Tau suit nomenclature system

[Magos Takatus]

15 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I just love that these are XV26 Stealth Suits, while the old kit are XV25 - and were an upgrade to the ancient XV15, which was a completely different design. This here seems like a logical evolution of the XV25, so the smaller step in series numbering makes sense, too.

I think the way that T'au designate their battlesuits is that the first number is the weight class, so it's not just that the leap from XV-15 to XV-25 was bigger than XV-25 to XV-26, but one advanced into a heavier suit category. Presumably the 26's do improve a lot on the 25's but it's not quite as dramatically because they are both the same weight class, I don't know the whole categorization system but I remember reading a bit about it and it was quite interesting.

 

=][= Admin Note =][=

 

Note that this discussion was created by culling a number of replies in the topic about the upcoming expansion for the Kill Team (2024) game in NRBA. These posts were tangential, taking that discussion off topic. It's a discussion worth having, though, so here we are.

Edited October 4 by Brother Tyler
Admin note added

[chapter master 454]

Reminder: the tau don't designate their suits with numbers. That is the Imperium that does that, XV stands for Xenos Vehicle and the numbers relate to the imperiums sighting and classification of these suits. Tau call them different things, notably I believe crisis suits are called something like "mantle of heroes" or something in their language.

So Crisis suit and such is just what the Imperium short hands them as. However this has likely fallen on the wayside by GW who likely also forgot what XV meant...surprised we don't have an VWXYZ-Tsunami Warsuit by now. The ABC-Undertow Stealth Striker.

 

However these new stealth suits do have an odd side effect: anyone notice stealth suits just up and vanished from the GW store?

Please GW...don't kill tau by getting rid of the only good marker unit we have...let us keep the current style of squad and just add these as a unique variant of the squad.

[Magos Takatus]

24 minutes ago, chapter master 454 said:

Reminder: the tau don't designate their suits with numbers. That is the Imperium that does that, XV stands for Xenos Vehicle and the numbers relate to the imperiums sighting and classification of these suits. Tau call them different things, notably I believe crisis suits are called something like "mantle of heroes" or something in their language.

So Crisis suit and such is just what the Imperium short hands them as. However this has likely fallen on the wayside by GW who likely also forgot what XV meant...surprised we don't have an VWXYZ-Tsunami Warsuit by now. The ABC-Undertow Stealth Striker.

 

However these new stealth suits do have an odd side effect: anyone notice stealth suits just up and vanished from the GW store?

Please GW...don't kill tau by getting rid of the only good marker unit we have...let us keep the current style of squad and just add these as a unique variant of the squad.

Wow, this is really interesting. Can you remember where this came from? I've got some of the older codices, it sounds like I need a lore refresher course. 

[Crimson Longinus]

57 minutes ago, chapter master 454 said:

Reminder: the tau don't designate their suits with numbers. That is the Imperium that does that, XV stands for Xenos Vehicle and the numbers relate to the imperiums sighting and classification of these suits. 

 

This seems rather questionable as Tau stuff is the only things with such designations. Why are Eldar and Ork vehicles not XV-# too if this is how it works?

[darkhorse0607]

41 minutes ago, Crimson Longinus said:

 

This seems rather questionable as Tau stuff is the only things with such designations. Why are Eldar and Ork vehicles not XV-# too if this is how it works?

It's also worth noting that Tau characters in their own POVs in their own novels(ie Elemental Council most recently), refer to the battlesuits by to their XV designations. 

 

In the same book they also christen an experimental suit one of the characters made with an XV number

Edited October 4 by darkhorse0607

[sitnam]

1 hour ago, chapter master 454 said:

Reminder: the tau don't designate their suits with numbers. That is the Imperium that does that, XV stands for Xenos Vehicle and the numbers relate to the imperiums sighting and classification of these suits.

 

I don't think this is true at all. Scanning through Lexicanum it seems that these are T'au designations, and the 6th edition codex I scanned through backs this up. It even references older fossil fueled "T-series" and the fission powered "V-series",  the former of which was introduced in M39, well before forst contact with the Imperium

[Indy Techwisp]

2 hours ago, chapter master 454 said:

Reminder: the tau don't designate their suits with numbers. That is the Imperium that does that, XV stands for Xenos Vehicle and the numbers relate to the imperiums sighting and classification of these suits. Tau call them different things, notably I believe crisis suits are called something like "mantle of heroes" or something in their language.

So Crisis suit and such is just what the Imperium short hands them as. However this has likely fallen on the wayside by GW who likely also forgot what XV meant...surprised we don't have an VWXYZ-Tsunami Warsuit by now. The ABC-Undertow Stealth Striker.

 

This isn't true.
The XV- designation is what the T'au themselves use.

The 1st number is the Mass class and the Second is it's design iteration.

So the XV104 Riptide is a Mass class 10 Battlesuit that's in the last stages of field testing and the XV26 is a Mass class 2 Battlesuit on it's 6th design iteration.

The meanings for the Designations were explained in White Dwarf Issue 91 from 2015.

The "Mantle of Heroes" you mention is just the Transliteration for "Her'ex'vre" which is the T'au Lexicon word for "Battlesuit".

[chapter master 454]

9 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

This isn't true.
The XV- designation is what the T'au themselves use.

The 1st number is the Mass class and the Second is it's design iteration.

So the XV104 Riptide is a Mass class 10 Battlesuit that's in the last stages of field testing and the XV26 is a Mass class 2 Battlesuit on it's 6th design iteration.

The meanings for the Designations were explained in White Dwarf Issue 91 from 2015.

The "Mantle of Heroes" you mention is just the Transliteration for "Her'ex'vre" which is the T'au Lexicon word for "Battlesuit".

 

And looking at it...there is some confliction here and likely I got something mixed in here however XV is certainly not Tau, they would refer to them as Her'ex'vre which seems in some lore to be the reason for the XV naming as that is what imperials go by. So my original statement stands wrong as I said number doesn't matter but it does but they don't call them XV (Unless you consider their calling it Her'ex'vre counts as that).

So fair play but if my number "aktully" is wrong, then my look at it then throws it back there too.

We'll call it all square there I think and agree the new suits look cool yea?

[Tawnis]

On 10/3/2025 at 7:23 PM, Indy Techwisp said:

 

This isn't true.
The XV- designation is what the T'au themselves use.

The 1st number is the Mass class and the Second is it's design iteration.

So the XV104 Riptide is a Mass class 10 Battlesuit that's in the last stages of field testing and the XV26 is a Mass class 2 Battlesuit on it's 6th design iteration.

The meanings for the Designations were explained in White Dwarf Issue 91 from 2015.

The "Mantle of Heroes" you mention is just the Transliteration for "Her'ex'vre" which is the T'au Lexicon word for "Battlesuit".

There are a couple logical inconsistencies with that explanation though (not to say it's wrong, GW, is not always their lore consistency). The old Stealth suits were XV15's, so when the new upscaled ones came out, shouldn't they have been XV20's or XV21's based on your explanation for this? Also, based on your explanation, every suit of the same size and design iteration would be called the exact same thing despite being wildly different suits. The R'varna (XV107) and Y'varha (XV109) suits are not further iterations of the Riptide (XV104) so far as I'm aware. 

 

What I thought the second number was for was it's role designation. 5 being sheath. So an XV15 was a Mass 1 Stealth suit, the current XV25's are a Mass 2 Stealth suit, which is why the Ghostkeels are XV95's they are a mass 9 stealth suit. However, that's not entirely accurate either, as the XV22 that Shadowsun uses is also a stealth suit, so that doesn't fit with this explanation, however, it doesn't fit with yours either since it's a later iteration on the design than the XV25 is, so it should be XV26 following your logic. However, that's not a air tight explanation either, as the Enfrocer battlesuit is the XV85, and it's not a stealth suit.

That being said, the size isn't always terribly consistent either. The XV9 Hazzard suit isn't anywhere near as big as a Ghostkeel and is a lot closer to the XV8 Crisis Suit. Also, would that mean that they are both still on their first iteration since they don't have a second number? From what I understood, single number suits were designed to be all purpose. 

Variations of the design seem like they could be the key to figuring this out. Not that one is a further iteration of the other, but that they serve a different purpose. I'm thinking of this because the Enforcer is listed as the XV85 and the Coldstar as an XV86. This is also supported by the Broadside being the XV88, having a different purpose, but seeing action long before the Enforecers and Coldstars did. In addition, multiple iterations of the broadside have been classified as XV88, both the old shoulder mounted version, and the current single rifle version (unless that was a ret-con that I'm unaware of...) 

 

So, after all this, it's obvious that (the FW Hazzard suit aside) the first number is clearly the size, that is well known (though there doesn't seem that much of a size gap between 2-8, at least not enough for 5 additional size clasifications, which is odd).

 

As for the others, I don't think it's exactly a design iteration because they don't all come out sequentially, and they do somewhat seem tied to function, but not completely. My best guess lore wise is that they were at one point sequential, but certain versions were dropped for one reason or another, then revisited later, which is why the XV22 came out canonically long after the XV25, it was conceptualized first (in the lore) but wasn't used in service until much later after the design was further refined. 

 

Outside of Lore, it's likely that the naming convention that they are using came about after they'd already made a bunch that sounded cool...

Edited October 7 by Tawnis