Ah yes ... but we were taught that war is both an art and science ... The art is the skillful use (Strategy & Tactics, doctrine) of the science(technology) ... So IMO ... the Tau have the tech edge ... And in the right hands that tech would be decisive ...

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Guys, being more 'technically advanced' than the enemy is less important in many respects, even if it can be measured (and here I am less sure on that point). Afghanistan was the graveyard of the British in the 19th century, and of the Russians in the 20th century; and then there was Vietnam which defeated both France and later the USA. These are but a few examples of cases where the determination of less technically advanced people were able to defeat better equipped armies that were perhaps less prepared or less willing to give up their lives for a cause.

As others have suggested it is not just having the technology or even the knowledge of its use, but also that mixture of psychologial make-up together with the appropriate political, religious and military leadership that gives the army its cohesion and edge - and sufficient numbers of course  As Sun Tzu said, you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your own forces as much as those of your enemy. Perhaps a description of 18th century Russian soldiers gives another example :- "The physical and mental attributes of the Russians are such as to make them the best people of all for war. They are long-enduring, tough and insensitive, and find it easy to withstand the hardships of campaigning. They devour great quantities of raw and uncooked food, they drink spirits like water, and their physical constitution is so hard that they bathe in rivers in the coldest weather (anon - 1758; Christopher Duffy "The military experience in the age of reason").

The point is that you need to have the tools, knowledge and willingness to use them, together with the appropriate logistics to supply and move the army, leadership and political acumen etc to employ it and the support of the populace to fill the ranks.

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I agree ... as I said Hi-tech under a skilled commander will certainly give them the edge ... but there are other factors to consider. Like Logistics(and I ran a lot of resupply convoys in the ROK !), but logistics is a given in Epic ... Everything is there that you need for the duration of the game ...

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

The Tau are different. Let's examine what "better tech" means.

First, can the Tau do something that the Imps can not? I don't think so. If there is something, it is trivial. Vice versa, the Imperials have some ultra-tech stuff, like very advanced neural links and AIs. Advantage in "pushing the envelope": Imps.

Second, can the Tau do the same things better? Yes they can. In some cases, their plasma (or whatever) guns are basically the same, but more mobile. The railgun is something the Imps can't put on a tank, even if they might have a blueprint sitting somewhere. The Tau can mass-produce cloaking devices, while the Imps for all their industrial might only have a few. Advantage: Tau.

That's where we are. Where are we going?

The Tau are advancing, while the Imps are stagnating. If the Tau come up with something new, they can tell other Tau about it and start using it quickly. If the Imps come up with something new (and they generally don't), they can not spread the invention in their system. The Tau have a system for spreading scientific progress, while the Imps only have a system for maintaining their current level. Given time, the Tau will surpass the Imps.

Ah, time. The Tau are small. The odds of a galactic civilization keeping itself alive is very much a function of size. Any single random event has almost no effect on the Imperium, but can have a very large effect on the Tau. In order to thrive, the Tau must grow to be large enough that they can not be wiped out by a single catastrophic event. The Imps have passed this step. We don't know if the Tau can do so. We're seeing the system they have start to unravel at the edges as it grows...

Huh?  what Imperial AIs?  There's very good Psuedo-Intelligences or Satisfactory Intelligences (Imps call them Machine Spirits), but there's no true AI like what the Tau use.  An expendable Tau drone has a better onboard intelligence than that used in a Land Raider (which is comparable to the one in a Reaver Titan).  The Tau can build thousands (or millions) of those, and they do.  There's a Tau ship (the Messenger) which has a single live Tau onboard, everything else is handled by remotes!  Tau neural-links?  Senior Fire Warriors usually have prostheses that are just as good as the original part, and there was some discussion whether the Crisis suit is controlled by a machine link or piloted.

The Imperium does have a few advantages, all based on the Warp.  Psychers, Warp travel, and teleportation are a bit of an advantage to the Imperium that the Tau simply will never understand or be able to match.

Militarily, however, the Tau beat the Imperium like a red-headed stepchild.  Oh noes, the stoopid 'umies 'ave a Titan!  *whoosh-BOOOOM!* Gentlemen, I present to you the AX10 (which carries STARSHIP-class kinetic weapons, nevermind the missiles).

The Tau can be beaten, but the Imperium can only do it by attrition, and attrition is the surest sign of a lack of strategy.  The Tau bled the Imperium white on Taros, but don't (presently) have the strategic depth to do it in case of a major attack.

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Regarding the AX-10, I thought there were not supposed to be that many of them, raising another thought:- While the Tau may have a technological edge in some respects, do they have the volume (or concentration) to make a difference?

Think back to WWII german technology which was superior in a number of ways to virtually anything available to any of the allies, culminating in things like Bismark and Tirpitz, Panther and the King tiger tanks, V1 and V2 missiles, jet and rocket powered aircraft etc - but these "super weapons" did not win the war, either because of some flaw in their design; the way they were employed or were countered; or because they were not employed in sufficient numbers. A classic example being the "battle of the Bulge" where King Tigers ran out of fuel.

Also, what stage of technological development are we considering? Usually, for every example of technological advance made there are often a number of failures or 'learning moments' on the way whether it be because the ME163 Komet had a nasty habit of its Hydrogen peroxide fuel leaking and disolving the pilots, or the post war British "pidgeon guided" anti-ship missile  being unable to distinguish friendly ships from enemies.

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Not true. As you say, the Tau can still manufcature lots of them, but the AI's of the machine spirits of Titans and Land Raiders are very advanced, so much that they develop a character. The drones are not capable of doing that. If it is good or bad is another point, but their quality is unquestioned.

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The machine spirits of things like titans (and by extension, Land Raiders) have an imprinted 'personality' of sorts.  It's very feral/predatory (I'm trying to restrict myself to official GW fluff about Machine Spirits, and stay away from Black Library stuff), and the Princeps needs to 'wrestle' with the Machine-Spirit to control it.  Tau AIs are used for menial or dangerous tasks, and are capable of completely independent, unsupervised action that is indistinguishable from having a live Tau controlling the drones.  That means that a Tau drone would pass the Turing Test (at least in it's area of expertise), while there's no mention in canon fluff of (nor can I extrapolate) an Imperial Machine-Spirit that is capable of passing the Turing Test.

That sounds like better AIs by the tau (and that's assuming that the AdMech aren't just taking a sociopathic, homicidal maniac and dropping a copy of his personality into the Titan).

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I would go with some form of halfway house here with Tau drones still requiring some link to their controller.

As for the AdMech "taking a sociopathic, homicidal maniac and dropping a copy of his personality into the Titan" perhaps we should change the Titan criticals to allow it to shoot or assault the nearest formation until it rallies - a bit like elephant troops running amok in ancient armies

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

I think we can say one thing for sure. The tau have far more science.
While the imperium have inherited fantastic technology, their level of scienc, scientific understanding and development is virtually nill

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Yes, the Tau have volumes. It is written that the their were a small number of the new Custodian Class Battleship being build before the Taros Campaign, after the Campaign more septs began to produce the vessel in small numbers.

On the other hand it is written that the Imperial Navy takes a great loss when a Apocalypse Class Battleship is destroyed as only few are in service and they can no longer build new ones.

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The Empire still builds battleships.

I remember I have read the building time of one of this behemoths is about one millenia.(don´t ask me where ) So if you loose one and none is in build, you wait quite a long time to replace it. (simply cannot be replaced)
The same is for the "Tactical Dreadnought Suit" aka Terminator Armor. It´s still in build but in so small numbers that no chapter can hope to get replacement in near future. This suits mainly transfered to special institutions, mainly Inquisitional forces (Grey Knights anyone?), leaves most chapters only option simply to salvage and loot. And even this hand picked armors cannot satisfy the demand of even the Grey knights. (Remember the story where the Knights borrowed the Tactical suits from several chapters for one most important operation and even hadn´t the time to repaint them before going into the thick of action    )

I think the "nothing can be build" is a quote often misspelled. Sure it can be build, but the numbers simply don´t count in the vast size of the empire. Most things are available, but jealous guarded or used only to special operations anywhere anytime.

my 0,0002 cent


Soren

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Could be, but 1 in a millenia versus dozen battleships the Tau build in a short time span. I mean....

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I doubt that the Imperium only starts replacing ships after they are lost in battle, with a millenium of time lag inbetween.

Ship construction is obviously an ongoing process, with units entering service now whose keels were laid centuries ago.

That said, I predict the Tau will get crushed in a millenium or two when some imperial clerk erroneously adds a "0" to some troops request for the next crusade and the puny Tau empire is totally swamped by imperial battlegroups as it will take decades if not centuries to correct that "mistake"...

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1 in a millenia on countless planets, but insignificant for the total number of planets in the empire.

This is what i meant.

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Attrition is the proof of absence of Strategy