Specialist Arms Forum
Battlefleet Gothic => [BFG] Discussion => Topic started by: lastspartacus on September 23, 2011, 07:23:26 PM
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A few questions for future Tau fleet projects, and some random ones. I have been researching, but there appears to be a lack of info on these topics.
1. Do Tau have bionics, vat grown body parts, etc? Life extension? I'm wondering how advanced they are in these fields in comparison to Imperials.
2. Do Tau employ or are they even capable of employing exterminatus grade weapons.
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As far as I know, the Tau have particularly short life spans (~40 years). This is one of the reasons why they put their race above their personal well being so much. Ethereals may live longer but I'm not sure. This is all coming from the fluff in the Deathwatch role playing game. As for bionics (etc.) I've never seen any in the art or heard of anything in the fluff. I haven't read a Tau codex though. If they don't have access to them in 40k then I'd suggest they don't have them. Given their technology level they can certainly make them, but perhaps they don't see much use as the Tau don't live long enough to warrant the investment (for example).
As for exterminatus weapons, again I've never heard of any in the fluff. Actually I've only ever heard of the Imperium having such technology (plus the planet killer and black stone fortresses, but they're unique). I think it's not their style. The Tau want to convert populations to the greater good, not erradicate them. Being a young (possibly naive) space faring race, they don't see the need to totally wipe out some races (such as dangerous xenos filth or planets irrevocably tainted by chaos).
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I would agree on all points about the tau. I have never seen them use any of those items. Even against the orks they never eradicated a planet. As for the bionics they can clearly build similar equipment (battle suits) but either cannot miniaturize the equipment enough (unlikely) or are unwilling to alter themselves in this fashion (pretty likely). They can probably grow organs, however I believe they would only use them to heal the wounded or sick tho.
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Like Andrew says I think. Tau would think of altering themselves as a bad thing. And they live pretty short. And I do not know what the Ethereals view is and how high the breeding rate but I could see them searching for a way to extend life in a normal way.
As for exterminatus: I think they are capable to do so but it would not be their idea to do so. Thay want to expand and conquer, not destroy.
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The Tau do have a form of bionics. Things like drone controllers and targeting devices can be in "hard wired" form as a kind of implant. I have seen official artwork of Earth caste Tau with a large, mechanical looking forearm, however it's likely that it was just a kind of glove rather than a "bionic".
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Once again that sounds like the battle suit tech, something like an exo suit for heavy repair or construction.
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Tau military tech does include bionics. As mentioned, they term them "Hard Wired" in all codex releases. The tech is not just for battle suits. Fire warrior shas'la ( the unit sargent or corpral) and Path finders may use Hard wired gear. Gear includes, Drone controler, Target Lock, Multi tracker.
In Imperial Amour second edition there is a section that introduces the Pathfinder testfiring the new infantry scaled Rail Rifle.
The test was overseen by a Aun im presuming to be from the Fire Cast. The test firing showed the hitting power of the Rail Rifle, The test gunner had a hardwired multi tracker and target lock to allow him to interface with his weapon. During the test a feedback surge from the gun caused severe brain damage to the gunner.
(rule represented by Gets Hot) The Aun was distressed by the results and loss of life but was resigned that it was a price to pay to arm the Greater Good.
The Weapon was sanctioned for field use.
In the current Codex release the Tau Rail Rifle no longer sufferes from feedback ( Gets Hot) and may use it and the hard wired gear in a unit of pathfinders ( up to 3 models) So this would indicate that the Tau are investing in their tech as well as their biological interfaces.
Would the Tau use Prosthetic limbs? Why not, its the Tau/Humane thing to do for all the wounded war vets of the warrior casts. It would be a engineering and a quality of life issue to develope functional limbs at first. Later stronger limbs would be made possible with military applications to allow wounded firewarrors to rejoin the fight with the experience and now reforged limbs to combat the many enemies of the empire. Tau are very familure with robotics and programming of articulated limbs and the have mastered the surgical skills to implant war gear that is largly sensory in nature wired directly to the nural path ways of their brains.
If your asking for this kind of stuff, you must have something in mind ( no pun intended)
Ill leave with this. Weapons of mass destruction. Only known use of a modern WMD is the PC game release Dawn of war 2 soul storm. The Tau have whats called Arco Cannon that destroys higher lifeforms at the cell level. All lower lifeforms such as plants, animals and insects are unaffected.
In game the cannon is used to reduce the garrison forces in a territory that is to be attacked.
If you want to see it check out on You Tube.
Other weapons, probably Fission and Fusion bombs. The do have Electo magnetic pulse weapons. Infact they have emp grenades. This would indicate that they have mastered the tech for a city or regional level of capability as it is much harder to control and build a device with a emp effect that fits in the palm of your hand.
Mass drivers. Large rail guns are possible with the principles and materials available to the empire. Local asteriods could be brought to a targeted world and then loaded into a large open barrel of a mass driver. Tau seem to have access to 2 types of force to employ mass acceleration. 1. Magnetic 2. Gravitity.
A asteriod size of a bus traveling at hypervelocity would wipe out any major city on earth. If the Tau want to play basket ball over a planet, they could dribble rocks down on the heads of their enemies. It would be ugly ( and dirt cheap). Have no doubt, if the Tau want to kill a world, they have the tools to do it.
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I couldn't (and obviously didn't) put it any better myself Kelsik ;)
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Life extention tech. Gw in the first 40k codex release stated that the typical life span of the species was around 40 terran years. How ever some of thier special characters were stated as to have a life span of several centuries. Farsight bieng one of the specificly named characters to have had a long life.
However, GW has rewritten some of its lore and time line of the Tau in the second codex. They refere to events that had taken place centuries before ( like the Damoclese Gulf Crusade) as having now taken place with in the life span of the current or the reciently passed generation of Tau. aka, all events within the last 100 years. That still leaves a few special characters with longer life spans than the average Tau.
So in both codex there is enough evidence to suggest that the Tau do have life extention tech. What form it takes and what costs are required are unknown to me. I could speculate that since its so rare it must be extreamly costly in resources or that the resource thats key is the very flesh of their fellow Tau.
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Zombie Tau! Talk about the Greater Good! :)
Arco Cannon? I wonder if that cannon is canon (lol) or just a silly video game thing. Sounds like super advanced tech by any racial standards.
As to the rest of it, I find your logic plausible.
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Using DoW fluff is risky.
The tau do not use exterminatus weapons because it is entirely contrary to the needs of the greater good (though, thanks to DoW, and a fantastic example of how stupid relic can be).
If the tau would encounter a world too difficult to destroy through force of arms, they may find other ways of conquest, namely diplomatic means or cutting off supply lines until the defenders are too weak to protect the world.
They are, however, not beyond orbital bombardment of hardened targets. (this could justify an 'exterminatus' mission, as the tau fleet gets into orbit and begins raining down rail cannon and ion cannon rounds onto the planet)
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Indeed, DoW is not canon, I just used it as it was a nifty looking weapon.
Im not fully in aggreement with the sentiment that Tau Aun would not authorize a planetary exterminatus. Examples would be a nid infested world, a nurgle cult thats let disease and corruption take root and get hoplessly out of control, A necron tomb world thats already dead but needs to have its entire surface made molten by repeated mass driver strikes. Dig deeper and youll find more cases that merit total destruction.
If you can find a reason to justify bringing a world to absolute ruin in the context of the greater good then it shall be done. I believe their guiding philosophy would allow it if the cost of not enacting exterminatus would mean greater destruction to Tau lives and worlds. The needs of the many out way the needs of the few. ( dam I love pulling out old Spock lines.)
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Well, allow me to use specifics.
The tau have only been reported in fighting nids when they were not expecting it.
The tau far more frequently engage the nids where they are weakest (in space). Shadowsun herself obliterated an entire splinterfleet with zero casualties.
The problem is, the Tau do not have the same problems as the Imperium does. They know to fight the nids in space, not on the ground. Their society does not lend itself to chaos infiltration either. Most of the "exterminatus" orders come when an inquisitor does not want to cope with a protracted land-war.
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That is true the Imperals would rather sign the death warrent on 10b lives than deal with what they know getting out. Plus they can afford to, humans are cheap and plentiful.
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Id still like to believe the imperium isn't so calus as to condem a world of human or xeno to total destruction for less than reason than would be neccessary, but I've read many accounts of massive use excessive force used.
The Aun would be able to make the difficult choice and do what must be done before its to late
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Regarding the Arco cannon: I wouldn't count it as an exterminatus weapon. In the game it could shoot from one planet to another, but the blast radius was a few tens of metres at best. I'd class an exterminatus weapon as something that can de-populate a planet in either a single shot or after a few hours of bombardment. The Arcon cannon would take years to cover the surface of a planet.
As for Imperial exterminatus: when I played 40k as a kid I condoled myself with the thought that even if my space marines lost the battle (which they always did), I'd just exterminate the planet and so still ultimately win. However I believe the actual Imperial strategy (from the Dark Heresy rpg IIRC) is that a planet is only subject to exterminatus if the cost of not doing so would be more than one planet. I.e. if a planet has fallen to chaos it wont be exterminated, as in the future it could be brought back to the Imperium. But if the planet is very likely to then spawn a chaos crusade which would endanger more worlds, then it would be subject to exterminatus. Similarly, a world that will inevitably fall to the Tyranids may be exterminated to prevent the Tyranids from getting more biomass.
The Imperium doesn't do exterminatus on a whim as the weapons required to do so either cannot be reproduced or are very expensive to produce.
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Im quite sure the Imperium still knows how to build a wmd. And I think you stated it well on the criteria that use of wmd would be sanctioned.
The Aun also will be forced to make such decisions. The Red Corsairs are also based the eastern edge of the galaxy and will come into conflict with the Tau at some time. Huron wouldnt hesitate to use a wmd to clear the way to a prize wanted, even if a billion souls were to be sacrificed to his gods to do it. ( well in his and any chaos thrall, the more dead the merrier).
As for the Arco Cannon not measuring up to a wmd, Its not a world killer. Its a tacticle weapon used to clear opposition. Its range is impressive id wager its rate of fire is too.
Is it a useful tool to clear out a star system let alone a single world? Yes, but like many tools, haveing more than one would be requireed to do the job in a timely manner. In DoW Soulstorm its a base weapon. The Kor o vesh ( Tau second generation navy) should explore adapting the weapon concept as a ship mounted system.
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I think I need to make it clear that, in my mind, weapons of mass destruction and exterminatus weapons aren't the same thing. The former take out cities, the latter take out planets.
A warship or fleet may be able to hang in orbit and bombard a planet with its "conventional" weapons, and each shot may level entire city blocks, but that does not constitute an exterminatus.
Arco cannon: long range doesn't necessarily equal high rate of fire. It could indicate a very low rate of fire as it takes a long time to build up its charge. Despite it's impressive range, ultimately it only kills a handful of humans per shot (in DoW Astartes could even withstand a direct hit), so it's nowhere near an exterminatus or even a wmd.
The Tau may well face situations where an exterminatus is necessary, but I don't think they do it because 1) they have far less worlds to loose than the Imperium, 2) I've never seen it mentioned in the fluff that I've read, 3) I see the Tau as being relatively naive. The Imperium kills xenos because the Emperor, in his infinite wisdom, told humanity not to trust aliens and to mercilessly eliminate all threats. The Tau see enemies as potential allies (vassals) and so may well decide to send in more water caste ambassadors rather than more fire warriors.
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I think I need to make it clear that, in my mind, weapons of mass destruction and exterminatus weapons aren't the same thing. The former take out cities, the latter take out planets.
Most of the Taus current arsenal is more precise scalples than blunt world killers. And as Ive listed in this thread, Tau possess the technical know how to make very effective mass drivers. cheap ammo in the form of asteroids accelerated to hyper velocities could pulverise a entire planet, provided a large enough asteroid is used as the kill vehicle. As Dan Lee made clear, Exterminatus weapons are a class of weapon more terrible than the common garden variety of wmd.
A warship or fleet may be able to hang in orbit and bombard a planet with its "conventional" weapons, and each shot may level entire city blocks, but that does not constitute an exterminatus.
Not at first, but if you were to ask the former citizens of Nastromo what they though of the Night Lords bombardment of the surface by means of every lance weapon available to the 8th legion. The resulting assault cut through the adamantium crust of the planet till the core exploded. Would they be able to tell the difference between " conventional vs exterminatus " weapons? one may take longer and more effort but the result is the same.
Arco cannon: long range doesn't necessarily equal high rate of fire. It could indicate a very low rate of fire as it takes a long time to build up its charge. Despite it's impressive range, ultimately it only kills a handful of humans per shot (in DoW Astartes could even withstand a direct hit), so it's nowhere near an exterminatus or even a wmd.
It may not have a high rate of fire,but id put my money on the Foe cast to get it to fire faster or give it a contstant streaming. with that effect cleansing the board would be like coloring in a map with a pen. stay in the lines and make sure to color in the whole surface.
I also though the Arco cannon lacked all out killing power. In game I liked using it but i though it left too much alive after every shot. I reasoned that the weapon was calibrated to not totally sterilize all life forms from the target zone. Its not unreasonable to speculate that the Arco could be calibrated to kill all life in the target zone. Soil, bacteria, even little dogs.
The Tau may well face situations where an exterminatus is necessary, but I don't think they do it because 1) they have far less worlds to loose than the Imperium, 2) I've never seen it mentioned in the fluff that I've read, 3) I see the Tau as being relatively naive. The Imperium kills xenos because the Emperor, in his infinite wisdom, told humanity not to trust aliens and to mercilessly eliminate all threats. The Tau see enemies as potential allies (vassals) and so may well decide to send in more water caste ambassadors rather than more fire warriors.
I dont think The Aun would kill one of their major septs. Well not with out really dire reasons. As for many of the conquered human worlds may not enjoy the same level of protection of importance as the core worlds and thus easier to allow them to be sacrificed to the greater good.
If your looking for a justification as to why they do anything, just look at Taus catch all phrase, The Greater Good, It is pithy but its a solid philosophy that supports many dark deeds if it can be justified for the good of the empire. They may not like what they see in the mirror some days but thats a price to pay when running a empire. I think they have what it takes to do the dirty deeds for the right reasons ( well their right reasons )
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I'd rather not get into the whole mass driver asteroid debate. I don't think it's that feasible. Did you ever read the "Asteroids aren't cheap" article (I believe in WD) where they explained why the Imperium don't use Asteroids for Exterminatus. It's true the Tau may have better mass driver technology, and they wouldn't spend several weeks blessing the asteroid. But overall I don't think it's as straight forward as you make out.
Nastromo was very much a special case. Most planets don't have an adamantium crust, and heating up the core of a planet, which is already probably hotter than a lance shot anyway, wouldn't cause the planet to explode. Nastromo's crust was cracked from when the Night Lord's pod crashed into the planet (which is what the 8th Legion aimed at), and for some reason the planets core was explosive (why did anyone ever choose to colonize and explosive planet?). On any other planet, conventional weapons would have to kill the planet one blast radius at a time, expending ridiculous amounts of ammo, and giving the occupants of the planet time to escape the destruction. It would be mass-murder but not exterminatus.
If improving the Arco cannon was simply a matter of wanting it to be better, why doesn't someone just take a normal ship lance battery and "just" up the range, damage per shot, and fire rate so they can use that to kill whatever they want? In reality (or even in a semi-reasonable fictional universe) you have to make compromises when you design a weapon. Even if it could wipe out a planet by "colouring-in", unless it does it incredibly quickly anything that can move is just going to avoid the beam.
You have a point that the Tau wouldn't care so much about conquered worlds. And they probably would be willing to do terrible things for "the greater good". If we are considering DoW fluff, then if you win the Dark Crusade with the Tau they put all the humans in to single sex concentration camps and essentially wipe out the entire population anyway, so they obviously don't really care about other races.
I hope you aren't taking the things I say too personally Kelsik. We obviously have differing views on this but I'm enjoying the exchange.
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I'm not taking this personnaly other than that I like the topic and I have enjoyed the debate. Speaking of which, I think we've made all the speaking points of relevance. There are more things to look at that such as, what is the primary fuel the Tau use in their ships, vehicles, power plants ect. Multiple sources or just one type of fuel?.
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Glad you're enjoying it too.
The only thing I can think of regarding fuel is that the Tau make use of pulse rifles which I believe are plasma based, so I guess it would make sense for them to use plasma reactors. I haven't seen their power or fuel sources mentioned anywhere though.
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The Sho'aun'or'es Generator, as described in both Kill Team and Fire Warrior.
In appearance, starship-grade generators are enormous, hollowed out "stacks" containing a turbulent liquid-gaseous substance with floating particles of light and energy inside (similar in description and function to a green-colored tokamok generator).
In practice, it's a safe and effectively unlimited power supply used in almost all Tau technology that requires electrical energy to function; ranging from starships to Hammerheads to Crisis Suits to Drones to Line Warrior backpack-mounted powercell-chargers. The Sho'aun'or'es requires no described recharging (though it's likely it only needs its fuel replenished every 10+ years if it is indeed a Fusion Reactor), and is only limited by its maximum power output at any one time.
Shamelessly stolen from forums.tauonline.org (http://forums.tauonline.org)
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Shamful or not, that was a good discription as any for the power generators, Id be interested in knowing what the fuel was. Exa, Plutomioum, Un-obtainium, non-existium.
Another tech question ive batted around is the ship mounted prow deflector. Im fairly sure its based on gravitic manipulation, same as thier prime star drive. Im taking my source from Armada, and the original fleet release in BFG mags.
Also in the old releases, Tau primary means to launch missles from a weapon termed, "Spine Gun". This is basicly a very similar to the magnetic rail gun however a spine gun uses gravitic (gravity) pules to speed the ordanance up to launch velocity.
Coffees done, got to get back to work.
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Shamful or not, that was a good discription as any for the power generators, Id be interested in knowing what the fuel was. Exa, Plutomioum, Un-obtainium, non-existium.
Nah, it's Narrativium.
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Shamful or not, that was a good discription as any for the power generators, Id be interested in knowing what the fuel was. Exa, Plutomioum, Un-obtainium, non-existium.
Nah, it's Narrativium.
possibly Un-explainium?
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possibly Un-explainium?
Assuredly it is plotium deviceatrate.
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Since I just got a SG tau fleet, and have a tau fluff thread open. How the HELL is a Merchant starting at 4 points? That thing is almost the size of an explorer battleship! Easily cruiser mass.
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Since I just got a SG tau fleet, and have a tau fluff thread open. How the HELL is a Merchant starting at 4 points? That thing is almost the size of an explorer battleship! Easily cruiser mass.
This has been a bone of contention for a long time. The standard line was that it was a Merchant vessel, not a warship, therefore it wasn't reinforced properly. The argument led to the option of +2 hits being added for +15 pts. Presumably the rationale being that they did get retrofitted for military use. However, this whole line seems to me to justify it starting at 6 hit points, with a possible upgrade to 8. When you consider that heavy transports have 6 hits and they're smaller than Tau Merchants and just as non-military in function then it really is hard to justify 4 hits. I always pay the upgrade to 6 hits and consider this as their minimum.
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Hollow ship, less durable.
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Hollow ship, less durable.
No less hollow than the transports of other races, no less hollow than the Explorer, which has 3 times the hits.
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Good to know. Sounds like they just wanted a 4 hit cruiser. And IIRC the tau MO before the kororvesh was weaponized commercial ships rather than a dedicated military fleet, so it wouldn't be that structurally compromised, you would think.
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The explorer was converted to military use tho, I imagine they put extra bracing etc to beef it up, not to mention that it is bb size. The only other transports that are close to this size in game are the imperial heavy transports 6 hits (or ten upgraded).
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And when trying to fill out the fleet, see the retail costs of a battleship, cruiser, and light cruiser are the same. W. T. F.
This fleet has me absolutely bumfuzzled. Yay kororvesh! :)
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The explorer was converted to military use tho, I imagine they put extra bracing etc to beef it up, not to mention that it is bb size. The only other transports that are close to this size in game are the imperial heavy transports 6 hits (or ten upgraded).
The same is true of the Merchant. Both are cargo ships refitted to military use. And when you compare the Merchant to the Imperial heavy transports the latter are smaller and yet have more hits, despite being cargo ships.
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I didn't realize the merchants were larger than heavys. Hummm I guess chock it up to gw's idiocy. Kinda like how the taus purpose built battleship has less hits than a converted transport....
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I didn't realize the merchants were larger than heavys. Hummm I guess chock it up to gw's idiocy. Kinda like how the taus purpose built battleship has less hits than a converted transport....
Yes, the lack of hits of all 3 of the Kor'or'vesh's capital ships is disturbing. However, this isn't down to GW idiocy this time, but rather FW's inability to grasp the intricacies of scale.
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You think the kororvesh vessels look like they have larger hits Sig? That confuses me on all but the 4 hit Emissary, which I can see.
The ultimate answer to it all is the one put forth at the beginning of the BBB, the one that states that everything is not to scale and is only a representative model of the ship in the stem. Of course, thats not very satisfying an answer, when you know that they COULD easily do it to scale if they wanted to, and most of the ships seem to be to scale.
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You think the kororvesh vessels look like they have larger hits Sig? That confuses me on all but the 4 hit Emissary, which I can see.
No, but if you're going to construct a CL you'd go for a 6 hit one, not a 4 hit one, yes? Similarly, if you wanted to construct a line cruiser then 8 hits would be the norm, not 6 hits. And a new battleship should also be 12 hits, not 10 hits. All this would have been possible had Forgeworld any concept of scale and did not always make their ships so small. The GK strike cruiser is tiny, the FW Tau ships are tiny and the Eldar CLs were probably first intended to be full cruisers but only ended up light cruisers due to size.
If Forgeworld had made the models larger the Emissary would be 6 hits, the Protector 8 and the Custodian 12. These would be much more appropriate for the fleet.
The ultimate answer to it all is the one put forth at the beginning of the BBB, the one that states that everything is not to scale and is only a representative model of the ship in the stem. Of course, thats not very satisfying an answer, when you know that they COULD easily do it to scale if they wanted to, and most of the ships seem to be to scale.
Indeed, unsatisfactory.