History Headscratchers / Warhammer40kXenos

* I read the pages for some of the Tau's aircraft on the Lexicanum, and what I saw really surprised me: The primary weapons on their fighters all seem to be guns, with the only aircraft I saw that had anti-aircraft missiles being the Sun Shark, a bomber. Every other mention of missiles I saw in relation to Tau aircraft either didn't mention how they were used or said they were for ground-attack purposes. The reason this strikes me as odd is that theoretically, the Tau's tactics are the most like modern humanity's, but the standard for modern fighters is that their primary weapons are missiles, with guns and thus dogfighting being relegated to the secondary role. There are other factions I could see as being dogfighters– The Imperium, who has

* I read the pages for some of the Tau's aircraft, and what I saw really surprised me: The primary weapons on their fighters all seem to be guns, with the only aircraft I saw that had anti-aircraft missiles being the Sun Shark, a bomber. Every other mention of missiles I saw in relation to Tau aircraft

** ''Most'' of them are female; the option is there to convert a male Banshee or a female Autarch should you want one. It could be that female Eldar are for some reason less likely to succumb to BecomingTheMask ([[IncrediblyLamePun pun not intended]]) and as such tend not to become [[strike: sociopathic {{Blood Knight}}s]] Autarchs.

** ... [[CloningBlues If its consciousness can't be duplicated, how can it be reincarnated?]]

** In a new article, GW has a [[http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=13600030a Youtube interview with the creators of the new Dark Eldar]]. Thankfully(?), this is issue was one that they did discuss, rather than saying [[HandWave that there are just enough of them to last that long]], which appeared to be part of the implied solution up 'til now. The Dark Eldar have [[ReallyGetsAround higher birth rates]] than their Craftworld cousins, and they [[AnythingThatMoves may have]] a number of [[HalfHumanHybrid Half-Eldar Hybrids]] in their ranks. Then the [[MadDoctor Haemon]][[CombatMedic culi]] have a sort of "[[PeopleJars medical sarcophagus]]" that can restore one of them entirely [[FromASingleCell from a simple body part]] were they to get killed in battle, although this can have [[CameBackWrong potential downsides]]. Also, similar to real life, population can grow rapidly from keeping people from dying, which the Dark Eldar can do since they're practically immortal and regularly rejuvenate themselves.

** A better question is, why do Tau ethereals ''exclusively'' equip themselves for melee combat, without even grabbing a pulse pistol? Do they have a bad case of [[StarWars Jedi syndrome]]?

** From the fluff I would say that the average Tau in the street has a fairly enlightened outlook on life and many of the commanders/leaders are relatively benevolent, if a little cynical. But the higher-ups and the Etherials are more aware of how generally shit the universe is and act as ruthless as everyone else. The difference between them and Imperial authorities is that the humans don't bother to lie about being tyrants any more. Basically, Tau on the street are LawfulGood with LawfulNeutral rulers, while Imperial citizens are LawfulNeutral with LawfulEvil rulers. On a good day.

** Also, everything is relative. Remember, the other races are Orwellian space communists, ultra xenophobes that create an absolute dictatorship, tribal war bands killing for fun, creatures from beyond the galaxy seeking to devour all life, Undead skeleton robots wanting to end all life, and a group who inflicting torture is a daily meal. In comparison, the manupilative Eldar are Jesus Christ.

** [[YouKeepUsingThatWord I'm not sure "I think we should kill less of them with each volley of shots" fits any sane definition of efficiency]]. Neither does "I think we should take away the ability for our troops to damage light vehicles". Besides, Tau aren't ''like'' the Imperium. They don't look at their troops' guns and think "These are inefficient at killing Guardsmen and other light infantry". They look at pulse rifles and think "These are effective at killing Guardsmen and other light infantry". Their power gives them a versatility that the Imperial Guard have to use special weapons to achieve - they can gun down light infantry, light vehicles, and can use the old "throw enough mud at a wall" tactic to bring down things like Carnifexes or Marines/Necrons. They've already gone for CripplingOverspecialisation by focusing exclusively on ranged combat, and they know that focusing on killing one specific type of opponent with that fire, on battlefields where anything can happen and very frequently does, is a recipe for disaster. (Besides, they're not going to release a Tau codex with "Normal Fire Warriors," "Marine-Killing Fire Warriors With Plasma Rifles", and "Guard-Killing Fire Warriors with Flashlights" entries.) Sure, if the Imperium was able to mobilise all its resources, the Tau would get wtfpwned. But they can't, because of Necrons, Tyranids, Orks, Chaos, Eldar, rebels and so on.

** Seconded that the source for this is the {{novelization}} of ''VideoGame/FireWarrior''. However, that takes place shortly after the Damocleas Crusade, when contact between the Tau and the Imperium was still scarce. As such, Tau had heard of Imperial Titans, but had not really ever confronted them by that time, believing them to be Imperial scare-tactic propoganda. It is kind of easy to see why they would believe so, as the laws of physics would require a lot of TechnoBabble [[{{Handwave}} Handwaving]] before a Titan could be believed to not sink into the ground it stood on, let alone move in combat. The Tau believed that any civilization with enough AppliedPhlebotinum to make such a thing work would certainly find better uses for it. Fluff taking place later (specifically ''Imperial Armor Volume III: The Taros Campaign'' which is a great read if you are interested more in overall military doctrine and large scale strategy and logicstics than character driven plots of most Black Library works) do show the Tau reversing this earlier position when they realized that the Imperium actually took such CrazyAwesome concepts [[SeriousBusiness seriously]] and they would be in a world of hurt if they did not have an effective countermeasure to them. Thus was born the heavy railgun version of their Tigershark aircraft, designed to kill Titans at a fraction of the material cost.

** There used to be quite a lot of Eldar who believed in a lot of gods, all of who were spanked by Slaanesh. Having a lot of worshipers doesn't necessarily translate to being more powerful in the 40K universe. This troper's pet theory is that the Old Ones engineered their creations to have productive and less dangerous outlets for their warp energies. So as long as they stick to their designed function (i.e. not starting galaxy-wide pain orgies), they're only feeding into their mostly benign gods. Dunno if any of the fluff backs that up, though.

!Old Ones
[[folder:Canon status of Old Ones]]
* Are the Old Ones still canon? They seem to have been forgotten about.
** Unless they've been deliberately retconned out, they're still canon.
** They still existed, but they're likely all dead, and not many people know about them. Probably only the Necrons really remember the Old Ones, but they're not talking.
** The other possibility is that the Eldar and Ork gods (Khaine/Mork and Cegorach/Gork) are the last two surviving Old Ones.
** The New Necron codex confirms that the Old One's are still Canon, but claims the Necrons and the C'tan eliminated every last one of them. Then again, GW's fluff policy means that isn't necessarily the truth.
[[/folder]]

!Orks


[[folder:Orky psychic physics]]
* Are the Orkz aware of the Psychic field? They know that Wyrdboyz have to be separated, but do they know why the red ones go faster?
** Of course they know why the red ones go faster: It's because they're red. The Orks don't have our perspective on the psychic field and so the effects they observe are to them as the laws of physics is for us. And they're about equal so the Orks beliefs basically are laws of physics whenever many Orks are around. Of course both can be bent or broken.
** Orks perceive the physics of the universe "right", i.e.: governed by what should work. Since for it to work it has to be cool ork-wise, they do know that rule of cool governs the universe. Ergo they're genre-savvy about rule of cool, no need to be aware of anything complicated.

* How do the Dark Eldar maintain their population? They are constantly taking casualties from raids, not to mention the enormous amount of betrayal and lethal backstabbing going on 24/7 in their society. To make all of that up, their birthrate would have to be huge. and somehow I don't see them as staying home to raise the kids.

** Also, it will be time-inefficent.
By harvesting the planets the normal way, they get all the biomass and carbon in some weeks, while farming they will need many monts, and it will result in a lower output of gaunts, and in greater cost of energy in orbit and on the planet, even if we don't count the retaliation of whoever they are eatyng.

** Also, everything is relative. Remember, the other races are Orwellian space communists, ultra xenophobes that create an absolute dictatorship, tribal war bands killing for fun, creatures from beyond the galaxy seeking to devour all life, Undead skeleton robots wanting to end all life, and a group who inflicting torture is a daily meal. In comparison, the malipulative Eldar are Jesus Christ.

** Tyranids do have emotion; each individual Tyranid has its own rudimentary instinctive emotions. The Hive Mind itself also has emotion, but that emotion is primarily hunger. However,t his question makes a fundamnetal mistake about the Warp: the Warp isn't exactly fueled by emotion, but rather by ''thoughts''. Even an entirely emotionless being would influence the Warp if they have a slight psychic presence... and the Tyranid Hive Mind is an impossible vast thinking machine.