Editing Tau (section)

==Fleet==
[[File:Tau_Map.JPG|500pc|right|thumb|The Domain of the Weebs.]]


In the old fluff, the T'au used to have equip their ships with reverse-engineered warp drives from an unknown faction that crashed a starship on one of their home world's moons. Using their gravitic wave technology (think a sail) they used this to skim the surface of the warp before bouncing back to the Materium after a short while (1/3 the speed of optimal Imperial warp drives).

New fluff, on the other hand, has retconned that by giving them what is called a "slingshot drive" or "skip drive." From what little fluff we have on it, it looks like the reality-based theoretical warp drive (in the modern physics meaning, i.e. the Alcubierre bubble). The practical applications, however, are the same in both new and old fluff - Tau FTL is much slower than the Imperium's, but is predictable, reliable, and not affected by warp storms (a big deal, given Tau spent half of their history inside one). As a result, Tau are capable of building highly reliable interstellar logistics lines over short distances, but their strategic mobility is... lacking, to say the least. Compared to pretty much every other faction the Tau move at an absolute snail's pace, hence the reason why their worlds are so tightly packed together. Of course, if the slingshot drive was THE best way to travel normally without the Warp and to avoid Warp phenomena, the radically more advanced Dark Age Humanity would have slapped the drives on every type of ship they had. They didn't, which implies that this technology is a dead end, a stopgap solution at best.

Additionally, slingshot drives are rather big, heavy, and power-hungry, even compared to the Warp drive (which itself can constitute 1/3 the volume of an Imperial ship). As a result, escort-class Tau spacecraft are built without FTL drives and are hooked to bigger ships for the purpose of interstellar travel, which basically make them equivalents of the Imperium's system monitor ships, with the same benefits (cheap, compact, fast, powerful and durable for their size) without their major downside (being incapable of FTL flight). Tau FTL limitations mean that they have to be more precise in how they concentrate their forces; they can't throw a bunch of ships into a warzone from halfway across the galaxy as Orks and humans can.
Tau empire have two fleets:
*Kor'Vatra, or "merchant fleet", is made of older modular ships that double as merchant and colony vessels (hence the name). One of their main shticks is huge arcs of fire for most gun batteries, with side batteries easily covering front arc, and nose batteries covering all but the stern - as a result, while Kor'vatra Ships may not have as much firepower as Imperial or Ork ones, they can focus more of it on one target. On the flip side, merchant ships while decently fast at sub-light, are not very agile, and must rely on escort wings and auxiliary fleets against more maneuverable foes. Even after the founding of Kor'Or'Vesh, the Kor'Vatra still see a lot of military use, especially against the Imperium, <i>precisely</i> because it's regarded as a non-military fleet. This is so Tau diplomats could tell their Imperial colleagues, "What battle cruisers on your orbit are you talking about? It's just our merchant vessels, moving goods to and from our trade missions."
*Kor'Or'Vesh, or "combat fleet" is a newer fleet, made for battling the Imperium's fleet in straight up combat, after Kor'Vatra got run over during the Damocles crusade. Made out of more compact, maneuverable and better armored ships, it may lack Kor'Vatra's wide arcs of fire, but is superior in every other regard, and as the Taros and second Damocles campaigns showed, it is more than capable of fighting off humans even if outnumbered.
Both fleets use largely the same technologies: railguns as short-range (by Tau standards), high-damage gun batteries; ion cannons as long-range beams (lance equivalent); and, above all, powerful small-craft ordnance (second only to Eldar and available in far greater numbers). Mantas, Barracudas, and EMP drone-torpedoes reign supreme at extreme ranges, gaining the Tau navy the same reputation their ground armies have. Because their small-craft ordnance is so powerful, most Tau ships tend more towards carrier and torpedo boat archetypes than battleships, and suffer horribly if an enemy comes within macro-cannon or boarding range (note the "if"). Technically, Imperial warships are, as they are when compared to most other factions, far superior. The problem for the Imperium is, like always, those warships are very rare, built in tiny numbers, and never around when you need them.