Editing Titan (Warhammer 40,000) (section)

== Tau Titans ==
For much of the Tau's history, they never had Titans or anything equivalent to them. This is because they thought that the idea of diverting the resources and technology necessary to build and operate something like a Titan would be so impractical and wasteful as to be absurd, so ''surely'' any sensible civilization would naturally realize that numerous smaller war machines would be much more efficient. They laughed when the first humans they encountered told them of Titans, assuming that it was only Imperial propaganda to intimidate their enemies. During the [[Damocles Crusade]] they realized to their horror that [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|the gue'la were crazy enough to actually build them]], and the Tau were no longer laughing.

They suffered horribly at the hands of Imperial titans, but for some time they still considered titans too impractical to be worth building. The Tau utterly failed to understand the kinds of wars the Imperium gets in to. When you're up against a [[Vraks|defensive line 12 miles deep]], or an Ork horde large enough to make Soviet Russia blush, what you need is not 20,000 of something cost effective, but something that can just destroy large swathes of the enemy as fast as possible. Although such situations are rare (which is why Titans are not commonly deployed), winning a tactical victory in that scenario is far more important that the most efficient strategic production practices. Besides, even though the Imperium's ability to produce titans in quantity has degraded over time and the loss of each one is now keenly felt, the Imperium of Man ''does'' still have enough strength in its industrial base to produce titans without necessarily harming production in other areas. A titan's greatest advantage, therefore, is that it brings overwhelming concentrated firepower to its local area. While titans may not necessarily be ''efficient'' there is something to be said for a war engine that can singlehandedly lay waste to the entire battlefield. To put it another way, a Cobra-class destroyer may be more cost effective in most situations than a Retribution-class battleship, but [[Exterminatus|sometimes]] you ''really'' need that battleship.

When the Tau faced off against the Titans they needed to devise ways to counter them. [[Manta]]s were in the same mass class as Titans, and had big enough railguns to threaten them, and while almost invulnerable to most Titan class weapons due to normal Tau plot armor they were too vulnerable to massed anti-tank weaponry (like Lascannons) in turn, and a bit too valuable to lose cavalierly. So they ended up manufacturing a version of the [[Tiger Shark]] bomber equipped with Manta-scale railguns. For a time, it seemed to work at forcing the Imperium to be more careful about deploying Titans against the Tau, since a single flight-wing of these Tiger Shark attackers can rip up a formation of Titans and replacements for those bombers can be (relatively) easy to manufacture compared to the Titans it threatens.

However, due to the increasing number of Imperial Knights equipped with anti-aircraft weapons, as well as the increasing numbers of gargantuan Tyranid creatures the Tau have been facing during their expansions, it has become clear that the tried-and-true method of spamming Tiger Shark attackers and Mantas was no longer sufficient to properly take down these new threats: Mantas were simply too valuable to risk 1:1 casualty ratios, and massed aircraft wings were not always available. In order to have a chance against these opponents, the Tau needed something that could go toe-to-toe with these towering monstrosities, or at least bombard them from long range while still being tough enough to withstand being a massive bullet magnet itself. In a move that would have previously seemed foolhardy and wasteful to try, the Tau just said "Fuck it!" and decided to take a page from Pacific Rim, building their own Titan in order to fight everyone else's.

The result was the '''[[Battlesuit#KX139_Ta.27Unar_Supremacy_Armour|KX-139 Ta'Unar Supremacy Armour]]:''' the first Titan-class Battlesuit ever made. Designed specifically to counter other races attempts to reclaim territory lost to the Tau expansion campaigns, this machine was designed around being a mobile Titan-hunter, heavily armed but under-armored. For its secondary arm weapons it can equip either a slightly-gimped-Multimelta-esque Fusion Eradicator (which more than overcompensates by being Heavy 5) for popping vehicles, TEQs, and monstrous creatures, or an Ion Cannon that can fire 6 normal shots, or 3 super-shots per turn, both of which are superb for massacring heavy infantry. But the ''real'' party is in the back, as the core weapons systems are mounted from an extended backpack/carapace/shoulder mounting point. The back-mounted Pulse Ordnance Multi-Driver is a 3-barreled naval gun system that slams naval-grade ordnance downrange at naval distances, and can be configured to fire all three guns at one point for [[meme|massive damage]], or in a spread-out pattern with explosive payloads. It can also strap one singular fuckoff gun in the form of the Heavy Rail Cannon Array, instead of three smaller fuckoff guns, or forgo direct fire entirely by mounting a Nexus Meteor Missile System to spam rockets like it's little brother (more on that later). Defensively, it is lightly armored for its size, and relies heavily upon a powerful Barrier Shield that, while most effective against ranged weapons, can also protect against close combat attacks. In consideration for the kind of threats the Ta'Unar will be facing, the Barrier Shield can focus all of its energy toward one area, intentionally sacrificing all other defensive power to intercept a perceived "Deathblow" and greatly reduce the inevitable impact. This gamble will blow out the shield for a short while, but it allows the Ta'Unar to withstand (once) as much damage as it can dish out, especially since it's not as structurally fortified as other Titans, even for its weight class. Being somewhat smaller than a Warhound, a Ta'Unar is comparable to a large, heavily over-gunned Knight.

'''[[Battlesuit#KV128_Stormsurge_Ballistic_Suit|KV-128 Stormsurge]]:''' After the Ta'Unar was deemed successful enough as a proof-of-concept, the Tau would use their newfound experience with Titan-building to create the Stormsurge, a physically lighter class of the newly-dubbed Ballistic Suits (which is the term that the Tau use to describe combat walkers that are too large to be considered actual suits of armor). Fio'o Bork'an Ishu'ron, the mad Earth-caste genius behind the Stormsurge, designed the suit to be a really big XV88 Broadside, specifically designed to take on non-Titanic Imperial armor. Its main weapon is one of two variants of <s>Compensation</s> ''Pulse'' Cannon: the Pulse Blastcannon is a goddamn tank-sized plasma shotgun (what for killing lots of little things dead), and the Pulse Driver Cannon which is probably ripped off of a direct-fire artillery emplacement (what for killing one big thing dead). The Stormsurge [[Abaddon#The_.22No_Arms.22_meme|does not have arms]], instead having two '''WALLS OF MISSILES''' which it uses to ruin your day, and the days of all of your infantry. It even has stabilizers, all the better to shoot you with, just like the Broadside does! The odd thing about the Stormsurge is that it probably ''wasn't'' made with the engineering experience gained from the Ta'Unar, because Fu'Rious Bork'ed Iso'hedron [[wat|forgot to add a roof to his mech]]. Seriously, the thing is open-topped, showing off both of the two pilots to the sky. Maybe he thought that they would want to eyeball their shots from way up on top of their moving building of a suit. This compounds the matter of the Stormsurge's physical durability which, like the Ta'Unar, is not as impressive as its size would suggest. The Stormsurge, while about as big as an Imperial Knight, can't really take one on a Knight at close range. However, when the Tau need overwhelming firepower to face a horde of conventional armor, that's what the Stormsurge was built for and where it shines.