++

The Shas'el stepped through the threshold of the Earth Caste's armory. They knew he was coming, but he had made an effort to show up a bit early so he could browse through without all the pomp and circumstance that would soon be surrounding him.

He followed the noises of tools being used and breathed in deep, letting in the smells of fresh, unspoiled, Fio'tak. Often 'Ui's joked about "new suit smell" and he always raucously agreed. The smell somehow was a microcosm of what the Tau stood for. Clean, efficient and precise, nothing like the smells and sounds of a Gue'la shop with all it's oily chemicals and grit.

His daydreaming was interrupted with a strong outburst

"You can't be in here, who do you thin..." a stocky statured Fio'shas stood in front of him menacingly and lifted his welding mask.

"I'm very sorry sir I didn't recognize you in your plain clothes. You're of course allowed to be in here. I was told you wouldn't be here for another 2 Decs, the festivities haven't been.... Please watch your step and come with me."

He was lead past rows and rows of XV8 battle suits, all hanging lifeless like children's toys staring down at him with dim lenses.

"Here they are sir, they're still experimental, but they're what you asked for for both yourself and Shas'el Lozo.

The first suit is currently known as the XV84, it's equipped with a markerlight there, on the spine. It still has 3 hardpoints to fill, so you're customary loadout will still fit fine.

The other, is the suit you asked about for clearing cityscapes on Gue'la worlds. I had to sacrifice a hardpoint to fit the shoulder mounted smart missle system. But I think you'll be pleased with the performance. It'd recommend pairing it with twinlinked flamers, or you could use an airbursting fragmentation projector, but of course, it's not up to me."


The Shas'el nodded in calm appreciation.

"You've done very well. Your dedication to the cause is well noted.

Now can I take that one for a test drive?"

++




Alright guys, so I know there's a pretty expansive list of vernacular around weapon patterning but I haven't seen anything regarding a few patterns, mostly with the Forgeworld alternate suits.


1) The Xv89 is essentially just a suit with built in iridium armor that let's you take another iridium armor, so it's irrelevant to this discussion.

2) The Xv81 is equipped with a Smart Missile system as well as having 2 additional hardpoints to fill. I move that this be called the "Brimstone" pattern. i.e.

A Xv81 equipped with a twinlinked missile pod would be called a "Deathrain and Brimstone", equipped with an Airbursting Fragmentation Projector and a burst cannon the pattern would be "Thunderstorm and Brimstone"

3) The Xv84 suit comes equipped with a target lock and markerlight. I move this pattern be called "Maelstrom" for the firepower that will follow the marking (though not from the suit itself, since it's not networked) i.e.

So a suit armed with twinlinked misslepods would be a "Deathrain Maelstrom"


Thoughts?

Honestly I'm not sure if there's a need, it's just adding another layer of confusion for new players (and old players since they're pretty rare). XV89, XV81 and XV84 is short enough and there's a handy reference in the Forgeworld website that will give you the "XV89 Battlesuit" as the first result if you google it or even just XV89. Even with the commonly used names, it's four results down before I get a reference to Tau if I google "Deathrain", with two websites selling chilli sauces taking the top two spots and the third being about the weather. "Fireknife" is 7 results down before I get any Tau, with Samoan rituals taking up the first 6. "Maelstrom" and "Brimstone" are much too common for you to expect any Tau to appear on the first page.

Outside of Fireknives and Deathrains, I very rarely see the configurations called by their alternative names, and in this case it's going to be on a commander who is likely to have a fairly varied load out that goes beyond the standard 3 hardpoint load out. Whilst Fireknife is a useful shorthand, because it's a complete loadout and tells you pretty much everything you need to know about that suit - the FW variants are really just one piece of equipment.

If there's a particularly useful combination that includes the extra suit variants, as a commander or a full squad load out, then that could warrant a name - but just for the suit types I think it's got a lot of downsides for no real benefit. It'd also be worth going for more unusual names or word combinations.

As much as I love the nomenclature we have for specific suit loadouts, I'm inclined to agree with Tastyfish. Not just on the practicality for players who aren't familiar with the shorthand, I've seen maybe 2 players use ForgeWorld suits, ever, so extending the system to these suits would seem pretty pointless. But also because the system proposed makes the names a lot less short, kinda defeating the whole object of a concise naming system.
I can't really see an adaptation to the current system that would yield an effective way of naming FW suits variants. Unless, again like Tastyfish pointed out, one loadout proved particularly useful, in which case you could just assign a totally new (short) name.

The Invoker

You can always use the ATT Jargon guide that was hashed out amongst the membership (when we were much smaller) and generally agreed upon as a method to combine names and meanings beyond the classics.

Read The ATT Jargon Guide here.

Perhaps we need to discuss a name for the weapon type instead? Regardless of chassis, the loadout is what gains the title.

@ Tael : The Jargon guide was my inspiration. I was using chassis and loadout interchangeably, but you're right. I like Brimstone for the SMS, I had trouble coming up with one for the Markerlight and I went back and forth between "Typhoon", "Maelstrom" and "Tempest" or something more to do with the light itself like "Focused" .

Currently I'm running:

an XV81 with AFP, and misslepod (w/ multitracker). This suit is fantastic for clearing objectives and cover, and the misslepod ensures I'll have some longer range firepower.

and an XV84 with CIB and twinlinked misslepod (w/ multitracker). I like using the two suits synergistically to pinch units in between them while the rest of my army deals with other problems.

And to the others, my intention isn't at all for shorthand practicality, it's moreso for flavor. For shorthand, you're right, saying xv84 fireknife would be much simpler.

Ah, I'm with you now Shasolozo, I'm liking this idea more now I understand your intention. As a chemist, I like the whole "making up names to systematically define series" thing.

In which case I'd lean more towards a "fire" related name for SMS, seeing as they are basically weaker but more numerous missile pods (aka. fire), possibly 'blaze', or possibly an adjective form, to give something like 'blazing deathrain' for SMS + tl-MP.
My argument for the adjective form is that is seems to flow better, and add a greater sense of action, than two nouns; eg. Blazing Fireknife vs. Fireknife Blaze.

As for a name for the markerlight, I think something along the lines of an implication of support, rather than actual action would be more fitting. My point being that the suit itself doesn't cause the tempest of firepower, other units do, putting the markerlight in the role of the witness. My suggestion would be something along the lines of 'gaze' or 'gazing', though there are probably better words, 'focussing' or 'focussed' sound pretty promising.

For example, the XV81 AFP MP (XV81 thunderfire) could be a Blazing Thunderfire
and the XV84 CIB tl-MP could be a Focussed Ionrain (I'm using 'rain', from 'deathrain', here instead of 'fire', the typical name for an MP, to denote it being twin-linked)


The Invoker

1) Yeah, that's why I was liking 'Brimstone' for the SMS, but it's hard to turn that into an adjective. Blazing might work better. Though Brimstone just sounds so dang cool...

2) I was leaning towards 'focused' as well until I realized that the markerlight isnt a networked markerlight which threw me all off. How about "Radiant"?

Radiant's not such a bad shout actually, god one.
And as far as brimstone goes, it means sulfur, which has almost nothing to do with fire, it just smells bad :/ It also has more chaos-y connotations, which doesn't sit too well with Tau imo.

What do you mean sulfur has nothing to do with fire??? You do realize that matches have a mostly sulfur tip...as sulfur is flammable.

As are trees, oil and people. Although I wouldn't advocate the burning people just to prove a point...
Potassium perchlorate is primarily the oxidising agent on a match (the bit that causes fire); the sulfur (a negligible component by weight) only sparks.
A discussion of matches is highly off-topic.

The Invoker

Don't argue with a chemist about sulfur.

Instead why not contribute to the discussion about names for the patterns?

I think it needs more diverse input and some actual decisions making before this is made any variation of 'official'. I don't feel the concept (or thread) is really up to ATT standards yet, with input from so few people.
Judging by the lack of interest in the thread (which I think should have a more relevant name tbh) a poll wouldn't be much use.
I'd suggest changing the name of the thread to something similar to "[Discussion] Forgeworld XV Naming", then coming down with your opinion on one side, with reasons etc.

My opinion: I think a suit with SMS should be have the prefix 'Blazing'
and a suit with a markerlight 'Focussed'

e.g. SMS + missile pods + flamethrower = 'blazing firewave'

The Invoker

Cool! (I'm new). I changed the title and I'm working on some sweet fluffy intro that we all know and love.

Or something even shorter, perhaps we should be looking at something closer to the system used for the targeting array (Deathrain+), perhaps '#' for the XV91 and it's SMS?

At that point I think you might as well say "XV81" for shorthand. The goal was to come up with some cool flavor, not for timesaving shorthand.

Then we're talking something very different then, with the potential for a much more interesting topic too (and one properly worthy of a tactica).

Just renaming a XV81 as a "something Brimstone" variant doesn't add flavour, if anything it takes it away since we're replacing a name that is quite strongly linked to the idea that these are experimental suit models and from a race that isn't as inclined to pre-emptive displays of divine favour with what would have been the word 'Xtrme' had we been in the '90s. It would be totally radical if the world's Tau player's adopted your naming system for the Forgeworld suits, but ultimately is a bit pointless if there is no need to actually use it.

The original Tau book specifically tries to add an element of alien to them by focusing on the fact that their names don't often translate very well - Vral or Ukos being included in the few words we know, due to being included in titles. Adding 'Brimstone' or 'Maelstrom' to a battlesuit name because you don't think that XV81 has enough attitude is just wrong, and really completely counter to your apparent intentions.
The Tau don't really embellish (distort, misinterpret and outright lie, yes but not really boast), their architecture and design is usually pretty minimalist and functional and their whole ethos is based around glorifying the many rather than the individual. A hero will be understated, you boast about the abilities of your cadre and thank those you support you to receive recognition from those who matter and might understand your role in the undertaking, to start a personal saga would just invite questions about what you wanted to hide by shifting focus onto one part of your leadership - sure you struck the killing blow against the Hive Tyrant at B'lesani, but what steps do you take which brought you to a situation where that was necessary, especially if you had no support?

So lets change the topic a bit and kill two birds with one stone - if we're using a special name for a configuration, then lets talk configurations (there's definitely a couple worth mentioning for Zone Mortalis rules at least) and come up with some more inventive names that represent the situation where it became famous. Don't just pick cool words you want to include in an army list - lets hear a bit of background about what might have made the Earth caste engineers consider this particular build a standard layout rather than a test bed device for field testing.

Perhaps Ka'kar Da'va - also known as 'Greenfear' or more directly translated as "the skillfull strike that comes from your own darkness (i.e your blindspot, personal fears or more literally 'where you personally can not see')". It's an XV81 equiped with plasma and melta designed for the close quarters combat. Unusually for a battlesuit configuration, it was originally named by it's enemies after a bloody campaign against the Catachan Jungle Fighters supported by Astartes from the Black Templars during the Nimbosa crusade. The ability to strike without warning, or even being seen got the commanders using the configuration christened "Catachan Devil", especially when even tanks, dreadnoughts and even Astartes Terminators weren't a guarantee versus a cornered 'Greenfear'. At the behest of the watercaste (particularly those favoured by Brightsword, specialising in Gue'la military psychology), some teams were intentional instructed to attempt legend building - with teeth and claw marks being left as calling cards after a successful engagement. However due to some difficulties in translation, and the fact that no Tau has ever seen a Catachan Devil, the mysterious beast was assumed to be some great worm that lived in tunnels under the jungle. Whilst this tactic worked as far as enhancing the reputation of this particular suit and severely reduced Imperial morale - the discrepancy led to most other regiments coming up with their own nicknames for the load out (Lurkers, Flashrats, or Plasmaspites are the most common amongst Brimlock regiments), preventing a common designation for the loadout in Imperial briefings.

'Cause this is without playing games utilising the loadout. Even if it ends up just being 'that damn shooty commander suit' - chuck it through a couple of translators and then into Tau to see if you can come up with a name that is fairly unique and also reflects the actual battlefield testing of this experimental suit. Post a couple of battle reports and even GW/BL might make note your story and incorporate into the fluff proper - but without any citations, or anything useful to point to when referring to these builds, it's just a post on a small forum that doesn't have unanimous backing even then.

To use an example from science - generally a scientist will never name something after themselves (it's seen as the height of arrogance, and you'll quickly find your new find named after someone else who alluded to it earlier or just given a TLA/Basic description). However publish an interesting paper about something and you'll suddenly find that thing referred to as the "Shasolozo principle" or "Shasolozo's weavil". Come up with a loadout, show it's worth, and come up with a briefly mentioned shorthand and a more commonly used and overly long name. Then you'll see the short name you came up with used throughout the internet if it's worth anything.

Bravo Tastyfish, very well thought out and said. I have to say I much like where you have turned this. I'd never even thought much about names originating from the enemy. You raise a very good point though in regards to translation, and how the Tau mind works.

I'll admit, what you were trying to say was a bit hard to follow, but I'll try and interpret what you're saying and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

"Just renaming a XV81 as a "something Brimstone" variant doesn't add flavour, if anything it takes it away since we're replacing a name that is quite strongly linked to the idea that these are experimental suit models and from a race that isn't as inclined to pre-emptive displays of divine favour with what would have been the word 'Xtrme' had we been in the '90s.....Adding 'Brimstone' or 'Maelstrom' to a battlesuit name because you don't think that XV81 has enough attitude is just wrong, and really completely counter to your apparent intentions.
The Tau don't really embellish (distort, misinterpret and outright lie, yes but not really boast), their architecture and design is usually pretty minimalist and functional and their whole ethos is based around glorifying the many

Why not? I'm following naming conventions as they exist and you seem to be calling GW's and the online communities conventions into question. Keep in mind that many of these configuration names seem to be names the imperials use when referring to the Tau technology, this happens quite often when cultures clash, see "Bouncing Betty", "Charlie", and "Bee Hive" are all good examples of Vietnamese technology or people that weren't words the Vietnamese used to refer to the same items. Most of the Tau codex is written from an outside perspective, not an inside perspective. It's also written in english, not Tau.

Let's take some example of names from the Tau Codex itself and put them up to the premise you've created.

"Devilfish"- The Tau don't have devils, and aren't inclined to displays of divine favor.

"Damocles Crusade"- Again, examples of tau's language of "divine favor"

"Hammerhead, Piranha, Tetra, Manta, Orca "- The Tau don't have any of these sea creatures on their planet. These are specific species names in most cases. Why would they name their tanks after sea creatures from millions of light years away? Their names give absolutely no practical indication of their use or function either, just "sound cool".

That being said, Brimstone and Maelstrom fit in with the communities naming conventions: "Fireknife", "Helios", "Firestorm", "Thunderstorm", "Blinding Spear", "Burning eye" etc don't follow the conventions you've put forth, but are accepted by the community. What does not fit into name convention is what you're suggesting. I'm not looking to create a backstory on the XV81-84, the Imperial Armor book already did that. What I'm trying to do (for the third time now!) is to start a discussion on how the forgeworld loadouts should fit into the existing naming vernacular.

For example:

“Blade/Knife”=Plasma Rifle
“Ion”= Cyclic Ion Blaster
“Fire”=Misslepod
“??”= SMS
“??”=Markerlight

Also, Tau not being ones to boast or celebrate individual achievement and are minimalist and spartan with their design couldn't be more wrong. They build monuments of individuals and call them “Heroes of the Empire”. They have elaborate ceremonies and rituals. The ethereals wear priestly vestments. Having modernist styled architecture doesn't mean it's spartan and without style and an eye for aesthetics.

Firstly, a short piece of history about the community accepted naming conventions:
Way back before ATT, there was MTT - Mechanised Tau Tactica, an MSN group. The Tau were a new race, young and inexperienced - the novel Crisis Battlesuit and its many and varied weapon loadouts had still to be fully tested and evaluated. It was here that the current nomenclature (and the now redundant Fish of Fury) was born, as a type of shorthand to make it easier to write some of the more overly long winded loadouts in army lists and battle reports. Over time, the better, and more useful weapon combinations were so widely used they were found to be worthy of their pseudonym. Other, less useful loadouts still have names under the convention, but since virtually nobody actually uses them they remain mostly unknown compared to the Fireknife, Deathrain and such.
You might notice that non-XV8-weapon systems such as the drone controller, the smart missile system, the blacksun filter, the disruption pod and the markerlight were only given letters as shorthand - DC, SMS, BSF, DP and ML respectively.

There is your answer right there.

The accepted naming convention for non-XV8-weapon systems is to shorten its name down to a few letters.

Forgeworld taking a heavy smart missile system, usually found only on Devilfish and XV88s, and plonking it onto an XV81 chasis doesnt just magically change its designation from SMS to some cool sounding adjective. If the SMS were to become available as a wargear choice for XV8 suits there might be a case for a new designation - such as when the AFP and CIB were introduced. But it isn't.

The XV81 has an SMS, thats why its called an XV81. You cant change that on the suit, its not exchangable - you get an XV81, you get an SMS. Everyone knows this already. Why does it need another name? To sound cool? So you can get credit for coming up with it?

Its superfluous. The whole idea of the naming conventions is shorthand. Not so something sounds cool.
'Fireknife' is easier to write than 'Plasma rifle and Missile Pod and multitracker'. The fact that it also sounds cool is just a bonus.

By all means, use your preferred name whenever you want, however you want. Just don't expect everyone (or anyone) to agree or even understand what you are talking about when you use it. There have already been other names put forward *within* this thread, and pretty much any adjective can be slapped on and argued for.
For example:
What about using 'Blind' because it doesnt need line of sight, or 'A.I.' because the missiles of the SMS are controlled by Drone artificial intelligence, or my favourite - 'Foooooooshhhommmmm!!!', because thats the sound the missiles make when they launch.
All of these are as relevant and fitting as your choice of 'Brimstone'. You might not think so, but thats not my problem.

Remember, its the in-game usefulness of the loadout combination that over time eventually gains it a widely accepted pseudonym, not how cool it sounds. And the XV81 is never going to gain that amount of in-game usefulness. Ever.

The vehicle names are Imperial designations (a Devilfish is also smaller type of Manta ray, famous for jumping out of the water), as is the Damocles gulf crusade. However the names for the configurations are used by the Tau and were originally in a WD article that has been transcribed here if you've not had a chance to read it before. There's a couple of official ones as well that don't see widespread use, largely because they're a bit rubbish - the original ones were either Monat or Ta'ro'cha configurations and quite a few had squads with mismatched weapons.

Fio' El's Workshop echoes my main point - that the original designations came from a WD article and therefore had a fairly large initial base of readers who would have some familiarity with the term. ATT just isn't big enough to really come up with a name for the sake of a name even if we were all on board with the idea. However, coming up with a loadout variant (either individual or for a squad) is something that might just spread - there's a plenty of people talking about the updates on other blogs and forums, along with Zone Mortalis stuff that you could easily come up with a interesting configuration - have a few games on it and then spread that knowledge elsewhere. It's at that point you might find a shorthand is useful and sticks, especially if when you mention it you have a handy article written up that lays out the theory and the pros and cons you've experienced.