Tau Efficiency Achievement (Tau Jump Stun Strategy)(Video)

Tau Efficiency is an achievement where the player must defeat all three of the Colosseum Wave 16 doppelgangers by themself within five seconds of each other as the Tau Commander.

This guide uses the strategy of one or two allied Tau Commanders in Heavy armour repeatedly jumping on top of the doppelgangers to stun them, giving the player attempting the achievement plenty of time to manage firepower to land the killing blow on all three within a five second period.

Most information presented herein takes the form of a YouTube video (with correct subtitles).

The Tau Efficiency

The exact requirements or implications of the Tau Efficiency achievement can be surprisingly unclear.

Achievement Description
The Tau Efficiency achievement description is "As the Tau Commander, kill all three doppelgangers within 5 seconds of each other on wave 16 of Bloodied Coliseum yourself."

Requirements
Ignoring the inconsistent spelling of the map name, the requirements, for the player aiming to get the achievement, are the following:

• Play Last Stand on Bloodied Colosseum
  
• For Hero, select the Tau Commander
  
• Survive to Wave 16
  
• All three doppelgangers must die
  
• Those three deaths must occur within an interval of time equal to five seconds
  
• Those three deaths must be caused by the player

"within 5 seconds"
The particular point that often causes confusion is the "within 5 seconds of each other". The wording used could imply that it is enough to merely make the second kill within five seconds of the first kill, and make the third kill within five seconds of the second kill. (This is the case for many multikill medals in first person shooter games.) However, this is not the case. Through my own experimentation (that is to say, not 100% faltless), I have found that the third kill must be made within five seconds of the first kill.

"yourself"
Another thing to be aware of is that the three deaths of the doppelgangers must be caused by the player. That means damage may be inflicted upon the doppelgangers by other players, so long as such damage is not the cause of any single doppelganger's health falling to zero or below. The player getting the achievement must land the killing blow for each of the three doppelgangers. Even a Tau drone can steal the credit for a kill from the player attempting the achievement (as far as my own observations have shown, again not 100% sure; these things are really hard to test, okay).

The Video

Info Dense
The content of the video is quite information dense, perhaps even to the point of information overload. There is visual gameplay, audio monologue, and visual pointers throughout. Whenever you need an extra couple of seconds to keep up, do pause the video, or use the left arrow key (with the video selected) to skip back a few seconds.

Video Subtitles
The video subtitles are correct. Watching with the subtitles on is also recommended due to poor voice microphone quality.

The Video of the Guide of the Strategy of the Achievement of the Tau Efficiency of the Last Stand of the Retribution of the Two of the War of the Dawn of the 40,000 of the Hammer of the War (hallelujahs)

Video Index
The video can be divided into the below sections. Each time measure (as progress through the video) presents the starting point of the indicated section. Unfortunately, they do not act as links that can set the video progress to the indicated time (as they do when watching on YouTube).

0:06	Introduction to the strategy, basic requirements
0:52	Team build, wargear setup
1:55	Other team builds, wargear setups
2:50	Strategy implementation, short version
3:07	Surviving to wave 16
3:49	Wave 9 Banshees indicate spawn
4:13	Wave 14 Tyranids, Raveners
4:35	Strategy implementation, jump stun
5:31	Strategy implementation, firepower management
5:56	Finishing
6:36	Credits

The Team Build

The image below shows the ideal wargear setup for the suggested strategy.






















In words;

Achievement player:

• Command Issue Plasma Rifle
  
• Networked Weapon Interface
  
• Armoured Battlesuit
  
• Coolant Injectors
  
• Targetting Cluster
  
• Anti-Armour Missile Pod
  
• No Drone

Support players:

• Flamer
  
• Networked Weapon Interface
  
• Armoured Battlesuit
  
• Coolant Injectors
  
• Ion Battery
  
• Energy Core
  
• No drone

A Note on Necrons

The video, and therfore, the majority of this guide, was created before the release of the Necron Overlord Last Stand character.

The Tesseract Labyrinth ability, at least in theory, provides a better stun -and so better opportunity for managed firepower and potential to down all three doppelgangers at the same time- than the Tau Heavy armour landing.

However, in practise, at least as far as I have seen, the Tau (Heavy) jump stun strategy works out better for a player attempting the achievement than the Tesseract strategy.

Still Optimising this Strategy!

This section is just to note any further points observed from more experience with the strategy.

In my attempts to help people get the achievement in January of 2017, I noticed something different to my memories of previous attempts: Tau were able to jet pack out of the Heavy stun. It would seem that something has changed; if a jump order is given while stunned, then the order queues and will execute at the earliest possible opportunity (this has always been this way), but now, if a character (including doppelgangers) is stunned by a Heavy Tau jet pack landing, and then the character queues a jet pack jump order, then is stunned again by another Heavy Tau landing, then the queued jump order will execute, throwing the stunned character out and away, landing to be stunned for the remainder of the stun time.

This is a problem because all the doppelgangers must stay together for the (Tau Jump Stun) strategy to work. I don't know what has changed (maybe I was just doing something wrong), but to solve the problem I am forced to recommend that all players attempting the achievement using this strategy bring two Tau to perform the Heavy jump stunning (as the queued jump out of stun problem did not appear for two Tau performing the Heavy jump stunning).

Statistics

This section is for statistics relating to the implementation of the guidance of the given strategy. These statistics were "living" (constantly updated), but are now stopped due to lack of reports.

(Old information: If you used the Tau (Heavy) jump stun strategy to get the Tau Efficiency achievement, then, for statistical reasons, please comment with an appropriate indication of such, along with any other appropriate information.)

Total number of attempts for the achievement using the strategy
I don't know, 20? (As of 31st December 2016) That sounds about right
47

Total number of players who got the achievement using the strategy
19

Of those, total number of players who got the achievement in their first attempt of the strategy
6

Average number of attempts for a player to get the achievement using the strategy
47 / 19 = 2.47368421053... (two and a half)

2018.03.01: It seems that the average attempts number is tending, rather irregularly, to 2 or 3. It occurs to me that this irregular tendency may be due to two opposing influencing factors. I hypothesise that 2 is the limit for the statistic of average number of attempts for a player to get the achievement using the strategy and having two highly experienced supporting Tau players. I hypothesise that 3 (or slightly higher) is the limit for the statistic of average number of attempts for a player to get the achievement using the strategy and without highly experienced supporting players. With these hypotheses, I should separate the average number of attempts for a player to get the achievement using the strategy statistic into the two separate cases, but I cannot be bothered (and there is always the concern of the unreported statistics, such as from YouTube viewers). Instead, I will assume the hypotheses to be correct and continue the living statistic as has so far been treated.

Accepted statistic for average number of attempts for a player to get the achievement using the strategy
2, if the player has two experienced supporting Tau players
3 or 4, if the player does not have two experienced supporting Tau players

See Also

(Shameless self advertising incoming)
My 10,000,000 score achievement guide!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=817207752

Use of the Comments

2018.07.11: I am no longer directly assisting random online people to get the Tau Efficiency achievement (I got things to do, you know). Please do not ask for support players in the comments to this guide. Go to the Discussions tab and ask for some people there instead. Maybe there is a group for it. This is a friendly community, your odds of finding some nice people are good.

Comments relevant to the contents of this guide are, as always, welcome.

[Nightbringer]

I will have to look for people to complete this achievement. Back when I was still playing this game, this achievement gave me no shortage of woes. I consider it such badly designed achievement which ticks every box of bad game design.

[ZaidusRecon]

I'm sure there were a bunch of holes in it (partially why I stopped counting), but at the time I figured something was better than nothing.

[Nightbringer]

Your statistic section was basically counting air. You have no statistic to gather. The only players who are going to report tries are ones who are going to complete it. A casual player or group which fails is unlikely to report it. This is excluding the reality that most players do not even engage in reporting such data. I watched, got the strategy and would had missed your statistics page all together.

[Tandy, Destroyer of Worlds]

If you know someone who has the controller, you can use that to your advantage. The player wanting the achievement can put down a marker drone and have the player who already has the achievement blow it up and the kills will go to the person who's drone blew up.

Source (anecdotal): that's how I got the achievement

[ZaidusRecon]

Done on first attempt ;)

[HOXY]

Would like some help to do this, if this is still active

[Cpt. MonkeyMarkiak [NL-CM-II]]

Thank you for the help ZaidusRecon! :D
I had it in 2 tries where 3 months of frustration had failed.

[ZaidusRecon]

Done and statistics updated ;)

[Cpt. MonkeyMarkiak [NL-CM-II]]

Anybody still wants to give this a try? I have been trying for a while now to get this achievement, but to no avail :s

[Retrolicious]

Thanks guys for the awesome help, for statistics we only needed 3 tries :D