Tau Piranha

[Mondkuchen]

Why is this thing so incredibly trash? It dies fast, does no damage to anything, and isn't even a better scout than some kroot hounds you find in the wild. It just feels like it has no use whatsoever, even when targeting the high armor targets its supposed to.

[GreenBeanN1]

Well I gave it a shield drone to spawn. Still not really fun. Maybe I remove the scout from the pathfinders and give it to the piranha. So they can work in pairs and probably they become some fun to use after that.

[zyrax]

i used this unit a fair amount, i found its movement useful when paired with its gun drone, though i never managed to encounter any krook hounds.

[dexgattaca]

Well, its useful for clearing the map and spawns drones more frequently. Its a decent scout for pushing out past your immediate territory. Its cheap and fast to produce.

[Noodlesocks]

I haven't found any particular use for it. I usually don't even bother researching the vehicle building until hammerheads because of it.

[TemplarGR]

It is extremely cheap. It is not meant to be a reliable unit. It definitely dies easily but has really good movement capabilities so it can be an excellent scout early game. Other than that, the only 2 purposes it could have are cheap drone spam and early anti armor.

Tau have really poor anti-armor capabilities until you get to their first large battlesuit, the Ghostkeel, or their tank, the Hammerhead. Well, unless you are feeling adventurous and create some Stealth Suit infantry, though i avoid them, just too squishy for my tastes. So, in a pinch, the Piranhas can be spammed to kill some armored targets. They are cheap enough.

[Mondkuchen]

The problem I have is that I haven't had any success with them in the anti-armor role, though maybe I should be using swarms of them instead of just a couple.

[TemplarGR]

Originally posted by Mondkuchen:

The problem I have is that I haven't had any success with them in the anti-armor role, though maybe I should be using swarms of them instead of just a couple.

Well, they are a very cheap tier 1 scout unit, what did you expect?

First, if you want to use them as anti-armor, you do need to use enough of them.

Second, you need to attack at 1 range, not 2. Many units have traits that make them lose half their attack power if they use their full range, and get more power at 1 range. For example Tactical Space Marines, they could attack at 2 range but do double the number of attacks at 1 range... Melta weapons are similar, they get more damage penetration at half the range, so you need to stick the Piranhas close to the armored unit for best effects. This definitely means that your Piranhas will become vulnerable, so you should ideally eliminate the threat before it can react.

All in all, unless you really really need early anti-armor, Piranhas should be best used as scouts. I typically don't bother getting the vehicles at all when playing Tau (i only build 1 vehicle building for Utopia), since troop transports aren't important for infantry battlesuits and their tanks aren't up to par to their Giant Battlesuits.

[Wiresky]

The 5 turn drone spam is good enough for the cost

[~HaY~]

They are pretty handy once you gain access to drones and their 2x seeker missiles.

[adozu]

just use them as a cheap support "caster". 5 turn drone CD and seeker missiles is plenty for the price. In fact large amount of piranhas can summon extremely problematic amount of drones.

[Mondkuchen]

Well what I have gathered here is that I was focusing too much on the unit itself rather than using it as a mobile drone platform. Will be more mindful of that next time I play Tau.

[TemplarGR]

Yeah. Most of the time people on these forums complain or find something too weak, is because they haven't attempted to actually understand it and exploit it. This can happen in any game in my long strategy game experience. Every time i find something weak, i attempt to find a use for it to see where it could fit. Yes sometimes game devs/designers made an error but most of the times it was just inexperience on my part and lack of imagination.

If it happens again to you, just visit the compedium and try to study everything about the unit in question. When it comes out (tier), how expensive it is, what alternatives do you have, what kind of things it can do.... Most of the time you will figure it out.

[~HaY~]

On the topic of Piranha - I don't fully understand the Melta trait.

I was testing it aginst a SM Predator Tank (8 Armour). Regardless of 2 tiles away or 1 tile away, the damage calculation is giving me 3.0

I thought Melta trait gives higher armour penetration for the fusion blaster at half range.

Am i not understanding the calculations properly?

[Jey]

The fusion blaster already has 8 AP, which fully pierces the predator armour.
Having 8 or 10 AP doesn't change anything against 8 armour. test it against an Imperial bastion or a Captain to see a small increase in damage.