlesuits.

I plan on doing gue vesa tau, with my humans almost piloting everything except the leader upgrades are actual tau who lead the human auxillaries. As far as official games representations I have some starcraft marine models that are the right size to be crisis suits. As far as other power armour I plan on h a having some counts as vespid that are humans in a fast power armor with the breacher guns, stealth suits with Hu man legs, and catachans as kroot. I even plan on making all my drones as humans with hover harness and pulse carbines.

Jefffar wrote:
I also recall some Sentinels converted with Crisis/Broadside parts and weapons as Gue'vesa Battlesuits.

If this is referring to the photos that were shown by GW when the Tau first came out on their website, those were done by one of the 'Eavy Metal team as a personal project and he posted them up.

They weren't to be used as Battlesuits. They were Sentinels with Tau bits for proxying.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Jefffar wrote:
I also recall some Sentinels converted with Crisis/Broadside parts and weapons as Gue'vesa Battlesuits.

If this is referring to the photos that were shown by GW when the Tau first came out on their website, those were done by one of the 'Eavy Metal team as a personal project and he posted them up.

They weren't to be used as Battlesuits. They were Sentinels with Tau bits for proxying.

Not those, I came to the hobby well after the Tau were a new thing.

I don't want to make melee weapons for suits, as it is the opposite of the Tau doctorine, and when you can just jump thrust away and barrage your enemies with cqc weapons thats better. Having said that, the kroot sutis will definitely have some form of emergency melee weapon, even if its similar to the way the kroot fashion blades on their firearms.

My initial idea with the brood mother was, having a unit that could link and coordinate the vespid drones and tau drones and make them into a functional cohesive force. And your defintely right about it needing to be somewhat mobile, I just didn't want it moving as fast as standard troops around the field. And I didn't know about the drone net or the tank drone factory. I'll sit down and rethink it to make it a better unit.

The idea behind the heavy vespid troop was having something that wasn't a full on suit, more like armor plating for vespid troops. But give that troop the option to have a tau commander in a similar suit. But you may be right in saying its redundant, and just to have a Vespid Strain guard suit, and give it multiple ways to build.

Wolfnid420 wrote:I think the kroot suits could almost be a really good place to put the pathfinder special weaponry. maybe they cost an extra few pts each?

Or better yet, the kroot or vespid could be melee suits, ion fields around the blades could make them power weapons or something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have ALWAYS wanted like, samurai drones(because tau wont waste life in melee if they can avoid it) but better equipped kroot or vespid makes more sense, probably cheaper than a drone too lol

I love this idea for the Kroot suits, Make them specialized Pathfinders, that have access to the pathfinder drones/equipment.

Kroot suit: Crisis pattern Stalker suit.

As for samurai drones, the Tau have made suicide drones specifically to fly in ram the target and detonate. I have this stupid horrible image in my head of a flying roomba with knives tapped to it.

Kanluwen wrote:

Jefffar wrote:
I also recall some Sentinels converted with Crisis/Broadside parts and weapons as Gue'vesa Battlesuits.

If this is referring to the photos that were shown by GW when the Tau first came out on their website, those were done by one of the 'Eavy Metal team as a personal project and he posted them up.

They weren't to be used as Battlesuits. They were Sentinels with Tau bits for proxying.

if you could find pics that'd be cool.


--------------------------------------

I corrected the issue of mistakenly labeled the kroot suit weapon as a gauss rail rifle (I've been playing to much fallout). My idea was a hybridized Kroot gun with a Rail rifle.

quick sketch for the kroot suit is in first post, So far I like the torso, but have lots to go before I like the legs and arms. Then once I figure stuff out I'll do a nice illustration

Triszin wrote:

jer155 wrote:Do you have any ideas for the human auxiliaries?

RIght now I don't, the reason being is, any human suits might confuse people. (what space marine is that?) I'd keep humans in the lore and off the table top for the tau. I'd focus on the Vespid, Kroot, and other prominent xenos in the tau empire. Especially because they could just say Trained humans are now using crisis suits, with little modification to the interior systems. (similar size, and physiology, 2 arms, legs, wise)

I understand. New players could maybe confuse them for models they just haven't seen before.