| Brood Brother |
 |
 |
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2005 12:00 pm
Posts: 573
Location: Canada
|
Hi!
I posted this at Tau Online in response to the usual moaning about the whole 'bubble-will-burst-on-the-Tau' nonsense they are so wedded to, have a look at what I wrote in reply and tell me your opinion on the matter!
Ok, I think that there are a few issues at hand that need to be clarified regarding the Kor'vattra and the potential technological avenues which may one day be open to the Empire. (Not to mention the tenuous nature of the Imperium's presence - aside from a few strongpoints such as Ultramar and Kar Duniash - west of the galactic core...)
Firstly, the Kor'vattra still has a lot of development to go through yet, but by the time of the Third Sphere Campaign much of the disparity in technology between them and the Imperial Navy had been rectified - indeed the Tau have advancements in certain areas when compared to your average Imperial starship. The Hero cruiser has been a highly successful example of the ability of the Empire to construct a powerful, capable warship, able to face its Imperial equivalents on generally fair terms (the Tau starship combat philosophy continues to prefer the ability to overlap fire arcs into an effective forward strike - plus a large dose of their advanced missiles and deadly Manta Missile Destroyers - which in the hands of a skilled Kor'el can allow a lar'shi to match the broadside-focussed Navy cruisers).
Of course, your average Tau fleet as seen in Armada is still stuck with the older generation Explorer and Merchant vessels, but for those looking to see a Tau fleet more closely matching the warships of the major races, the Kor'or'vesh initiative has produced the Kor'vattra Qath'fannor - the Commerce Protection Fleet (ie the beautiful resin starships from Forgeworld). Led by the new battleship of the Tau fleet, the Or'es El'leath (Custodian):
this new fleet has enabled a significant advancement in the spaceborne capabilities of the Empire's space fleet. Not only are these starships able to Warp dive for longer periods - and at faster velocities - they are far more capable of holding their own in close quarters combat against enemy warships - retaining the ability to overlap their fire arcs to deadly effect, integrating more advanced systems into their basic design - and showing off at the 'Pretty Ships M42' parties...
Of course, the Qath'fannor is still only gradually entering wide-scale deployment into the Kor'vattra as a whole, curently being concentrated in the defence of First Phase Septs and in the most strategically vital new systems of the expanding Empire, but over the next centuries, when these vessels become the mainstay of the Kor'vattra, the venerable Gal'leath is eventually retired and the Il'fannor returned to its original duties of heavy transport, scoffing at the overall tech level of the Tau fleet will be less excusable a proposition!
(And let's not forget the Empire's friends among the Bentu'sin - with Commerce Vessels which, generally, laugh at the relatively primitive ships of the Imperium...)
Regarding the supposed 'limitations' of Tau Warp dive technology, the Empire has already worked to turn this drive system into an advantage - indeed, into the basis for the links which bind the tau'va together. Unlike the Warp drive system used by many other galactic races, the Warp dive has freed the Tau from concerns over such minor problems as Geller Fields, time-dilating weirdnesses (no Tau ship has to fear being trapped in another realm, possibly forever, like the ships of other races do...), daemonic possession, the need for some Astronomican-like beacon, the concern over having to introduce a dangerous psionic gene which even the Tau could see has rather large negative consequences...
Besides, we don't yet know exactly how limited in terms of distances or dive durations capable in a Warp dive - presumably because no other race has explicitly been stated as having operated it for such a long period of time - and who knows, perhaps the Demiurg travel between the stars using a far more advanced form of Warp dive, capable of keeping the ship in long dives spanning hundreds of light-years...
Regarding the issue of FTL communication, the Tau have adapted by establishing their message boat and Waystation system between their worlds, as well as ensuring that every major colony they found is planned to be self-sustaining and capable of providing for its own defence - as well as coming to the aid of others. (The Qath'fannor has enabled the Tau to dramatically increase their rapid-response ability), plus a message boat doesn't have to worry about the fickle tides of the Warp - or the null field generated by the Hive Mind - when sending a message from one world to another.
(Again, I'd bet that the Demiurg have some non-psyker means of FTL, or that the Tau will figure something out themselves)
And regarding the other races in the galaxy, at least one (and probably others) has figured out an advanced FTL system which circumvents the Immaterium entirely - the Necrontyr. Who, by the way, most certainly do exist... We have no idea how far the ancient scientific advancements of the old Necrontyr needed to go to figure out the first primitive versions of the Inertialess Drive, what kind of FTL communication system they possess (if, indeed, they have any such system in the first place), what kind of energy source or fancy physics were required to figure it out, whether there have been other races not fleshed out so far in the 40K galaxy who have used - or indeed, currently use - any ind of similar system if interstellar travel.
It's quite possible that what we see in the Necron fleet is merely the end result of millennia of development - back when the Necrontyr were still a living, (uncomfortably) breathing race - of principles which could conceivably be adopted by a race with no attachment to the Warp, suitable exposure to existing proofs of concept - ie Necron starships - and a large, smart and motivated group of scientists and engineers to eventually work out the basics. Someday.
On the issue of capturing, or attempting to pilot, a Navy or Astartes starship (and the fluff has indicated that more than one Navy capital ship has been... acquired by the Kor'vattra), the Tau are not stupid enough to try and switch on its Warp engines. Indeed, the whole reaon why they developed Warp dive technology a thousand years ago is that they can't enter the Warp at all, nor would they want to! Instead, they'd tow their new prize to Fal'shia or Bor'kan, take the thing apart, reverse-engineering every useful system on the ship. If they decided not to keep the ship for further study and wanted to put it to good use, they'd then replace, or modify, the Warp drive into a dive engine, reconstruct the ship as one more easily supported by Tau infrastructure (replace launch bays with ones designed to carry Barracudas and Mantas, swap lances and weapon batteries with Railguns and Ion Cannon - or modily the existing weapons to carry Tau-manufactured munitions, as done with Kroot weaponry - modily torp launchers to fire Tau guided missiles, automate its systems to remove the need for all of those manual labourers and so forth... not to mention cleaning the filthy thing out from stem to stern, and integrating Tau recycling and Windo-drone teams to keep the ship sanitary!)
And if you tried to tell a Tau that the ship facing his or her Lar'shi or Lar'shi'vre had to use expendable slave labourers to load torpedo tubes and fire lance batteries, was infested with rats and slime, was so unruly above the officers' decks that the crew was usually divided and exploited by ruthless gang leaders, whose crewmembers needed dangerous narcotics to steel themselves for combat, whose officers use ancient parchments to navigate some strange nether-realm, whose so-called engineers mumble prayers and litanies at their systems, with no true understanding of the technology at work on board the vessel, and I would imagine that he or she would laugh in your face if you implied that the Navy were nore advanced than the Kor'vattra!
And in any event, while the Imperium has nowhere to go but down, the Kor'vre would know that now is the dawn of the Tau's time in the greater galaxy.
Remember that in the eastern Ultima Segmentum and the Eastern Fringe, most human - and a whole lot of alien - worlds are not part of the Imperium. Many of these systems are only known to the Ordo Xenos as a name on an old star chart, and in many cases not even then. This far from the Astronomican, far from the Segmentum stronghold of Kar Duniash, far from the bulk of the Imperium, far from the ever-looming threat of the Eye of Terror, far from the carnage of Armageddon, far from the encroachment of Hive Fleet Leviathan, far from the immedaite concerns to Ultramar - which is much too focussed on Kraken, Charadon et al to crusade around the Fringe - reside a lot of potential member worlds and colony sites for the Tau Empire, who are not in the least limited by the restrictions on travel or contact beyond its borders the Imperium places on anyone who isn't a Rogue Trader.
Warp diving allows the Tau to ignore the shortcomings of interstellar travel which dog the Imperium this far from Terra. Since the vast bulk of interstellar travel is not composed of long voyages across the galaxy - even the Navy and Astartes usually stick with system-to-system travel, to reduce the risk of time dilation or compromising of the ship's Geller field - and so the Tau are only lacking in comparison to the Imperium in terms of their Segmentum-scale strategic ability, which will a) not concern the Tau for a while, as they will continue their gradual, systematic colonisation/expansion policy they have successfully handled already and b) could well develop a more advanced diving technology (if they could hold a ship in a dive for a 3-500 LY distance, and keep the recharge time below a Ro'taa, that ability would be enough to make the support of their expansion into the Eastern Fringe a far less problematic proposition, as well as allow a more developed level of message boat communications between Septs in an expanded Tau Empire)
Also, the Imperium have the Black Legion on Cadia, the largest Waaagh! on record on Armageddon, the largest Hive Fleet in the galaxy on their doorstep, a bloated and woefully inept bureaucracy mostly imcapable of the task it takes upon itself to fulfil, and a large blind spot in its intel and assets east and north of Ultramar - ripe for the Empire to thrive in.
The carefully constructed systems developed by the Tau have resulted in a system which is far less dependent on centralised government, or on the fickle tides of the Empyrean - which will allow the Tau Empire to avoid, or at least have a greate chance of managing, the kind of crises which brought the old human realns to their knees.
In terms of other alien threats, Kraken has had the wind knocked out of its sails at Iyanden and Ichar IV, the Orks are in no shape to stir up too much trouble - and would sooner fight the humies on Armour-Geddem than the blue-skinned shooty boyz - and the likes of the Necrons and DE are not too pushed about the Tau, it seems (the Druchii would find the Tau poor sacrifices, with such a miniscule Warp presence)
The Kroot, Nicasar, Vespids and Tau-allied humans are already on board, the Demiurg have remained a strong associate and ally (the Demiurg contributed significantly to the development of the Kor'or'vesh), the Alaitoc seem to have some interest - or at least a sense of indifference - to this dynamic young race, and the other Craftworlds are mostly too wrapped up in their own affairs to care all that much!
The Dark Millennium of M42 is uniquely placed to see the Tau take great strides on the path to beoming a galactic superpower - for the greater good of all sentient races who choose to appreciate the virtue, or at least accept the existence, of the Tau'va.
Gary
|
Gary
_________________  Gue'senshi: The 1st Kleistian Grenadiers v7.3 pdfHuman armed forces for the greater good.
|
