In response to the post
40k Theory: It's All About The Numbers by Nikephoros I decided to do the same calculation for my Tau army list.
It was interesting to me because I had performed a similar calculation to compare the efficiency of various Crisis suit configurations at killing terminators (TEQ), marines (MEQ) and humans (GEQ). For a while I'd been using the twin-linked missile pods with a targeting array (referred to as the "Deathrain" configuration by Tau players). This gives 2 shots with a 36 inch range at BS4 and it's twin linked, so it's great for killing light transports. With this configuration a squad of three suits would reliably hit with 5 out of 6 shots, however that also demonstrates it's weakness - low rate of fire. Tau armys rely on the Crisis suits to do most of the killing for the army (foreshadowing) and Deathrains aren't very good at killing marines. The other popular Crisis suit loadout is the Fireknife, it has a missile pod, plasma rifle and multitracker so it can shoot both in the same turn. To figure out if the added low-AP shots from the plasma rifle was worth the higher points and lower BS3 I decided to whip out some mathhammer.
My results are that a squad of three Deathrain suits (at BS4) should kill 1.5 MEQs to the Fireknife's 2 MEQs (which goes up to 3.3 MEQs in rapid fire range). If you use markerlights to bring the Fireknife BS up to BS5 they should kill almost 3.5 MEQs at range.
Whoa mathy, on to Nike's numbers... (Read the article and the 8 or so follow-ups to understand what this means)
Unit / DMS / DMCC / DRPG / DLRPG
3 Units of 3 Crisis Suits (w/ 1 HQ) / 11.39 / 2.33 / 22.97 / 0.00
12 Gun Drones (+3 SD CC) / 1.32 / 1.66 / 0.00 / 0.00
2 Devilfish / 0.66 / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
1 Piranha / 0.55 / 0.00 / 3.03 / 1.92
12 Firewarriors / 2.64 / 1.33 / 0.00 / 0.00
10 Kroot / 1.65 / 2.50 / 0.00 / 0.00
13 Kroot, 2 Hounds / 2.15 / 3.75 / 0.00 / 0.00
8 Pathfinders (2 squads of 4) / 0.88 / 0.88 / 0.00 / 0.00
3 Broadsides / 4.40 / 1.00 / 11.00 / 6.60
2 Hammerheads / 3.15 / 0.00 / 5.50 / 3.30
Total / 28.79 / 13.45 / 42.49 / 11.82
If the pathfinders use their markerlights to raise the Crisis suits to BS5 the numbers change to:
Total / 34.91 / 13.45 / 60.84 / 11.82
The numbers don't look too bad (except for CC), but Tau rely on the ability to kill the opposition at range and the proliferation of army's that either move fast and assault or deep strike make life very hard for the Tau player. Also, any opponent who is experienced in playing Tau knows to kill the Crisis suits first, the numbers above show why that's so important.
The numbers are not bad at killing marines or mech, but pretty weak other than that. Despite the reputation for long range killing power AV14 is still a problem because there are only so many railguns available (the answer is 9 maximum), and doing that limits the number of horde killing templates you can take. That's why I started building marines.
