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Think about it. Heavy emphasis on ranged weapons, melee combat has almost totally disappeared as a standard part of combat. Our own training in hand-to-hand combat is more as a last-resort thing, so of course our soldiers would get slaughtered by aliens that put a lot of emphasis into being good at it.

It's not an unreasonable point. Mostly here and now hand to hand is pointless. With no reliable means to deliver said Hand to hand fighters vs the sheer amount of projectile death.
Good hand to hand aliens would be in for some trouble. I'm sure we'd take some nasty losses but Humans learn stuff fairly quickly and we're really good at killing stuff. I'm sure after a short while we'd hold our own. They run up assault units we move up something to burn them all the death or whatnot. For as good as the TAU shoot my Orks are glad they don't have massed flamer units. real"Fire Warriors" ..Yuck.

 warhead01 wrote:

Think about it. Heavy emphasis on ranged weapons, melee combat has almost totally disappeared as a standard part of combat. Our own training in hand-to-hand combat is more as a last-resort thing, so of course our soldiers would get slaughtered by aliens that put a lot of emphasis into being good at it.

It's not an unreasonable point. Mostly here and now hand to hand is pointless. With no reliable means to deliver said Hand to hand fighters vs the sheer amount of projectile death.
Good hand to hand aliens would be in for some trouble. I'm sure we'd take some nasty losses but Humans learn stuff fairly quickly and we're really good at killing stuff. I'm sure after a short while we'd hold our own. They run up assault units we move up something to burn them all the death or whatnot. For as good as the TAU shoot my Orks are glad they don't have massed flamer units. real"Fire Warriors" ..Yuck.

In order to hold off aliens in melee we'd need to invent powerful melee weapons and train our troops to use them. This would, in game terms, mean relying on our models' Strength value to deal damage, instead of our ranged weapons's Strength value.

Remind me again which of the two is more likely to kill something?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, a quote from the old Plastic Hammer video series comes to mind. The Sergeant is talking to his troops, and he says something like the following, "Our enemies are hulking, brutish barbarians armed with enormous axes. I think, since we're good at shooting, we take them on in combat, meet them on their own ground."

That is the level of absurdity the decision to train troops in melee would require. Really we'd just find ways to avoid getting into melee at all.

In order to hold off aliens in melee we'd need to invent powerful melee weapons and train our troops to use them. This would, in game terms, mean relying on our models' Strength value to deal damage, instead of our ranged weapons's Strength value.

Remind me again which of the two is more likely to kill something?

It gets squirly when we cross back and forth between game play and the real world.
Power weapons maybe or maybe not. My experience is only with bayonets. And I think we may have been the last cycle to do that training. I'm not able to confirm that for sure. So, that was more or less what I was thinking for hand to hand fighting. Not that other things couldn't be developed. Sure, why not. Melee is fine and all but I'd rather plop a grenade on them from a safe distance. have it out with the wounded. safely. lol. I don't thing our "rules of war" Or the rules and laws of land warfare would apply to fighting aliens. So no moral issues there. haha.
The only things I can think of for power weapon equivalents that we might readily have would be chainsaws and pneumatic equipment like the jaws of life. Mostly I doubt the effectiveness of anything not mounted on a vehicle and used for a specific task. Doubtful even then.
Which sounds to me even more like the TAU. haha.

Well, it has been said that the only way that the world will unify is if we are invaded by aliens, so there.

And the fact that Tau mirror how modern troops would act IRL has been a much lamented point of many detractors (for how our Tau suits work); rather than stand and take the fire ala medieval field combat, we would fire from cover, fire then flit (JSJ), and so on.

I could imagine a campaign of Eldar (Craftworld and Dark) against Chaos (Marines and Daemons) working quite nicely. The problem with other xenos-xenos matchups is that GW have mostly defined the non-human factions of the setting through the lens of the Imperium.

The problem with, say, a Tau-Necrons campaign, or a Tyranids-Orks one, is that there isn't, at least the setting stands, a compelling wider narrative to it. I would expect the closest we'll ever see to a xenos-heavy campaign would be one of unlikely Imperial and xenos allies (Guard and Orks, Ultramarines and Tau, Blood Angels and Necrons) against a existential threat (Daemons, Tyranids, Necrons).

Found the next generation Tau tank. Just need to slim it down and make it hover.

THis is a good link to learn about all the modern defenses tanks have compared to back in the day. It would be funny to see a Tau tank with a cover save and can fire and move with no penalties to its ballistic skill. Think of the tears folks.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russias-armata-tank-vs-americas-m-1-abrams-tow-missile-who-17719

Russian T-14.

I can do better. Polish PL-01 prototype/concept.

That's a light tank though not a main battle tank. One shot from any modern mbti is likely to leave the crew dead where as abrams and in particular the new T-14 are designed to take a shot and let the crew survive even if the tank itself can't fight back. Granted its gun is sufficient to damage any modern mbt. The T-14 by contrast will in theory take many many shots to bring down and if a frontal shot does get through it had very thick tank armor.

It has its uses and it definitely looks cheaper so there can be more of them. It doesn't seem to carry quite the defensive suit the T-14 has which puts it at a big disadvantage when fighting the mbt on its turf of choice.

I would like to see the Tau get a light tank based off of it.

 Gamgee wrote:
That's a light tank though not a main battle tank. One shot from any modern mbti is likely to leave the crew dead where as abrams and in particular the new T-14 are designed to take a shot and let the crew survive even if the tank itself can't fight back. Granted its gun is sufficient to damage any modern mbt. The T-14 by contrast will in theory take many many shots to bring down and if a frontal shot does get through it had very thick tank armor.

It has its uses and it definitely looks cheaper so there can be more of them. It doesn't seem to carry quite the defensive suit the T-14 has which puts it at a big disadvantage when fighting the mbt on its turf of choice.

I would like to see the Tau get a light tank based off of it.

*Looks at Gamgee's new avatar*

I always wondered what was under that mask. Now I know why he wore it in the first place.

 Pouncey wrote:

I mean, Tau even have power armor sorta like what some of our sci-fi has come up with, they're called battlesuits. It's not a literal suit of man-sized power armor, but it's more like the Starship Troopers vision of power armor, which was more like a small,one-man mech.

Minor point, but the Starship Troopers (the book) armor is man-sized. Much less mech, more like an Assault Marine with a lot of guns.

Frazzled version.

Failbaddon strikes forward, but Gork and Mork are displeased and jump up and down all over his forces and the Little Four. Some imperial dudes help out too.

Tau are eaten by Nids on their way to the EOT who have been drawn by all the activity. Necrons go to war with them over who gets all the biped snicky snacks and drives them out, but are weakened.

Gork and Mork realize their old cron foes are back in town-send out the big waugh to all Da Boyz and they go a' crumpin on the crons in the final great galactic throwdown. WAUGH!!!

IOM is broken apart. We have some large IOM fragments, but we have some marine chapters reforming legions and carving up their own empires. Cypher re-appears, unlocking Luthor and together they finally put down that Primarch turned traitor Lion'el.

And it is all part of Eldrad's cunning plan muahahah.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

I mean, Tau even have power armor sorta like what some of our sci-fi has come up with, they're called battlesuits. It's not a literal suit of man-sized power armor, but it's more like the Starship Troopers vision of power armor, which was more like a small,one-man mech.

Minor point, but the Starship Troopers (the book) armor is man-sized. Much less mech, more like an Assault Marine with a lot of guns.

Descriptions/depictions vary, and Heinlein never gives dimensions, but the War Machine suit in the Iron Man movies is the visual that's felt closest to the Mobile Infantry suits to me.

(The d20 book actually took the silly route of trying to reconcile the book with the movies by explaining how the leftover Aliens props were sophisticated nanotech power armour.)

 Gamgee wrote:
It would be funny to see a Tau tank with a cover save and can fire and move with no penalties to its ballistic skill. Think of the tears folks.

Technically Tau Tanks should have that second ability, since almost all of their weapons have gyroscopic stabilisers that keep the gun tracked on target as though the vehicle isn't even moving, even if it's moving very fast/turning very hard.

Well, two ways that could see a return to tanks versus the suit spam (riptide variants\stormsurges\supremacy suits) would be to return Multi-trackers and Target Locks to the Vehicle Armory. . .