The idea that the Imperium doesn't make new technology though has been taken out to a field and shot given the new update though.
Primaris Marines and their war gear are all substantial tech upgrades.
And even before, there has been constant, but tectonically slow, innovation.
Mechanicus has research stations, they have researchers, they conduct studies, build prototypes and bring in new ideas.
They just are very, very slow in doing so, and probably spend way more resources in finding STC parts.
edit-
Also, with Primaris, they could finally make female space marines, with the excuse "but the emprah" being out of the way.
They probably won't, but this would be a prime opportunity to introduce them.
I mentioned lady Marines as much as I could in that survey they just put out.
Tau tech is also advancing slowly. The Tau Empire doesn't need to outfit literal trillions of soldiers as mentioned above, but the Earth Caste has been hard at work miniaturizing battlesuits. The XV22 suit combines aspects of the large XV8 Crisis suit with the XV25 Stealth suit, and it's barely bigger than a Tau Fire Warrior is.
And I hear there's a whole ton of new battlesuits since I last played eight years ago. Yay robots!
The thing is the Tau of 6000 years ago were literally living in a stone age according to the Imperial records.
6000 years ago, The Imperium was pretty much where they are now.
Now the Tau are able to go head to head with the Empire on fairly equal footing. Sure, it's an empire that's divided and fighting wars on a dozen or more galactic scale fronts at any given time, and if necessary they could roll over and literally crush the tau under a sheer wave of bodies dropped naked and unarmed from ships in orbit. But in ship to ship combat, or ground combat, any engagement where the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Empire is not a factor the development of the Tau has to be terrifying for the Mechanicum who've been largely idling at current tech levels since the Heresy.
Sure, they've made some advancements. some new weapons, but most of those are rediscovering lost technology or combining existing technology in new ways. Even the Primaris Marines and their fancy hover tanks have apparently been sitting around in storage until Robutt showed up and said "Why are we not funding this and using it to crush aliens?".
Personally i suspect some outside interference when it comes to rapid Tau advancement.
Yeah, between their psychic unawareness and the sudden appearance of Ethereals from out of nowhere, it seems likely that somebody is playing sneaky buggers with their development for some reason.
+1
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
Personally i suspect some outside interference when it comes to rapid Tau advancement.
Yeah, between their psychic unawareness and the sudden appearance of Ethereals from out of nowhere, it seems likely that somebody is playing sneaky buggers with their development for some reason.
They advanced at the same rate as real actual humanity
Also marines are making new tech, it's just being rediscovered
Personally i suspect some outside interference when it comes to rapid Tau advancement.
Yeah, between their psychic unawareness and the sudden appearance of Ethereals from out of nowhere, it seems likely that somebody is playing sneaky buggers with their development for some reason.
They advanced at the same rate as real actual humanity
Also marines are making new tech, it's just being rediscovered
It has been more than 6 thousand years from the stone age.
And we still don't have an interstellar empire.
Hell, we're barely able to leave our planet.
Personally i suspect some outside interference when it comes to rapid Tau advancement.
Yeah, between their psychic unawareness and the sudden appearance of Ethereals from out of nowhere, it seems likely that somebody is playing sneaky buggers with their development for some reason.
They advanced at the same rate as real actual humanity
Also marines are making new tech, it's just being rediscovered
It has been more than 6 thousand years from the stone age.
And we still don't have an interstellar empire.
Hell, we're barely able to leave our planet.
Well, to be fair, we don't have a mind controlling ruler caste to keep us in line.
The idea that the Imperium doesn't make new technology though has been taken out to a field and shot given the new update though.
Primaris Marines and their war gear are all substantial tech upgrades.
And even before, there has been constant, but tectonically slow, innovation.
Mechanicus has research stations, they have researchers, they conduct studies, build prototypes and bring in new ideas.
They just are very, very slow in doing so, and probably spend way more resources in finding STC parts.
edit-
Also, with Primaris, they could finally make female space marines, with the excuse "but the emprah" being out of the way.
They probably won't, but this would be a prime opportunity to introduce them.
Don't you mean "this would a primaris opportunity to introduce them?
+2
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
Personally i suspect some outside interference when it comes to rapid Tau advancement.
Yeah, between their psychic unawareness and the sudden appearance of Ethereals from out of nowhere, it seems likely that somebody is playing sneaky buggers with their development for some reason.
They advanced at the same rate as real actual humanity
Also marines are making new tech, it's just being rediscovered
It has been more than 6 thousand years from the stone age.
And we still don't have an interstellar empire.
Hell, we're barely able to leave our planet.
the late neolithic period ended around 2000bc
so no
it has not been 6000 years
and interstellar travel is theoretically viable within the next 200 years
Personally i suspect some outside interference when it comes to rapid Tau advancement.
Yeah, between their psychic unawareness and the sudden appearance of Ethereals from out of nowhere, it seems likely that somebody is playing sneaky buggers with their development for some reason.
They advanced at the same rate as real actual humanity
Also marines are making new tech, it's just being rediscovered
It has been more than 6 thousand years from the stone age.
And we still don't have an interstellar empire.
Hell, we're barely able to leave our planet.
the late neolithic period ended around 2000bc
so no
it has not been 6000 years
and interstellar travel is theoretically viable within the next 200 years
Well, sure if we decide to call ancient Mesopotamia and egypt stone age civilisations.
But, let's face it, when most people think stoneage, they don't think Mesopotamia.
Or Uruk.
0
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
they did not use metal tools, they in fact used stone tools
hence the name
+7
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
1) the stone age ended within a range of years; the far end was ~10,000 years ago
2) calling today's technology comparable to what we observe with the Tau is extremely silly for obvious reasons
Personally i suspect some outside interference when it comes to rapid Tau advancement.
I've long suspected that the Tau were a Old Ones project that was frozen until (relatively) recently and then mysteriously kicked into production, hence the miraculous warp storm that protected them from the Explorator fleet and the serendipity of discovering a derelict warp capable ship sitting on one of their moons that they could use to jumpstart their interstellar drive tech.
+1
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
I've heard theories that the Eldar are involved, it seems like the kind of thing they could do, and I think Commander Farsight's weapon is vaguely Eldarish. But... if it is the Eldar, there's not much evidence.
This is the information I have regarding the Tau of 6000 years back from the current time in the setting, taken from the 40k wiki.
What is known is that only 6,000 standard years ago, in the 35th Millennium, an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet had discovered the Tau homeworld of T'au and determined that its population of sentient xenos were a primitive people at the Stone Age level of development who had only just mastered fire.
I don't know, maybe that's analogous with humanity of 4000-5000 years ago. I'm no historian or archeologist or whatever other field of study would be qualified to comment on such information, but I was under the impression that humans of that era had started developing metallurgy and agriculture which takes them a bit beyond "mastering fire".
All I was saying is that from the point of view of a Mechanicus Adept, who has access to the recorded technological "development" of the Imperium over the last 10,000+ years or so, seeing an alien race go from banging rocks together to make sharp points to making FTL capable craft, matching you on the battlefield, and slicing a tiny empire out of your backyard while your tech has evolved along the lines of "Maybe pray harder... and add some more candles to the reliquary?" or "Hey, maybe we can add more guns to this tank hull?" has got to be a little disheartening.
+1
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
This is the information I have regarding the Tau of 6000 years back from the current time in the setting, taken from the 40k wiki.
What is known is that only 6,000 standard years ago, in the 35th Millennium, an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet had discovered the Tau homeworld of T'au and determined that its population of sentient xenos were a primitive people at the Stone Age level of development who had only just mastered fire.
I don't know, maybe that's analogous with humanity of 4000-5000 years ago. I'm no historian or archeologist or whatever other field of study would be qualified to comment on such information, but I was under the impression that humans of that era had started developing metallurgy and agriculture which takes them a bit beyond "mastering fire".
All I was saying is that from the point of view of a Mechanicus Adept, who has access to the recorded technological "development" of the Imperium over the last 10,000+ years or so, seeing an alien race go from banging rocks together to make sharp points to making FTL capable craft, matching you on the battlefield, and slicing a tiny empire out of your backyard while your tech has evolved along the lines of "Maybe pray harder... and add some more candles to the reliquary?" or "Hey, maybe we can add more guns to this tank hull?" has got to be a little disheartening.
the adeptus mechanicus has been massaging machine parts for 20000 years and doesn't even remember it's own ancient history
also, keep in mind, most "lore" is written from the perspective of xenos-hating humans and is entirely unreliable
(Our) Humanity has also experienced ‘dark ages’ where technology stagnated or even regressed due to war, plague, and other reasons. The Tau might have gotten lucky and skipped some of that, shaving time off their technogical progress.
Yes, they have skipped periods of stagnation, not due to luck, but the influence of mind controlling overlords.
But even then, from "mastering fire" to "interstellar empire" in 6 thousand years is bit of a leap.
I always wondered how the pre Dark Ages humans got along with the Eldar and other races. They were spread everywhere and had full STC technology, with no threats from most of the current big bads. I’m assuming the Eldar had the Orks locked down, so maybe they just let humans do whatever as long as they obeyed boundaries? And then with the Eldar’s gradual slide into the Bad Touch everything went to hell, and the assorted alien nasties popped up along with Warp storms. Somewhere in there the robots rebel, which may or may not have been sparked by all the rest of the crap going on. And then it all falls apart until Slaanesh is born and the Warp storms lift.
The Fall off the Eldar took several ten-thousand years in which the got pretty isolationist with independent robot armies defending their territories. I guess that humans had enough time to take over swathes of the Galaxy outside the core worlds of the Eldar empire without the Eldar noticing or caring. Only around the year 20k the warpstorms brewing up due to Eldar Slannesh shenannigans got so bad that warp travel got difficult.
I bet there were a lot of robot vs. robot wars where the Iron Men of Terra battled the Eldar robot legions.
I'd be interested in know what actually happend to the Eldar ai constructs. Did they also rebel? Are they wraith constructs without souls? Why would the Eldar use wraith construcs if they had real robots?
0
SkwigelfPassed out in a cloud of farts and cigarette smoke.Registered Userregular
Aauuugh! I don’t wanna wait another 5 or 6 years for the next Gaunt’s Ghosts novel!
I should point out that the last imperial dark age was due to Eldar fuckery more than anything else.
Didn't they fuck up the galaxy when they created Slannesh.
The Dark Age was when Humanity had expanded and had all their technological breakthroughs. It ended when the Men of Iron rebelled, the psyker population exploded, and a warp storm engulfed Terra. Slaanesh's birth blew away the warp storm and let the Great Crusade commence.
I should point out that the last imperial dark age was due to Eldar fuckery more than anything else.
Didn't they fuck up the galaxy when they created Slannesh.
The Dark Age was when Humanity had expanded and had all their technological breakthroughs. It ended when the Men of Iron rebelled, the psyker population exploded, and a warp storm engulfed Terra. Slaanesh's birth blew away the warp storm and let the Great Crusade commence.
Isn't like half of the galactic empire mankind had during the "Dark Age" of technology cut off from the rest of humanity due to warp fuckery?
I'n like, 99% sure The Imperium never reached the technological height of the Dark Age of Technology.
My forever dream is to write that half of humanity making contact with the Imperium again.
I got thier tech levels and units sorted out in my head and EVERYTHING.
Sort of, there was a few technologically advanced human civilizations around, but the Imperium crushed them because they weren't xenophobic assholes during the Great Crusade.
I should point out that the last imperial dark age was due to Eldar fuckery more than anything else.
Didn't they fuck up the galaxy when they created Slannesh.
The Dark Age was when Humanity had expanded and had all their technological breakthroughs. It ended when the Men of Iron rebelled, the psyker population exploded, and a warp storm engulfed Terra. Slaanesh's birth blew away the warp storm and let the Great Crusade commence.
It's probably been polished away now that the IP is more serious business, but there was a time that the fluff hinted strongly that the Dark Age was actually Star Trek under the Federation.
Posts
I mentioned lady Marines as much as I could in that survey they just put out.
The thing is the Tau of 6000 years ago were literally living in a stone age according to the Imperial records.
6000 years ago, The Imperium was pretty much where they are now.
Now the Tau are able to go head to head with the Empire on fairly equal footing. Sure, it's an empire that's divided and fighting wars on a dozen or more galactic scale fronts at any given time, and if necessary they could roll over and literally crush the tau under a sheer wave of bodies dropped naked and unarmed from ships in orbit. But in ship to ship combat, or ground combat, any engagement where the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Empire is not a factor the development of the Tau has to be terrifying for the Mechanicum who've been largely idling at current tech levels since the Heresy.
Sure, they've made some advancements. some new weapons, but most of those are rediscovering lost technology or combining existing technology in new ways. Even the Primaris Marines and their fancy hover tanks have apparently been sitting around in storage until Robutt showed up and said "Why are we not funding this and using it to crush aliens?".
Yeah, between their psychic unawareness and the sudden appearance of Ethereals from out of nowhere, it seems likely that somebody is playing sneaky buggers with their development for some reason.
They advanced at the same rate as real actual humanity
Also marines are making new tech, it's just being rediscovered
And we still don't have an interstellar empire.
Hell, we're barely able to leave our planet.
Well, to be fair, we don't have a mind controlling ruler caste to keep us in line.
Well, if we do they're doing a shit job of it.
They ruled space until the necrons and ctan fucked everything up.
And an enslaver plague?
Look all I'm saying is that even its fucking shambolic state, the imperium is still the best thing for the galaxy
Ah yes, the Void Dragon.
Don't you mean "this would a primaris opportunity to introduce them?
the late neolithic period ended around 2000bc
so no
it has not been 6000 years
and interstellar travel is theoretically viable within the next 200 years
But, let's face it, when most people think stoneage, they don't think Mesopotamia.
Or Uruk.
hence the name
2) calling today's technology comparable to what we observe with the Tau is extremely silly for obvious reasons
All identified early cities are iron or copper age, and Uruk straddles the early bronze age. Stone age is hunter gatherers and very early agriculture.
I've long suspected that the Tau were a Old Ones project that was frozen until (relatively) recently and then mysteriously kicked into production, hence the miraculous warp storm that protected them from the Explorator fleet and the serendipity of discovering a derelict warp capable ship sitting on one of their moons that they could use to jumpstart their interstellar drive tech.
pottery and early settlements existed in the late neolithic period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byblos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu
All I was saying is that from the point of view of a Mechanicus Adept, who has access to the recorded technological "development" of the Imperium over the last 10,000+ years or so, seeing an alien race go from banging rocks together to make sharp points to making FTL capable craft, matching you on the battlefield, and slicing a tiny empire out of your backyard while your tech has evolved along the lines of "Maybe pray harder... and add some more candles to the reliquary?" or "Hey, maybe we can add more guns to this tank hull?" has got to be a little disheartening.
the adeptus mechanicus has been massaging machine parts for 20000 years and doesn't even remember it's own ancient history
also, keep in mind, most "lore" is written from the perspective of xenos-hating humans and is entirely unreliable
WoW
Dear Satan.....
But even then, from "mastering fire" to "interstellar empire" in 6 thousand years is bit of a leap.
Didn't they fuck up the galaxy when they created Slannesh.
it did create the Eye I believe
I bet there were a lot of robot vs. robot wars where the Iron Men of Terra battled the Eldar robot legions.
I'd be interested in know what actually happend to the Eldar ai constructs. Did they also rebel? Are they wraith constructs without souls? Why would the Eldar use wraith construcs if they had real robots?
The Dark Age was when Humanity had expanded and had all their technological breakthroughs. It ended when the Men of Iron rebelled, the psyker population exploded, and a warp storm engulfed Terra. Slaanesh's birth blew away the warp storm and let the Great Crusade commence.
Ooooooo consider me schooled
I am now feeling an urge to buy a model and try assembling/painting it even though I have no artistic capability and no one to play with.
I'm like, 99% sure The Imperium never reached the technological height of the Dark Age of Technology.
My forever dream is to write that half of humanity making contact with the Imperium again.
I got thier tech levels and units sorted out in my head and EVERYTHING.
Well I am in the same boat with no one to play with so I enjoy the never ending painting modeling problem I now have
It's probably been polished away now that the IP is more serious business, but there was a time that the fluff hinted strongly that the Dark Age was actually Star Trek under the Federation.