Tau Sept Defence ships

[antonious]

The Tau Custodian has long been debated as its roles. While carrying a weapons outfit that can match many Battleships as well as powerful command and control facilities, the lack of mass inherent in Tau ships plus the manouverability, especially when commanded well, of the Custodian places it more in the lines of a Grand Cruiser.

This however was not the main problem, the problem was that despite long range fighter and powerful bomber support. As well as multiple drone missiles and individual escorts a Custodian was prey, like the rest of the fleet, to long range weapons engagement.
Although the Tau Commerce Protection Fleets and Raiding fleets are faster and more dangerous than the initial Merchant fleets it cannot be denied that they suffer against the more powerful and long range weapons that are carried on Imperial Battleships, Battlecruisers and even in some numbers on Cruisers themselves.
In paticular an engagement against an imperial fleet containing 1 Mars Class Battlecruiser and 2 Dictator Cruisers resulted in seriously heavy damage to the Tau fleet in the initial phases of combat. Multiple high powered ordnance blasts force the Tau fleet to split up or risk destruction. Allowing an Imperial attack from fighters, bombers, Escorts and a single Lunar class cruiser to destroy or criple large sections of the Tau Fleet.

Tau High command immediately ordered a new class of ship that could force the Imperials to close and thus allow the rest of the Tau fleet to retain the Initative. The castes pulled resources and a first batch of 4 was created. This vessel was dubbed the "Enforcer" class by the Imperials when it was encountered. Poorly suited for anything but fleet engagements the Enforcer must be escorted by dedicated craft due to its lack of gunships. However its long range firepower was found to be fearsome indeed. Sporting 2 massive Dual railguns that ran the entire length of the ship the Enforcer was able to bypass a ships shields at extreme range and apply direct damage to its hull. At long and mid range powerful weapons batteries supported its fire before escorts and the fleet intercepted the damaged opponent allowing the Enforcer to keep its distance.

Enforcer Grand Cruiser........................................Points: 410

TYPE/HITS	SPEED	TURNS	SHIELDS	ARMOUR	TURRETS
Battleship/10	20cm	45º	3	5+	4

ARMAMENT	RANGE/SPEED	FPR/STR	FIRE ARC
Port Weapons Batteries	45cm	4	Left/Front
Starboard Weapons Batteries	45cm	4	Right/Front
Prow Weapons Batteries	60cm	4	Front
Hull mounted Heavy Railgun	45cm-130cm	3	Front
Hull mounted Heavy Railgun	45cm-130cm	3	Front
Dorsal Launch Bays	Barracudas: 25cm Mantas:20 cm	2	N/A

Notes
Tracking Systems: All Enforcers are equipped with powerful sensor arrays, these systems allow the ship to quickly and efficiently engage a target at long range. An Enforcer ignores any weapons penalties due to long range firing and also gains a +1 for using the lock on special orders. This is disabled on a prow critical hit. (Note that it DOES NOT gain the re-roll for turrets)

Heavy Railguns: Enforcers carry two large dual railguns. These fire hyper velocity particles that can travel extremely large distances with high accuracy due to their small size and speed. In addition due to their massive kinetic energy the damage caused to hulls and shields is well above normal parameters.
Heavy railguns function like normal weapons batteries except for the following conditions.
A) Heavy Railguns cause double damage on every hit
B) Heavy Railguns cause criticals on a 5+ instead of 6+

Enhanced Gravitic Drives: The vessel adds 5D6cm to it’s movement whilst on ‘all ahead full’ special orders, rather than the usual 4D6cm.

Advanced Manouvering Protocols: The vessel receives a +1 leadership modifier on command checks to perform the ‘all ahead full’, ‘come to new heading’ and ‘burn retros’ special orders.

Hull mounted weapons: Hull mounted weapons are far more difficult to truly disable than most weapons due to the fact the are embedded in the length of a ships hull. They are however more suseptible to damage. As such any weapons disabled critical will reduce the strength of a hull mounted weapon by 1. This is cumulative and can reduce them to zero strength. A repair will increase the hull mounted weapons strength by 1.

Tau Sentinel Class Heavy Destroyer......................Points: 75

TYPE/HITS	SPEED	TURNS	SHIELDS	ARMOUR	TURRETS
Escort/2	20cm	90º	1	5+/6+	2

ARMAMENT	RANGE/SPEED	FPR/STR	FIRE ARC
Prow Weapons Batteries	45cm	2	Left/Front/Right
Dorsal Launch Bays	Tiger Fish AX-1-0: 25cm	1	N/A
Prow Torpedoes	20-40cm	2	Front

Notes:

Prow Deflector:
Sentinels are equiped with prow deflectors and as such raise their front armour by 1, to 6+. A prow critical disables this and the damage cannot be repaired.

Tiger Fish AX-1-0:
Tiger fish AX-1-0 are armed with missile pods, burst cannons, seeker missiles as well as a pair of fighter heavy rail guns. This allows them to function as Fighter-Bombers.
Tiger fish act just like normal fighters except should they come into contact with a ship then they do D3 hits + 1, they also get a +3 modifier to calculate the number of attacks reduced by turrets.

Enhanced Gravitic Drives: The vessel adds 5D6cm to it’s movement whilst on ‘all ahead full’ special orders, rather than the usual 4D6cm.

Advanced Manouvering Protocols: The vessel receives a +1 leadership modifier on command checks to perform the ‘all ahead full’, ‘come to new heading’ and ‘burn retros’ special orders.







Okay people thoughts?

Disclaimers:
The enhanced Gravitic Drives and Advanced Manouvering Protocols rules are due to the ship being used with the CPF fleet list. Should you instead wish to use this with a standard Forge World fleet or even a GW fleet simply remove these special rules and decrease the cost by 20 points.

EDIT:
Changed the title to reflect the work i will start doing on other ships

[kelsik]

Its good to see not all creativity has been drummed out of the gaming community.

your specs are for a upgunned custodain with a over powering forward punch.
I think 60 cm str 8 batteries is not yet in the taus off the shelf tech.
as for any arc individual arc str 8 is a bit much. However, if you rebalance
6p/f
6s/f
6s/f/p you get the combined str forward and a dececient broad side.

Have you made a model for your ship? if no, then I may offer a suggestion to the same problem that I have on the books.
The center of a custodian is hollow. creat a modual to dock in the center space that will lock in on all 3 grav hooks. this modual will be a gun deck along with extra engine ( optional) and power/ armoury for the extra guns.
Cheap way to get the most out of your current fleet.

Heavy rail cannon.
Its so funny you should mention this. I was thinking about a varient of this very weapon on my ride to work this morning.
Hyper velocity firepower. I think thats what your were shooting for in concept. so fast that shields dont have time to react there by bypassing the shields and hitting hull unobstructed. Void shields arnt controled by a tech priest like a pinpoint barrier ( if you know that your really old school) Void shields are up or not up and dont care how fast a item is going.
I think youll find opponents resisting this weapon as written.

One suggestion would be to use the Orc heavy guns weapon battery stats instead, (exept the range)
I like your over all range Nova cannon range gun.
Heavy battery do double damage per hit. and do crits on 4 plus.
this allows a new weapon to be introduced but uses a tried and tested rules set ( range change noted)

I have to get back to work. Ive read your posts and I think I know what list your using. ( i use a varient of it my self
Love the 2 lance warden)
If you want to get a look at other tau ships try googling this site.
"project distant dark"
and of course, look up Port Maw for more active tau and bfg disscussions.

Nice work. time to go, cya. man lunch is so short these days.

[antonious]

Shields work by slowing an object down and thus rendering it ineffective, disapating magnetic or electric fields in the case of Plasma and other things. However i have to admit that your view of using them like Heavy Gunz has a lovely synergy and simplicity to it.

60cm weapons batteries doesn't seem to unrealistic in my humble opinion. Magnetically accelerated particles are always longer ranged weapons than laser, plasma and standard kinetic particles.
Given that most Tau war cruisers have longer range than Imperial it doesn't seem unreasonable. Especially as this particular ship will be realitivly uncommon in the Tau fleet list.

Project distant darkness is okay, it does emphasise the Mont'Ka way of war. However i've yet to find a fleet that feels and acts Tau while executing Kuy'an. That is what this article, and several more will lead up to.

Cheers for the tips on modeling. I am waiting for my first batch of ships from Forgeworld at the moment. They are taking an age to arrive but i will bear what you said in mind when i get them.

EDIT:
Made some changes to the class? How does that look.

[kelsik]

Your revision is much improved, its more inline with what the tau FW fleet has demonstrated ( though fw still hasnt given us a 60cm range gun, I dont see any reason not to have the ability.)

I think youll like the change to the heavy rail cannons. and your opponents can see how they work off of a current rule.

Over all I like your design. I think youll be able to find a opponent who will let you field it.

[antonious]

The heavy railguns are meant to be hull mounted but currently there is no critical hit for this. Should i change them to prow? Or have what i had before where any weapons critical reduces strength of a hull mounted weapon by -1 to a minimum of 0?

[kelsik]

Im glad you see a problem with putting weapons in undisclosed locations on a hull.
It will make it easier to field a weapon if it is tied to a arc, or known ship spot that has a listing in the critical hits table.
If you have all your weapons tied to a spot on the criticals table then your opponent can reasonably try to disable them and will have faith that you didnt put invulnerable systems on the table.

The range of your heavy rail cannon may cause some oppoents to scoff. In none of the fw or gw bfg mags or books discribe tau weaponry with near nova cannon range.

There is however one refference in the Black Library " star of Damacles" by Andy Hoare, one of the creators of bfg and if Im not mistaken writer of the tau rules.
In his book Andy discribes a rail gun attack that gave the impression that it was a much larger round and from much greater distance than most tau warships typicaly engage.
the sceen is at the start of the novel if you want to go read it your self, A good book.

[antonious]

Tying it to a known arc would be reasonable however i did want to give the impression of these weapons being massive railguns that ran the length of the ship. Thus they are easier to damage but harder to completely disable.

I had thought of just saying the following;
Heavy Railgun batteries run the length of the ship, as such any weapon disabled critical hit will reduce a heavy railgun battery by 1 point of strength. NB; This effect is cumulative


The book sounds interesting and i will perhaps have a read of it. As to those who moan about the range, well i would just argue then that all they seek to do is win a game and keep the game as it is. Battle Fleet Gothic does not have the wide number of staff working on it that the core games do. It is therefore going to have less background to it. Community based background is more important in this case.
The Tau have superior technology in many regards to the Imperium already and they are a young, small race. Given that the Nova cannon is a massive shell (hence blast) whereas this is just a moddified long range railgun the range is actually shorter than it should be.
Mass accelerated weapons should be the longest ranged weapons in the whole of Battlefleet gothic. Function somewhere inbetween lances and weapons batteries but be fewer in number than weapons batteries.


Just because it hasn't been mentioned makes sense. Most Imperium space tech is upscaled 40K tech. I would expect the Tau to do this even more so. When you look at their Superheavy flyers, vehicles, Battlesuit and Infantry weapons it is upscaled weapons. This allows for efficient and cheap production (important in a small empire) of good tech weapons that fit an all round situation.

Perhaps they then lack the versatility of Imperium squads (who have a HW, SW and Normal weapons) but it does allow them to all be equiped to a good high standard and then individual versatile squads to be brought in (Pathfinders, Battlesuits)

I see the fleet working the same way. A backbone of a heavy cruiser class (Protector) supported by more unique and tailored ships (Custodian, Sentinel, Castellan, Orca, Warden, Emissary, etc) as the situation demands.
This is something i will try and relfect in my list.
A backbone cruiser and then plenty of varieties of escort, light cruisers and grandcruisers.

The imperials work with tailored cruiser configs. Supported by versitile Battleships, light cruisers and escorts.
They can do this due to the large empire they have and massive resources.