Holding my shiny new Custodian in my hand, I can agree on many things.
For the Custodian, I'd love to hear at least some design principle from Nate or another HA about the logic behind not giving better manouverability or endurance to the ship.
Okay folks, here it is. We have a framework “theme†for how every fleet is supposed to behave, what it’s supposed to be good at, and what it’s supposed to be bad at. Tau’s “theme†is that they suck at building true warships, and their propulsion, energy and shield tech is nowhere NEARLY as good as the Imperium. Take the Explorer for example. It has absolutely monstrous drives, yet it moves only 15cm and can barely juice more than one shield. Even their background fluff illustrates their WB fire is a carefully choreographed ripple-fire of their railguns because they don’t have the power to fire them simultaneously.
Without getting into the mechanics of how or why Forgeworld came about with producing the Kor’or’vesh, they just did. GW’s immediate (and present) policy is that all the models are just “counts as†models using the current GW rules (Custodian=Explorer, Emissary=Merchant, etc.), which is why GW never produced a ruleset for them.
Forgeworld came out with their own rules for them, the first iteration of which were an abomination and duly butchered by the HA’s when we were given a sneak-peek. Forgeworld came out with a second set of profiles they didn’t even show us before putting them in print (Imperial Armor 4). Their Kor’or’vesh rules were put on their online resources site for awhile but it’s been gone for several years now. Unfortunately IA#4 is an expensive book most BFG-only fans will probably never buy because though it has more than a hundred pages of WH40k rules and materials, only 4 pages are dedicated to BFG. This isn’t too much of a tragedy- the new FW profiles are still a bit buggy, though I suppose anyone who wants to use them can as long as their opponent doesn’t mind.
Anyway, regardless of how shiny the new models look, the fleet “theme†hasn’t changed. Tau starship tech (which is so vastly scaled up to anything in WH40k, an analogy would be pointless) was barely better than that of Orks and far behind Imperials before the Damocles Gulf Crusade. By the time of the Taros Campaign (which is an entirely Forgeworld-generated contrivance) several decades later, the Tau fleet is completely different thanks to Forgeworld, but GW’s underlying theme hasn’t changed. Should Tau tech be better than it was several decades earlier? Of course it should- the crucible of war does wonders for advancing technology, especially when you have a three-front war (Imperium, Orks and Tyranids) threatening you with annihilation. However, desperation only gets you so far regardless of the resources at your disposal, and with only several decades between two wars, there is NO WAY the basic theme of the Tau morphed from “barely better than Orks†to “better than the Imperium.â€
How do we represent this in rules? Easy: Kor’or’vesh starships are purpose-designed warships built to the Tau’s combat philosophy instead of the re-packaged Air-caste colonization vessels they were using pre-Damocles. Because Tau drives still suck (bigger does NOT mean better), their warships have to be smaller so they can move like warships. They still can’t go fast, but their small size lets them turn better. However, the smaller size benefit only condenses down to a point: their flagship 10HP vessel is still battleship-sized as battleship-mass vessels apply to the Tau, and their drives aren’t advanced enough yet to let the Custodian behave like anything besides a battleship. This means NO Grand Cruiser movement and NO 90 degree turns. This is also why they aren’t getting a 4th shield, though a deflector is still under discussion.
Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it is right for the fleet’s theme. If we keep making new ships and rules to program out the shortcomings of every fleet, we will eventually come full-circle and make all the fleets exactly the same. Then we would have nothing but a game of battleship-chess, and nobody would have to figure out how to fight to a fleet’s strengths and not merely try to fleet up its shortcomings.
I'd love to see some kind of character prototype Custodian. Every fleet needs an expensive centerpiece 
This sounds like a good idea, say a one-off vessel. Back at you- what should it look like, leaving the above constraints unchanged?
Don: This fleet is no where even approaching the power of the korvattra.
It’s easy to say considering Explorers are cheap, no-limit carriers. Like everything else in the game, smart tactics can overcome this. One of our play-test battles was actually a pure Kor’vattra fleet against a pure Kor’or’vesh fleet, just to check for balance. It was exceedingly close.
Fluff question: I'm guessing, but I don't know exactly when Farsight defected. Would the Enclaves have access to Kororvesh ships?
Commander Farsight defected before the Taros Campaign and thus wouldn’t have access to Kor’or’vesh ships. For flavor, imagine him as the Abbadon of the Tau, and you wouldn’t be far off. We have declined to make it official canon that a Farsight fleet can’t have Kor’or’vesh ships because in the greater scheme of things there isn’t enough reason to make the distinction (there can always be defections, of course), but ideally a fluff-true Farsight fleet wouldn’t have any Kor’or’vesh ships at all.
- Nate
