So you say that one ship getting hammered by a whole fleet of tau ordinance is a big deal? Lets mathhammer it:
If two fleets start on opposite sides of the board, nearly in line with each other and the sm player all ahead fulls towards his enemy until he is in weapons range then he will have to endure getting pummeled for about two turns before he can do anything.
Lets assume that the tau player is a douche and maxes explorers at 1500. Taking six of them. 6x8 is 48 bombers. Each wave of eight.
Now during the two ordinance phases 12 waves of 8 bombers (presumably) will come into contact with your ships.
2 turrets on a strike cruiser have:
1/4 chance of killing 0 bombers
1/2 chance of killing 1
1/4 chance of killing 2
Each bomber will have according to the number rolled on the dice attacks:
1 2 3 4 5 6
0 0 1 2 3 4
Or an average of 5/3 attacks for those that survive. So in the scenario that 0 die, this will be 13.333 attacks, if one dies this will be 11.667 attacks, if two die this will be 10 attacks. So averaging out these scenarios it will be 11.667 attacks, causing 1.94 hits each time. So 12 bomber runs will kill 4 strike cruisers.
The firepower on the explorers is negligible and is unlikely to do anything to a 2 shielded SC, save for when they are close. Also this doesn't account for the fact that your LBs will stop 9 bombers, and preventing the death of 1 strike cruiser. Also likely you will brace with any seeing more than 1 or two bomber runs. Additionally... shoot the ridiculously huge waves of bombers on your way in.
After this your fleet will have 3 strike cruisers and a battlebarge left. This is enough to murder 6 explorers. I mean... murder. I mean the Battlebarge with 4 turrets is damn near invulnerable to the same bombers, and it could probably murder all the explorers on its own. With boarding actions and etc. The Tau fleet in this scenario has no firepower whatsoever, and really...
the same 48 bombers will do:
.5 hits per wave, so 6 hits in the two turns. Crippling the bb, but saving your SCs for murder. The murder is in fact quite immense.
Also a strike cruiser wins in boarding against tau. In this scenario the explorers would always be on special orders (RO) and have a boarding value of eight. Sure they would outnumber you +1, but you get the special orders against them +1 as well as being a marine +2. So you get +2 on them, sure not great, but throw in a BM and you've got a solid +3, meaning that you will win 1/2 the time, 1/6 you will tie, and fight next turn (stopping the ordinance death from that ship) and 1/3 you will lose and take a point.
Presumably you wouldn't take such risk, unlike me, an ork player where the strategy is well... more suicidal than strategy. Hell I'd board those vessels even if I had a even dice off.
Why are you arguing about the tau being so nasty to marines?