Does anyone know of any compiled stats for the Tau Fleet like the ones given in 'Ships of the Imperial Navy' and 'Ships of the Chaos Fleets'?
Ships of the Tau Empire is now on MakeWarNotLove. Please comment here on the designs that are posted on the site.
If not I guess I could do it myself. I'll start by nameing the vessels and their classes. Anyone that sees an omission please chime in.
Gal'Leath (Explorer) Class
Il'Fannor (Merchant) Class
Lar'Shi (Hero) Class
Kir'Qath (Defender) Class, Escort (The Tau answer to Imperial SWORD Class Vessels)
Skether'Qan (Messenger) Class, Escort
Kass'l (Orca) Gunship, Escort (Monitor)
Barracuda Superiority Fighter, Attack Craft
Manta Missile Destroyer, Attack Craft (Bomber and Troop Carrier)
Tau Missile, Ordnance (Drone Guided)
Rather than cluttering up this thread with my 'work in progress' posts I started a page on MakeWarNotLove to cover the evolving ship stats for the Ships of the Tau Empire.
You might want to consider the inclusion of Warden, Emissary, Castillian, Protector and Custodian classes from Forge World. Several people I know, including myself, consider them a better and more 'Tau-y' fleet of ships then Citidel's original types.
I'd be glad to help you come up with the rules and such though. I'm curious why you decided to start with the big colony ships, however. It seems to me like it'd be better to start small, with the transport and escort equivilents, ship's which have the most information in the Rogue Trader book to base them off of. I'll post my idea for one of the small guys in a bit when I get it constructed.
Update (Tau Transport):
Crew: 2,000
Speed: 5
Manoeuvrability: +20
Detection: +10
Hull: 40
Armour: 14
Turret: 1
Ship Points: n/a
Armament: Prow Railgun Battery (FRL), Str 2, 1d10+3, Crit 6, Range 8
Essential Components: Single Gravitic Shield, Commerce Bridge, Type 2 Gravic Drive, Tau Life Support System, Air Caste Quarters, Type 1 Sensor Array.
Supplemental Components: Main Cargo Hold x3, Extended Supply Vaults, Observation Dome
Space 43, Space Remaining 5
Power 20, Power Remaining 2
Mounts: Prow, Dorsal
Notes: Tau Ships are both carefully maintained and well understood, while under Tau control they never start with Machine Spirit Oddities, or Past Histories.
Thanks for the help. Truly I just started by opening my Armada booklet and reading through the first ship.
After looking over the Forge World ships I tried to find a stat sheet for them. Are they in a Imperial Armour mag or other downloadable content anywhere? If not we can just make up stats but i wanted to ask before I leapt.
They certainly look a lot less modular than the originals, more like dedicated platforms than a spine and bolt on sections.
Adding:
Warden (Gunship), Escort, Non-Warp
Emissary
Courier, Transport
Castellan, Escort
Custodian, Fleet Carrier (Transports 3 Gunships)
Protector, Cruiser
AHA! Apparently what rules there are are in IA3. Now to dig and see if I still have that issue. Also I found a nice fan made booklet here: booklet link
Yeah, the Forge World ships are quite different. They are really the culmination of the Tau effort to construct an actual War Fleet. The original ships were merchantmen and other ‘civilian’ ships repurposed for war. The Hero became a technology test bed, an attempt to utilize refined weapons and equipment to create an effective warship.
The Kor’oh’vesh, or Forgeworld Fleet, are an actual whole new construction, rather then just an update of old technology. And at least 2 of them, the Protector and the Castillian, they are dedicated warships, good for little else then blowing enemies out of the void. On the other hand, the Emissary is a great one for PC use; indeed, it is essentially the Rogue Trader vessel of the Tau Empire. If one were playing a Tau Coalition, it’d be a logical choice.
Another ship suggestion: the Warden:
Crew: 2,000
Speed: 5
Manoeuvrability: +20
Detection: +10
Hull: 30
Armour: 15
Turret: 1
Ship Points: n/a
Armament: Prow Railgun Battery (F), Str 3, 1d10+3, Crit 6, Range 8
Armament: Dorsal Ion Cannon (FRL), Str 1, 1d10+4, Crit 3, Range 6
Essential Components: Single Gravitic Shield, Commerce Bridge, Type 1 Gravic Drive, Tau Life Support System, Air Caste Quarters, Type 1 Sensor Array.
Supplemental Components: None
Space 30, Space Remaining 2
Power 40, Power Remaining 4
Mounts: Prow, Dorsal
Notes: Tau Ships are both carefully maintained and well understood, while under Tau control they never start with Machine Spirit Oddities, or Past Histories. Type 1 Gravic Drive is to slow for most insterseller travel.
It moves similarly to the Transport, but is a much smaller craft. Its interesting compared to its Imperial counterparts because of Lance weapon, which because of the style of mounting, is actually more mobile then its prow mounted railguns. This makes it the opposite of the significantly larger and faster Firestorm.
I think I might branch this project into a Tau Trader supplement. For the Greater Good...and Profit! Who wants to write up a rough draft of Tau Races, Classes and Player Character Stuff lol 
I've worked on the site a bit more adding Tau Specific components that act as this or that Core Rules component. the culmination of this will be a Tau Specific Ship Utility. I decided to give them more Tau sounding names as the Imperium centric stuff would just look funny on a Tau Ship Character Sheet.
oh oh! Pick me!
If you hadn't guessed, I'm kinda a Tau Fanatic. Although I am, in part, hesitant to try and build the Tau from scratch when at least one will likely be in the Deathwatch core book, there no so far off human that i'm not willing to give it a try. Indeed, just point me in the right thread and I'll start spouting off ideas.
Your right about the component names though, Imperial components just wouldn't feel right.
Sounds like a plan. So we have Kroot in the next RT expansiona and maybe a Tau in Deathwatch? Theres the two main races fo the empire. Now Vespid, Demiurg, Nicassar probably won't ever be detailed officially. most of the fluff is already written so we can just reference it not re-write it. All we need is stats for the races, classes, progression tables and character generation stuff.
Do you want to create a new thread here for that, or start a new page on you website (or both)?
Back on the subject of ships. I was going to just create another one, but realized it might be better to figure out at least some trends & nature of Tau construction first. Seems to be there's basicly 2 basic styles of Tau ship, +3 Alien types (Nesscasar, Kroot, Demirg) not including Rogue Trader and captured imperial vesses which are essentialy already covered.
The Kor'vattra fleet, the original fleet, uses a highly modular, components on a stick method to create usable for any real purpose. With the exception of the Hero, they are all basicly merchentmen, making them most akin to a Rogue Trader's Jericho or Vegabond, just in larger scale. Both by appearance and by fluff, they seem to be less well armored then their imperial counterparts, although likely retain the same level of Hull Integraty.
The Kor'or'vesh fleet, the Forge World fleet, seem to be almost the opposite. It feels and looks like their armor seems up to Imperial standards, but their ships are bilt lighter, thinner and without the reinforced internal bulkheads that give Imperial ships their great resistance to damage. Maybe keep the armor the same, but reduce their Hull Integraty when compared to their Imperial counter parts.
I think we can keep the modularity on both generations of ship (they are all huge ) just reduce internal space slightly from class to class for the new generation reflecting the wing design philosophy (wing shapes in IA3 being said to increase the vessels gravitic drive coherency and speed).
Both the old and new seem to hold to the wedge vessel configuration for weapons fire - an advantage for any Tau vessel as they can fire everyhting but aft weapons mounts into their forward arcs.
I remember from Rogue Star the RT captain being surprised how fragile the ships were when their shields were down, easily damaged. Both generations are likely un-reinforced as a matter of course but saying their armour is better is not a stretch - the Tau are likely to have remedied that glaring flaw in their newer vessels...and all of the larger ones having a Deflector in the new generations makes sense as they'll want to point their noses at the enemy to outgun their opponents.
I was deliberately leaving out the alien races in the empire other than the Tau for now. Hammering out the Tau first is just me applying the KISS principle.
I can create a sub page of the Tau section for the race data. I'll do that tonight.
Here it is: For the Greater Good...and Profit!