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 Mr Nobody wrote:
The Imperium is weird because their level of technology is all over the place. The most advanced technology you'll see a guardsmen use will be some form of plasma gun, which also tends to blow up. Relatively unimpressive compared to the technologies available to even the lowest warrior of the Tau. But the Imperium will resort to using their archeotech if there is a need. Common examples would the space marine terminator armor or titans. Some forge worlds will even pull out even rarer examples, like a black hole gun or something.

Don't forget melta guns. At the simple company level they have toys like deathstrike missiles which are vortex warheads.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
The Imperium is weird because their level of technology is all over the place.

Which makes sense because they only make stuff that they have plans for that they inherited from the Dark Age of Technology. In many ways they are always fitting square pegs into round holes, rather than designing their way around problems.

chimera0205 wrote:


Yeab but thats the ONLY field the Lasgun is better in

Last time i remember, most wars are lost on the logistics front.

Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

This is where logistics wins. Until the Tau can get fast warp travel like the Imperium, they _cannot_ win a truly serious war on anything but defense. The Imperium can funnel in reinforcements faster than the Tau and they have more, and will have more for thousands of years.

I also think the lasgun is a marvellous invention. And a lot of the IG equipment has the very situational advantage (as others said) of being really cheap and easy to produce. The approach to have near unlimited numbers of "throwaway troops" only works, if you can also afford to throw away their equipment in the same measure. Orks can do it, because they can literally build their weapons out of junk. Tyranids can do it because they grow soldiers and weapons together. The imperium can do it, because given the remaining STCs even feudal worlds can hammer together lasguns and other guard equipment because it is so darn simple. The Tau equipment on the other hand, as elegant and progressive as it looks, seems to require advanced production techniques and materials to produce and maintain. The Imperium can afford to not only loose 1 Billion Guardsmen on a crusade, but also to loose their 1 Billion Lasguns and Flak vests, a million vehicles etc. They wouldn't if they put as much effort into it as Tau with their pulse rifles, battlesuits etc.

But regarding the fluff: I believe (personal opinion) that the usual Tau would have a hard time grasping that concept. If you are usually not treated as expandable (or at least not as expendable as a guardsmen, a hormagaunt or a gretchin), this facet of logistics and "can I afford to loose tons of my equipment" would hardly come to mind comparing said equipment.

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

This is where logistics wins. Until the Tau can get fast warp travel like the Imperium, they _cannot_ win a truly serious war on anything but defense. The Imperium can funnel in reinforcements faster than the Tau and they have more, and will have more for thousands of years.

Thats true imagine tau titan who can one shot entire planet!

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

This is where logistics wins. Until the Tau can get fast warp travel like the Imperium, they _cannot_ win a truly serious war on anything but defense. The Imperium can funnel in reinforcements faster than the Tau and they have more, and will have more for thousands of years.

Thats true imagine tau titan who can one shot entire planet!

They (and any other race in the setting) already have the capacity to field kinetic kill weapons travelling at significant percentage of lightspeed.(1% or better). Wrecking a planet is effectively trivial for any race with fusion power and ion engines - strap some thrusters to a big rock and aim it. It's the taking of planets, intact and useful, that's the hard part. It's boots on the ground conquest followed by fortifying the planet to keep it, made all the harder by insurgents and all the damage you did in the process of taking it.

It's the very reason the Emperor invented Space Marines in the first place. The Imperial Guard isn't even well suited to proper planetary invasion like hundreds of thousands of marines. They can do it, sure, but it will take a lot longer and do a lot more damage to the planet's infrastructure.

The Tau aren't even at the level of Imperial Guard when invading worlds. They probably have better orbital insertion of troops, but there's a very good reason why the Tau prefer to use diplomacy and technology transfer to 'convince' worlds to join their cause - taking planets by force is enormously costly, Bribing the hell out of a planet is always going to be less expensive.

TAU: "Hahaha, silly Gue'la! Look how primitive this gun is, it's just a laser? Hahaha! And your Space Marine gun... just shoots a big bullet that explodes? Pathetic!"

AELDARI: "Uh, don't do that... you might wanna stop."

IMPERIUM: "I think I'mma do it..."

TAU: "Do what, send in your clunky Knights? Our Broadside battlesuits make a mockery of them! Primitive Gue'la! Your technology is nothing compared to that of the Tau Empire!"

NECRONS: "Tau, this is where you need to STFU."

IMPERIUM: *wipes dust off an old console and calls over some Tech-Priests*

TYRANIDS: *detours elsewhere*

TAU: "You Gue'la are nothing without your numbers, your fear of technology is just old superstition. You should join our empire, and we can make you a part of the Greater Good- forget your rotting Emperor on his throne."

ORK: "Oh, 'ere we go..."

TAU: "There is nothing that this filthy Gue-"

IMPERIUM: *pushes a few buttons and bends time to superimposes a variation of Tau from a microsecond before back onto himself, simultaneously destroying every molecule in his body in an instant and leaving behind a void.*

TAU DRONE: *catches the Scrap Code and runs nothing but Microsoft Edge while it yeets weaponized memes through all other Tau technology*

IMPERIUM: "Huh, I thought this was the recaf machine. I was just gonna splash hot coffee on him."

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

This is where logistics wins. Until the Tau can get fast warp travel like the Imperium, they _cannot_ win a truly serious war on anything but defense. The Imperium can funnel in reinforcements faster than the Tau and they have more, and will have more for thousands of years.

Thats true imagine tau titan who can one shot entire planet!

They (and any other race in the setting) already have the capacity to field kinetic kill weapons travelling at significant percentage of lightspeed.(1% or better). Wrecking a planet is effectively trivial for any race with fusion power and ion engines - strap some thrusters to a big rock and aim it. It's the taking of planets, intact and useful, that's the hard part. It's boots on the ground conquest followed by fortifying the planet to keep it, made all the harder by insurgents and all the damage you did in the process of taking it.

It's the very reason the Emperor invented Space Marines in the first place. The Imperial Guard isn't even well suited to proper planetary invasion like hundreds of thousands of marines. They can do it, sure, but it will take a lot longer and do a lot more damage to the planet's infrastructure.

The Tau aren't even at the level of Imperial Guard when invading worlds. They probably have better orbital insertion of troops, but there's a very good reason why the Tau prefer to use diplomacy and technology transfer to 'convince' worlds to join their cause - taking planets by force is enormously costly, Bribing the hell out of a planet is always going to be less expensive.

Maybe they are weak at some perspectives but imperium now is literally split in 2 pieces so they can use human despair to bribe them. If they dont they gonna have a REALLY bad time because Chaos is sending troops to them. Well sucks to be them.On a side note: i wonder if they are blue screen bullets that can shutdown any suit or drone.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:


IMPERIUM: *pushes a few buttons and bends time to superimposes a variation of Tau from a microsecond before back onto himself, simultaneously destroying every molecule in his body in an instant and leaving behind a void.*

Yeah, the Tech Priests are hoarding all the good stuff. All things considered, it's probably for the best.

The scary thing is that all of the Imperium's STC technology was literally designed and constructed via basic colonial equipment. In other words, it wasn't even the WONDERS of the Dark of Age of Technology, just the lunchbox you sent out with expendable colonists.

 John Prins wrote:
Yeah, the Tech Priests are hoarding all the good stuff. All things considered, it's probably for the best.

You say that, but a lot of times it's more like they're keeping it locked behind every possible containment protocol imaginable and surrounding it with big explosives just in case it gets loose, because some of that tech is insanely dangerous. Not 'we don't get how this coffee maker works and it could break', but "this might just tear every planet in the segmentum out of orbit and super-compress them and launch them at another segmentum, and play the Folger's coffee jingle while it happens". Because at one time, humanity was that scary.

For perspective, races in the galaxy that knew what humanity was like back during the Dark Age? During the Great Crusade, when hundreds of thousands of Space Marines were conducting xenocidal campaigns against entire alien civilizations, the older species' general reaction was "Well, at least they've toned it down a bit".

 John Prins wrote:
The scary thing is that all of the Imperium's STC technology was literally designed and constructed via basic colonial equipment. In other words, it wasn't even the WONDERS of the Dark of Age of Technology, just the lunchbox you sent out with expendable colonists.

Imagine being able to walk up to a computer and saying, "A big monster with sharp teeth and covered in scales and spikes ate Cletus, please help" and it just tells you what parts to yank off the ship and where to place it so you can have a giant gun-laden walking tank murderbot.

That probably also has a coffee maker inside, because the STC knows what you need.

Arceotech is usually bad for everyone near it. A tech priest found an Ark Mechanicus and starting the thing up destroyed the planet.

 godardc wrote:
There is a short story when the Tau discover an imperial missile guided by a servitor, or at least some remains like the brain. They open the missile to study it and make this ... Disconcerting discovery

Moral is: great amount of flashlights can do everything.

What's the saying? Easier to curse the darkness than light a candle? You can light a lot of darkness with the billions of "flashlights" out there

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

But titans are a really, really inefficient weapon system.You introduce massive weak points in the form of the joints on the legs, sacrifice the ability to minimise your profile making it impossible to hide, introduce huge engineering problems with maintaining balance on uneven terrain, there's issues with weight displacement where the entire force of the titan on the ground is through its feet, they are incredibly expensive and represent a huge amount of your war resources to build/maintain/supply etc.

The Tau encountered Titans. Their initial solution was massed firepower from Mantas. Then they developed the Tigershark, a fast aircraft equipped with railguns. Problem solved.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

But titans are a really, really inefficient weapon system.You introduce massive weak points in the form of the joints on the legs, sacrifice the ability to minimise your profile making it impossible to hide, introduce huge engineering problems with maintaining balance on uneven terrain, there's issues with weight displacement where the entire force of the titan on the ground is through its feet, they are incredibly expensive and represent a huge amount of your war resources to build/maintain/supply etc.

The Tau encountered Titans. Their initial solution was massed firepower from Mantas. Then they developed the Tigershark, a fast aircraft equipped with railguns. Problem solved.

Tanks >> Titans both in effectiveness and cost

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

But titans are a really, really inefficient weapon system.You introduce massive weak points in the form of the joints on the legs, sacrifice the ability to minimise your profile making it impossible to hide, introduce huge engineering problems with maintaining balance on uneven terrain, there's issues with weight displacement where the entire force of the titan on the ground is through its feet, they are incredibly expensive and represent a huge amount of your war resources to build/maintain/supply etc.

The Tau encountered Titans. Their initial solution was massed firepower from Mantas. Then they developed the Tigershark, a fast aircraft equipped with railguns. Problem solved.

Then they made Tau Titans. Problem unsolved.

 KingGarland wrote:
I remember reading in some Tau books that when first encountering the Imperium and discovering some of the lower tech used like the Lasgun they were rather unimpressed

Well that's funny, because iirc its a lot harder to make a lethal laser weapon than a rail gun, which is what tau pulse weapons are.
Seriously, the ad mech must put like 3 nuclear power plants or something worth of energy in a single power pack. Turns out you need absurd amounts of energy to make a laser deal any significant amount of damage.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
The Imperium is weird because their level of technology is all over the place. The most advanced technology you'll see a guardsmen use will be some form of plasma gun, which also tends to blow up. Relatively unimpressive compared to the technologies available to even the lowest warrior of the Tau. But the Imperium will resort to using their archeotech if there is a need. Common examples would the space marine terminator armor or titans. Some forge worlds will even pull out even rarer examples, like a black hole gun or something.

Logistics and doctrines are a bitch. Considering though that there are precedents for being wary of advanced tech (See: The Men of Iron), the imperium probably have a good reason to be wary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Plus, the lasgun is a logistician's wet dream. It is by no means a bad weapon for its intended purpose.

I am surprised that don't take that concept and run with it like a wiener dog escaping with a slice of pizza:
*multilasers instead of heavy bolters at all levels.
*Lascannons or multilasers instead of autocannons at all levels.

Apparently laser weapons aren't great against armor unless they are really powerful. Which would explain why las weapons tend to have crap AP stats.
Something about needing more energy to melt through armor than flesh, which just needs to be flash boiled, I would think.

pm713 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

But titans are a really, really inefficient weapon system.You introduce massive weak points in the form of the joints on the legs, sacrifice the ability to minimise your profile making it impossible to hide, introduce huge engineering problems with maintaining balance on uneven terrain, there's issues with weight displacement where the entire force of the titan on the ground is through its feet, they are incredibly expensive and represent a huge amount of your war resources to build/maintain/supply etc.

The Tau encountered Titans. Their initial solution was massed firepower from Mantas. Then they developed the Tigershark, a fast aircraft equipped with railguns. Problem solved.

Then they made Tau Titans. Problem unsolved.

Agreed, Tau arguably shouldn't have battlesuits larger than a Broadside, I'd like them better when they were more dependant on hovertanks and airpower, it helped them set apart creatively from the other factions that did have large bipedal constructs.

chimera0205 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

chimera0205 wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
One thing people also forget is that the Lasgun is an absolute marvel of technology. It's simple enough to be mass produced and will work in any and all conditions, Desert, Tundra, Void, you name it. It is rugged enough that it will keep working after any abuse short of running it over with a tank, can fire for the entire (average) lifespan of a Guardsman on just a single power pack and the power packs can range from chemical batteries to solar powered to being thrown into a fire pit to charge them.

Its powerful enough to blow limbs off even on its standard setting.

The fact it's considered just a flashlight shows just how terasquirrel poop nutty the 40k universe is.

Yeah.but the Tau Pulse rifle is still objectively better in every possible way. It has greater range and massively greater power with it being considered comparable then a Spacemarine Bolter. Its only major downside being Rate of Fire

I agrentee it's no where NEAR as robust.

A Lasgun operates simply, you have a single ammo supply requirement (energy) which can be produced in any situation just about anywhere. A garrison unit can plug their packs into power plugs and recharge them as easily as you can recharge your xbox controler.

A pulse rifle meanwhile presumably needs both an energy source, and a source of matter for the Plasma, making them not as easy to keep working in the field. this isn't a concern for the Tau whose empire is small and are less likely to have to worry about supply chains, but, logisticly the lasgun is superior.

Yeab but thats the ONLY field the Lasgun is better in

You make it sound like that's a bad thing. Logistics wins wars. You can have the most powerful gun in the world, but if you can't maintain it or run out of ammo then you just have a fancy club.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 KingGarland wrote:
I remember reading in some Tau books that when first encountering the Imperium and discovering some of the lower tech used like the Lasgun they were rather unimpressed

Well that's funny, because iirc its a lot harder to make a lethal laser weapon than a rail gun, which is what tau pulse weapons are.
Seriously, the ad mech must put like 3 nuclear power plants or something worth of energy in a single power pack. Turns out you need absurd amounts of energy to make a laser deal any significant amount of damage.

Pulse weapons are not railguns, they are plasma weapons.

pm713 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:
Well if they dont discover or reverse engineer titans humanity have a chance to beat them(I hope)

But titans are a really, really inefficient weapon system.You introduce massive weak points in the form of the joints on the legs, sacrifice the ability to minimise your profile making it impossible to hide, introduce huge engineering problems with maintaining balance on uneven terrain, there's issues with weight displacement where the entire force of the titan on the ground is through its feet, they are incredibly expensive and represent a huge amount of your war resources to build/maintain/supply etc.

The Tau encountered Titans. Their initial solution was massed firepower from Mantas. Then they developed the Tigershark, a fast aircraft equipped with railguns. Problem solved.

Then they made Tau Titans. Problem unsolved.

And thats why we cant get mechs irl.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 KingGarland wrote:
I remember reading in some Tau books that when first encountering the Imperium and discovering some of the lower tech used like the Lasgun they were rather unimpressed

Well that's funny, because iirc its a lot harder to make a lethal laser weapon than a rail gun, which is what tau pulse weapons are.
Seriously, the ad mech must put like 3 nuclear power plants or something worth of energy in a single power pack. Turns out you need absurd amounts of energy to make a laser deal any significant amount of damage.

Pulse weapons are not railguns, they are plasma weapons.

Not quite.
They use an electromagnetic field to propel a solid projectile along a pair of rails so fast it turns into plasma. Its basically a railgun on steroids.
Not to be confused with a tau railgun, which is a tau pulse weapon on steroids

Plasma weapons, either imperial or tau, already have ionized gas ready or a liquid that is turned into plasma which is propelled outwards with a magnetic field, iirc.

I mean, the end result is plasma, its just that how it gets that plasma is basically through induction / railgun technology.
I think the US navy already pulled something like that off. Apparently when they test fired that prototype rail-gun the projectile they used left a trail of plasma in its wake.

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

And thats why we cant get mechs irl.

Not for warfare, anyways.

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

And thats why we cant get mechs irl.

Not for warfare, anyways.

Closest thing to mechs are exoskeletons not only for medical stuff but for soldiers and construction/industrial workers.
Just wait 5-10 years. This thing gonna be everywhere.

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

And thats why we cant get mechs irl.

Not for warfare, anyways.

Closest thing to mechs are exoskeletons not only for medical stuff but for soldiers and construction/industrial workers.
Just wait 5-10 years. This thing gonna be everywhere.

Exoskeletons and powered armour are old hat at this point. The problem has always been the batteries.

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

And thats why we cant get mechs irl.

Not for warfare, anyways.

Closest thing to mechs are exoskeletons not only for medical stuff but for soldiers and construction/industrial workers.
Just wait 5-10 years. This thing gonna be everywhere.

Power armor isn't mechs, it's power armor. Mechs are super complex compared to the most complicated of tanks, have more weak spots and a higher battlefield profile.

So we might see power loaders or construction mechs, but they'll be garbage platforms for combat units.

That still leaves us with possible Patlabor units, which I'd be okay with.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

And thats why we cant get mechs irl.

Not for warfare, anyways.

Closest thing to mechs are exoskeletons not only for medical stuff but for soldiers and construction/industrial workers.
Just wait 5-10 years. This thing gonna be everywhere.

Exoskeletons and powered armour are old hat at this point. The problem has always been the batteries.

Old hat you say? Hold my beer! Sure they are less complex than mechs BUT instead of huge walker this gonna help ordinary joes with various things. Im scared thinking of Gucci exo XD


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

sajmonikpl1 wrote:

And thats why we cant get mechs irl.

Not for warfare, anyways.

Closest thing to mechs are exoskeletons not only for medical stuff but for soldiers and construction/industrial workers.
Just wait 5-10 years. This thing gonna be everywhere.

Power armor isn't mechs, it's power armor. Mechs are super complex compared to the most complicated of tanks, have more weak spots and a higher battlefield profile.

So we might see power loaders or construction mechs, but they'll be garbage platforms for combat units.

That still leaves us with possible Patlabor units, which I'd be okay with.

Thats true but they would be MAYBE terror troop. You know seeing giant ass robot walking at you its not good sign especially mech with minigun. Yup thats scary.

Meh, modern military would be taking lowest bidder. The hardware might look scary, but you just know that it would be running some kind of knock off or Windows ME. Flash 8t some pictures of squirrels and a table saw and it will probably just shut down to ponder what it has just encountered


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, scratch that... surely the only OS such a thing is likely to be running is Android