Tau vs Empire (on the ground)

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Yes. IA III has a shield rating for all the naval vessels as well as the Manta.

Since you yourself just said something about going on more than just stats from Imperial Armor, is there any instance of fluff that depicts them as having shields? In Firewarrior they don't, 'cause a Space Marine boarding team just teleports right on to their bridge.

Also, in the game version's cutscenes, you can clearly see imperial weapon fire striking the Tau ships' hull, while their return fire generates shield impacts.

In Warhammer 40,000, not all shield types prevent teleportation. Geller fields would, since they interact with the warp, but void shields and power fields might not. Besides, Tau warships canonically put all of their shield "power" to the fore in combat so that they may face the enemy.

[Imperial Overlord]

Void shields do fuck with teleportation, but not all shields are void shields. Also, a lot of Tau ships are poorly shielded.

[Rochey]

I'm a bit unsure about whether this would really count as fluff or not, but in IA3 there's an Ordo Xenos fact sheet for each of the Tau vehicles. Under the Armour section for the Manta it has "Energy Shields - Type Unknown". Unfortunately this doesn't tell us anything about the strength of these shields.

Regarding man-portable missiles, I'm not so sure they'd be all that vulnerable for them. With or without shields these vessels were designed with the role of heavy bomber in mind, and they're supposedly pretty durable in that role. It would depend on just how powerful the Empire's man-portable missiles are. Are there any indications of just how powerful they are?

Moving away from the Manta and onto other Tau aircraft, I spotted something quite interesting while browsing IA3. The maximum atmospheric speed for the Barracuda fighter (the standard Tau fighter) is listed as 2,100 KPH. Wookieepedia lists the TIE/In as having a max atmospheric speed of "just" 1,200 KPH and the TIE Bomber as traveling at 850 KPH. That's one hell of an advantage in favour of the Tau airforce.

[fractalsponge1]

Moving away from the Manta and onto other Tau aircraft, I spotted something quite interesting while browsing IA3. The maximum atmospheric speed for the Barracuda fighter (the standard Tau fighter) is listed as 2,100 KPH. Wookieepedia lists the TIE/In as having a max atmospheric speed of "just" 1,200 KPH and the TIE Bomber as traveling at 850 KPH. That's one hell of an advantage in favour of the Tau airforce.

Maybe because wookie's numbers are outdated and ridiculous?

ROTS ICS lists max airspeed for a droid HMP as 14200 kph. Between them, the AOTC and ICS gives starfighter atmospheric speeds between 12000 (Aethersprite) and 62000 kph (Utapaun fighter). A TIE/ln will have a comparable powerplant and should fall in that range. Even a Theta-class shuttle can do 2000kph.

Also, is there a reason why the Imperials don't get their complement of wheeled and repulsorvehicles? Like Juggernaut A6s, HAVrA9 floating fortresses, and firehawke/imperial/TX130T/2M tanks?

If we're including dropships, assault shuttles are known to mount turbolasers. I don't know what the low end of the scale for TLs are, but that's potentially megaton/second range firepower if one uses the point-defense light guns on an Acclamator as a benchmark. Something the size of a Gamma shuttle should be generating in the megaton range anyway.

[Rochey]

ROTS ICS lists max airspeed for a droid HMP as 14200 kph. Between them, the AOTC and ICS gives starfighter atmospheric speeds between 12000 (Aethersprite) and 62000 kph (Utapaun fighter). A TIE/ln will have a comparable powerplant and should fall in that range. Even a Theta-class shuttle can do 2000kph.

Aye, those figures seem a lot better to go by. In which case speed is one hell of an advantage in favour of the Empire.

Also, is there a reason why the Imperials don't get their complement of wheeled and repulsorvehicles? Like Juggernaut A6s, HAVrA9 floating fortresses, and firehawke/imperial/TX130T/2M tanks?

Indeed. Such vehicles would be much better comparisons to craft like the Hammerhead.

[Srelex]

What sort of firepower would we grant Imperial repulsor tanks? They've only really featured in games, IIRC. In Empire at War, for what it's worth, they seemed a level above AT-STs, if that's anything to go on. Yeah, I know, gameplay, but I think that's all we have.

[fractalsponge1]

I suppose you could scale the guns, but at the low end I don't know if you can draw much from it. After all a Gama-class assault shuttle has "turbolasers" not much bigger than the whole assembly of an AT-AT chin heavy laser cannon.

[Norade]

I suppose you could scale the guns, but at the low end I don't know if you can draw much from it. After all a Gama-class assault shuttle has "turbolasers" not much bigger than the whole assembly of an AT-AT chin heavy laser cannon.

It seems that generally speaking spacecraft in Star Wars get far more powerful weapons than ground vehicles of similar mass. That said in this case turbolaser likely just refers to a heavy laser as I don't know any difference between a laser and a turbolaser.

[NecronLord]

Ran across this PDF on the Games Workshop site. It's rules and fluff expansion for the Tau in Battlefleet Gothic. Now technically fluff is anything that doesn't directly deal with game mechanics but thats kind of a douchy way to get someone to accept your views so I don't mind if you discard it.

That's top level canon fluff pal, it's been published by GW itself. Those BFG rules are produced by the GW Studio and thus trump Imperial Armour where they conflict. While rules aren't considered reliable, if something has shields in the rules then it has them, because that level of general abstraction is quite sufficient.

[Aaron]

Fair enough.

[Black Admiral]

Checking Courage and Honour, there isn't much information about Tau naval or aerospace assets, although there is some on the equipment scale of the latter - the Tau equivalent of a divisional combat team has an aerospace wing consisting of at least 25 Barracudas, 8 Mantas and an unspecified number of Tiger Sharks (including some converted for mass drone deployment).

[Rochey]

Interesting. IA3 has an "Air Cadre" as consisting of 2 Mantas, 4 Tiger Sharks and 10 Barracudas.

What sort of firepower would we grant Imperial repulsor tanks? They've only really featured in games, IIRC. In Empire at War, for what it's worth, they seemed a level above AT-STs, if that's anything to go on. Yeah, I know, gameplay, but I think that's all we have.

I don't think there's any hard evidence about just how much punch an Imperial repulsor tank has. Though given the similar size and role of the two vehicles, we could always take the AAT's main gun as having roughly the same yield. That would at least give us a figure of some sort to work with.

[Eternal_Freedom]

This goes back a way, but as for how powerful GE man-portable missiles, In X-Wing, Isard's Revenge, Corran Horn and Ooryl Qrygg take fire from Merr-Sonn PLX-2Ms. One of them blows an S-Foil off Corran's x-wing, and Ooryl says "A chip shouldn't have taken off a wing. Shouldn't even have gone through the shields"

Dunno if that is useful at all

[Srelex]

In the original CW cartoon, a missile launcher round utterly annihilates a separatist tank with inch-thick armor in one shot and causes a large fireball. In the newer one, a RPG-sized round brings down a large rock formation. So quite potent.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

This goes back a way, but as for how powerful GE man-portable missiles, In X-Wing, Isard's Revenge, Corran Horn and Ooryl Qrygg take fire from Merr-Sonn PLX-2Ms. One of them blows an S-Foil off Corran's x-wing, and Ooryl says "A chip shouldn't have taken off a wing. Shouldn't even have gone through the shields"

Dunno if that is useful at all

That was a lucky shot. IIRC Horn had his shields set to the front, leaving his rear unprotected.

I don't think the Sepratist tank was shielded at all.

[Falkenhayn]

Checking Courage and Honour, there isn't much information about Tau naval or aerospace assets, although there is some on the equipment scale of the latter - the Tau equivalent of a divisional combat team has an aerospace wing consisting of at least 25 Barracudas, 8 Mantas and an unspecified number of Tiger Sharks (including some converted for mass drone deployment).

And the Tau were hardly scared of combat in built-up areas. They'd much rather take them by coup de main (who wouldn't?), but certainly weren't shy about taking a beating among their Devilfish/Hammerhead teams to maintain the initiative and the forward progress of their attacks.

[Black Admiral]

Checking Courage and Honour, there isn't much information about Tau naval or aerospace assets, although there is some on the equipment scale of the latter - the Tau equivalent of a divisional combat team has an aerospace wing consisting of at least 25 Barracudas, 8 Mantas and an unspecified number of Tiger Sharks (including some converted for mass drone deployment).

And the Tau were hardly scared of combat in built-up areas. They'd much rather take them by coup de main (who wouldn't?), but certainly weren't shy about taking a beating among their Devilfish/Hammerhead teams to maintain the initiative and the forward progress of their attacks.

At least, maintaining it where their armoured units didn't run into Father Time.

[Black Admiral]

Err, could a friendly mod please delete the above post?

[Connor MacLeod]

Ran across this PDF on the Games Workshop site. It's rules and fluff expansion for the Tau in Battlefleet Gothic. Now technically fluff is anything that doesn't directly deal with game mechanics but thats kind of a douchy way to get someone to accept your views so I don't mind if you discard it.

That's top level canon fluff pal, it's been published by GW itself. Those BFG rules are produced by the GW Studio and thus trump Imperial Armour where they conflict. While rules aren't considered reliable, if something has shields in the rules then it has them, because that level of general abstraction is quite sufficient.

The problem is, that depends entirely on the author and who you ask. By BFG standards a Thunderhawk is supposed to be twice as big as fighter/bombers and more powerful, yet the "canon" figure is 121 tons as per IA2. And much as one may love/hate IA (I go through varying periods of it) there are lots of authors who follow it (Abnett for example). Without a well-defined canon hierarchy it goes all over the place (its varied from "newer sources trump older, to "older trumps newer" to "certain authors are better placed than others," etc.)

Disrepcancies like that are pretty common actually. The IA figures for titans are another good example, but there are also the representation of Imperial fighters and bombers (Gav Thorpe's view on Marauders has them being in closer to a Fury/STarhawk in mass rather than a few tens of tons, and much bigger), superheavies (originally 1000+ tons, now about a third of that or less)

BFG has the MAnta serving as a sort of escort ship with limited FTL, although what I (vuagely) recall is that its straddling the fence between escort and attack craft. Imperial armour has it as some really big attack craft/bomber/titan analogue/transport thingy. If anyone can definitively fix those two sources within an authorized canon hierarchy that makes sense of it, be my guest.

Other than that: best guess is that there are two kinds of "Manta" one being the BFG one the other the IA one. We may not know which one is the "correct" Manta, but one is the "true" Manta and the other is either a variant of some kind or got mistaken for a Manta somewherea nd was misidentified. Its not as if data on Tau ships is "best guess" or "based on observation" anyhow.

As far as shields go.. Tau have shields on their ships. They have specialized drones dedicated to shielding which act as mobiel shielding, and their battlesuits can carry shields (or shield drones). They don't appear to have the ability to equip individual troops with shields (or shield drones, else they would: tau are very casualtiy sensitive) and aren't mentioned giving shields to their vehicles, but I presume that if they can do so for drones and battlesuits, the capability exists.

Tau shielding on capital ships (in BFG) is based on their peculiar gravitic drive (basically along the lines of an impeller wedge, and I suspect someone had that parallel deliberately in mind) and they seem to behave like powerfields or void shields. They even have more stronger/intense grav fields called Deflectors (IIRC) that basically serve the same function as the prow on an Imperial ship (super strong armor). Whether or not smaller scale shielding is the same or different, I have no idea.

[Connor MacLeod]

as far as the Tau vs Imperial military goes...

The tau: The tau can be thought of as a more ruthless, more ideological, and generally more consistently (and better) equipped force than the Rebels, but they both share tactics. The Rebels often fight as guerillas or light infantry (powerful, long range guns,little armor, emphasis on mobility.) The exceptions to this is: they don't carry organic SAW/Machine gun equivalents that I recall (their pulse weapon smay double as that, but I suspect they rely on burst cannon equipped battlesuits to provide that) and no heavy weapons organically. They don't seem to favor automatic fire much (again in line with the ranged bits) and their artillery is limited.This is compensated for by the fact that their combined arms approach often gives them extra heavy firepower in some form or another (like their transport, or battlesuit support) so this is only a probelm if alone.,

Individual equipment? I expect pulse rifles and carbines will almost certainly match the performance of Imperial blasters (I'd personally rate pulse rifles as heavy blaster rifles given how effing huge they are) in temrs of firepower and accuracy. Range? Maybe. We know that heavy blaster rifles can (either as sniper or LMG type weapons) reach out to 10 km, but i doubt Tau ones would get quite that far (I doubt most Imperial long rifles will either, the DC-15 is something of an exceptional weapon in many regards)

Armor

Other gear (comms, sensor gear, whatnot) *problaby* goes to the tau. We know they have low light/infrared gear built into their helmets, they can share and transmit visual, audio and other data between individual units and officers and whatnot, and they of course have comms. In terms of durability? It may be about the equivalent of flak. Maybe a *bit* better against energy weapons/thermal damage than kinetics (autogun fire and bayonets wielded by Vostroyans can pierce it anyhow) but the difference isnt likely extensive (a volley of lasgun fire can still breach Tau body armor, even if we assume its at maximum this would rate it on the same level as Guard Carapace in terms of thermal resistance.)

Tanks and other vehicles? I'd generally figure their energy weapons are roughly equal to the IoM's vehiclular energy weapons (meaning they should be roughly similar to anything SW fields). The railgun issue is a big question mark. The best I can figure is that Tau railgun sare maybe at least twice as good as what modern tank guns do, much the same with Imperial EM guns (its in the nature of EM guns itself) We dont know much more beyond that, but in general given we know that the Imperial "mass driverse" seem to be of similiar size and approximately similar calibre to tau weapons (not drastically different that I can find anyhow) and the fact that recoil (unless you're going to sit still and dig in) is a final arbiter of projectile weapon firepower in a vehicle, I expect that Imperial EM guns will be roughly comparable to Tau (at best. The Empire doesn't really use them so it could be worse - I'm just conjecturing based on the knowledge they use EM guns and we know the LAAT's missiles can travel at hypersonic velocity like Tau railguns.) But I doubt it will matter dramatically. even if the Empire's AT-ATs can resist several railgun hits, the Tau are good at concentration of fire and they probably could markerlight a salvo onto one AT-AT at a time from range.

Anythign approaching nuclear level (EG munitions, max power heavy laser/blaster shots, etc.) aren't likely to be standard (Thats an insane level of firepower - in the last year or so I've mentally backed off the idea of TJ range man portable anti tank weapons for various reasons. GJ range is bad enough!) I'll cover this below. The tau's likely answer to At-Ats, juggernauts, and the SPHA-T and LAAT in "heavy hitter" mode is going to be the Manta by and large alongside their fighters. THat said, I dont think they'd be using the high end (tj/kt) level stuff very much simply because then it becomes little different than a titan battle (and the battlefield can become VERY unpleasant in protracted battles...)

The Empire... oh boy. Where to begin. There's alot of potential there, but they can vary widely, much like the Imperium. It's not so much that they can't do things as won't. I mean, we know that Stormtroopers can be given better, more resilient armor (clone armor, Katarn armor, etc.) or even personal shields, but often aren't equipped for reasons other than effectiveness. Same applies to the Imperial army, possibly evne moreso. I'd say in terms of guns and gear they're like your average IG (you get a rifle, some limited body armor mainly focuse don protecting the head and upper body, comms, maybe some NVG goggles or a nifty scope, but probably not a whole lot else "sophisticated") The Empire does have a sort of SAw/LMg analogue but only one per squad, and they don't seem to (by rule) incorporate stuff like grenade launchers or man portable anti tank weapons, or marksmen/snipers (those are all specialists). It would almost be easier just to use clone troopers/storm troopers.

That is not to say they CAN'T change that around if they wan't to, so let's avoid getting into that argument, since if they wanted to they could be fielding fully shielded, power armored infantry (yet don't.) The long and short of it is : unless folks can hammer out (and demonstrate iwht proof) how the Imperial side is likely to be equipped (I doubt you just want to use the ISB - they're screwed if they do) some sort of discussion or compromise will have to be reached. Else this will go the way of every other Sw vs 40K debate in recent years.

[Serafina]

As a note on Tau artillery:
They generally rely on spotters (who can have cloaking fields) and guided missiles. They don't really have area of effect artillery or huge volumes of it, their artillery is more focused on taking out individual threats, mostly vehicles.

Whether it could take out an AT-AT is questionable, tough it should be able to hit the joints. In either case, it is probably going to toast lesser vehicles.

[Darksider]

Whether it could take out an AT-AT is questionable, tough it should be able to hit the joints. In either case, it is probably going to toast lesser vehicles.

Do the Tau have other dedicated missile platforms other than the Skyray? 'cause that doesn't look like it can carry much ammo, and according to Areonautica Imperialis, they use it as missile artillery and as an air defense platform. They might run out pretty quick.

[adam_grif]

Don't Hammerheads have submunition rounds for the railguns which act as Area of Effect?

[Black Admiral]

Don't Hammerheads have submunition rounds for the railguns which act as Area of Effect?

Yes, but they're not artillery nor intended as a substitute for such. The Tau, for doctrinal reasons of their own, rely exclusively on precision-guided missiles for their artillery support (there's no technical reason they couldn't build more conventional artillery), fired from Broadside battlesuits, Sky Rays, their miscellany of aircraft, and fixed emplacements.

[Falkenhayn]

At least, maintaining it where their armoured units didn't run into Father Time.

Oh indeed.

As artillerists, they do have a fetish for the instant destruction of point targets and "artillery sniping", depending on what tasks are assigned to the Markerlight drones. But they recognize the importance of misdirection operationally, and have the expendable troop types (Vespid and mass Gun Drone drops) to pull it off without decreasing their maneuver forces (all the blue skinned skimmer goodness).

I don't know what the GE has in the way of artillery, but Tau counter-battery fire is fucking awful, and when their initial offensives fail, they jump to extreme solutions (massed crisis suit drops, for instance) to break the deadlock. Doctrinally, as long as there is some sort of progress, they will maintain the offensive. Given the length of the campaign, these things may become apparent.

In terms of infantry tactics, the Shas'ui are linked fully into the drone network (Read: Markerlight drones for recon and to access the Smart Missile network). After making contact, they go to ground and pummel a dug in defender with missile strikes. It's a pretty standard move forward by fire-and-movement from that point, in order to reach a position where the enemy can be eliminated with personal weapons at range. All those smart-missile systems fill the role of everything from mortar to LAW to light artillery. That leaves the Tau squad free to bomb forward with Pulse Rifles/Carbines/Grenade Launchers, and covers their movements on the battlefield in both attack and defense, without risking lives, resources and time on Forward Observers, fire direction centers, etc.

It's a Blitzkrieg, with no infantry divisions.