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2021/11/21 00:49:16
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
On a different not, I've read that Tyranids go out of their way to avoid the outsider c'tan. Don't know if this is oldcron or newcron but it might signify that Tyranids are in fact a total joke to C'tans? And necrons, being entities that killed C'tans, would be immeasurably more powerful than the Tyranids at their peak?
They don't go out of their way to avoid the Outsider. They tend to steer clear of any sterile Necron worlds as well. It is the same reason that they steer clear of Chaos infested worlds as well (with Kronos being the notable exception as dealing with the warp seems to be its specialization). There is little to gain for the Tyranids even in victory, as Necrons and daemons do not yield biomass and the Tyranids would expend energy and biomass in battle. It is a very straightforward cost-benefit analysis. Why fight battles with no reward when there are so many other softer richer targets to hit?
2021/11/21 01:10:09
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
We have actual codex quotes, how is it fan made up? It's presented as mere speculation, but so is any other theory. I don't see how it's been debunked either. The only thing mentioned in this thread is the Pharos device drawing them to our galaxy (ugh), but that doesn't tell us why they were out there in the first place.
I don't want this to be true any more than you appear to do, don't get me wrong here
2021/11/21 09:11:59
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Army of full power necrons v.s. existing hive fleets? Necron victory no contest. Necrons win despite Tyranids being "planet killers" themselves.
Tyranids need a blackstone fortress equivalent to not be a total joke to necrons at their peak.
But why?
Destroying a planet is just totally against their general behaviour. Heck on the planetary scale they have built a planet sized structure for purposes we don't yet know (save projecting an insanely huge Shadow in the Warp).
It's just a whole line of thinking that Tyranids don't use. Even many of their projectile weapons are more organic based rather than energy based. They are more likely to create a planet eating super-grub worm that burrows in, sucks out the core and then grows to a huge hive-ship size and cracks the mantel like an egg shell. Their whole mental and physical and behavioural structure is just totally different to the Necrons.
Heck their evolutionary style of warfare and reactive response to new situations means that they generally have tendrils of fleets. Instead of one big super-fleet all in one place they are strung out; one ship encounters an issue and either wins or dies. The genetics from that are then used to enhance other fleets. Yes this means if they have battles with planet killing Necrons who use those weapons, the Tyranids will lose early encounters. However their ability to evolve and react would mean that every single time they lost, they would in fact gain overall. In the end they'd likely develop countermeasures that would allow them to deflect/destroy the Necrons.
So long as Tyranids have near limitless fleets this tactic works.
Because the Blackstone Fortress wipes out an entire SYSTEM in a single shot and there's not a chance in hell that the Tyranids can cross an entire system before the Blackstone Fortress can fire again. The only way Tyranids beat this is if they get a Blackstone Fortress equivalent of their own and takes it out from afar. Or have some ultra strong shadow in the warp that disperses the attack like the geller field shield Cadia used. But this will fail against Necron's weaponry.
I mean, BFGA2 says Tyranid Hive Ships can teleport a short distance but people say video game mechanics don't exist outside the video game so.... I mean, if Tyranids can teleport long distances and close the distance of super weapons then maybe they don't need super weapons of their own. But as it stands they will get utterly pwned by a single Blackstone Fortress let alone an armada of them fully organized and at peak power.
Overread wrote: So long as Tyranids have near limitless fleets this tactic works.
No it doesn't. 1 Blackstone Fortress can take out all known Hive Fleets by itself.
Just check out how the Hive Fleets fought other super weapons.
1. Get utterly pwned by a warp drive.
2. Get utterly pwned by a Magnovitrium
3. Reverse direction of an orbital refinery rigged to blow up and send it back to the Imperium.
Blackstone Fortress is beyond the scope of Magnovitrium.
2021/11/21 10:49:37
Subject: Re:Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
An individual Blackstone has BFG stats. It is not all powerful (8 lance shots at 90cm, ignoring void shields). That's double the firepower of a Desolator battleship but not a fleet in itself. In fact, Tyranids would do pretty well against it as its shots are less suited against swarms and more for higher value single targets. Also we know that they can be drained of power at least temporarily if their combined shot is interrupted which is exactly what happened in the Gothic War. For the price of a single battlecruiser the Imperium disabled 3 Blackstones.
Even in terms of background, the combined shot of 3 Blackstones that hit the Tarantis system’s star took a full month before it took effect to make the star explode. That is a lot of time to react and do something
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/11/21 11:45:10
2021/11/21 15:26:26
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
The thing is the Tyranids can just go around the Blackstone Fortress. Why attack it when you can just skirt around it. Or attack it from multiple fronts at once.
Overread wrote: The thing is the Tyranids can just go around the Blackstone Fortress. Why attack it when you can just skirt around it. Or attack it from multiple fronts at once.
Exactly. If they have to avoid it and never engage it that means they are a total joke to that weapon which means they are a total joke to the factions who have that scale of a weapon at their peak which is what this topic is discussing.
I doubt multiple fronts work on blackstone fortress because that thing fires pretty quickly for a system wiper.
2021/11/21 15:39:54
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Overread wrote: The thing is the Tyranids can just go around the Blackstone Fortress. Why attack it when you can just skirt around it. Or attack it from multiple fronts at once.
Exactly. If they have to avoid it and never engage it that means they are a total joke to that weapon which means they are a total joke to the factions who have that scale of a weapon at their peak which is what this topic is discussing.
I doubt multiple fronts work on blackstone fortress because that thing fires pretty quickly for a system wiper.
The Nazi war machine wasn't a joke but it didn't go face to face with the Maginot Line, they went around it. Being powerful in war doesn't mean you have to fight face to face with everything, if you can avoid a super-powered warship that's sitting in a system and instead attack dozens of others its not able to protect (aren't there only 5 or so Blackstone Fortresses over the whole Galaxy?); then go for those other systems. You don't have to face it head-on with an equivalent firepower. Tyranids might swarm it so that its few, but powerful, guns have too many targets; or even just wait for Genestealers and Cultists to infiltrate it and weaken it from the inside out. It might be a powerful gun, but its pretty useless if its crew are all dead; or better cultists who then turn the Fortress upon enemies of the Tyranids.
Abbadon literally did that during one of the Black Crusades. Instead of attacking the planet with hundreds of starforts, gun batteries, naval squadrons and defence regiments, he took his forces to the worlds that supplied the food, weapons, ammo and manpower to those things and destroyed them instead. The fortified system then starved and had no replacement soldiers/crew and was easy pickings for even basic pirate raiders let alone the Black Legion.
2021/11/21 20:36:58
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Overread wrote: The Nazi war machine wasn't a joke but it didn't go face to face with the Maginot Line, they went around it. Being powerful in war doesn't mean you have to fight face to face with everything, if you can avoid a super-powered warship that's sitting in a system and instead attack dozens of others its not able to protect (aren't there only 5 or so Blackstone Fortresses over the whole Galaxy?); then go for those other systems. You don't have to face it head-on with an equivalent firepower. Tyranids might swarm it so that its few, but powerful, guns have too many targets; or even just wait for Genestealers and Cultists to infiltrate it and weaken it from the inside out. It might be a powerful gun, but its pretty useless if its crew are all dead; or better cultists who then turn the Fortress upon enemies of the Tyranids.
There's a difference between being stupid and prideful and being efficient. There was no need to topple the maginot line to establish nazi superiority so they did the smart thing which was go around it. And yes Tyranids do just that. They don't accept 1v1 duels from avatars of kahines. They just kill it with a horde of carnifexes.
And there's a difference between winning via guerilla warfare and being unable to do jack. American Army during the revolution opted for Guerilla warfare instead of direct conflicts because that resulted in the most victories against the british's slow cumbersome and large army. And yes, Tyranids employ guerilla tactics whenever it is more efficient than fighting head on and doesn't back down from a head on fight when it's more efficient.
But right now we're talking about Nukes v.s. no nukes. The nation without nukes stand absolutely no ****ing chance against the nation with nukes. You're right now saying superior numbers is gonna beat a nation that can mass produce nuclear weapons without producing any of their own. And that's just wrong.
The race that can produce and organize multiple blackstone fortress equivalents are gonna mow the Tyranids down indefinitely unless the Tyranids can produce equivalents of their own because mass numbers don't do jack **** against super weapons.
If it's a contest between thermonuclear bombs and many, many nuclear bombs, yes the more numerous nuclear bombs win. But if it's a contest between thermonuclear bombs and many, many battleships and soldiers, the thermonuclear bombs will win. You need to be at least in the same league for your weaker yet more numerous swarm strategy to be a contestant at all.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2021/11/21 21:46:30
2021/11/21 22:47:22
Subject: Re:Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Blackstone Fortresses don’t “mow” things down. Stop making up hyperbolic statements.
That is not evidence. What a Blackstone is like is laid out in BFG. Its battlefield capabilities are similar to a battleship and it has critical weaknesses to attack craft and torpedoes due to lacking point defense turrets. Combined Blackstone shots are also described in the background as time consuming both to charge up and in the final effect (1 month to explode a star after it gets hit). This shot is also shown to be vulnerable to be dissipated by a sacrificial ship and this drains the Blackstones to the point of uselessness for a significant amount of time that is long enough for the Imperium to board them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/21 22:48:14
2021/11/21 23:04:45
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
But right now we're talking about Nukes v.s. no nukes. The nation without nukes stand absolutely no ****ing chance against the nation with nukes. You're right now saying superior numbers is gonna beat a nation that can mass produce nuclear weapons without producing any of their own. And that's just wrong.
You're making a useless comparison. Nukes are useful against populations and industry. When it comes to tyranids... good luck finding either.
I don't think you understand the scale of galactic warfare, and you've got a lot of strange assumptions about the fluff AND realism leading you to grand declarations that mean nothing.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/21 23:05:29
Efficiency is the highest virtue.
2021/11/21 23:44:39
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Voss wrote: You're making a useless comparison. Nukes are useful against populations and industry. When it comes to tyranids... good luck finding either.
I don't think you understand the scale of galactic warfare, and you've got a lot of strange assumptions about the fluff AND realism leading you to grand declarations that mean nothing.
The guy brought in ww2 as an analogy. I was abiding by that. And now you're slamming me for abiding by his analogy?
Blackstone fortress wipes entire systems in a single firing. It fires pretty rapidly for a weapon that does that. Eldar at its peak had multiple blackstone fortress firing at full capacity and fully organized. And Tyranids have been royally ****ed by super weapons over and over and the story ends there with the Tyranids defeat.
Just explain to me how exactly the Tyranids would combat multiple blackstone fortress firing in tandem, or hell how they would even take out a single blackstone fortress firing at full capacity, without inventing system killers of their own.
This entire discussion thread has been
"They have numbers so they beat system wipers by sheer numbers"
"No, they can't. They're slow so they can't close the distance before the system wiper can fire again"
*while later*
"WW2 Nazis dodged maginot line so tyranids still win without system wipers of their own"
"Better analogy is nukes vs no nukes. An army of millions strong will still die to a single nuclear bombing run."
"NO! Nukes only work on industry! And you are a fool for using ww2 analogy!"
wtf.
You want to keep it in lore? Sure. Tell me how current Tyranids can defeat a single blackstone fortress. And no, genestealer infiltration does not work because genestealers do not work on Eldars unless they intentionally submit themselves.
2021/11/21 23:51:29
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Voss wrote: You're making a useless comparison. Nukes are useful against populations and industry. When it comes to tyranids... good luck finding either.
I don't think you understand the scale of galactic warfare, and you've got a lot of strange assumptions about the fluff AND realism leading you to grand declarations that mean nothing.
The guy brought in ww2 as an analogy. I was abiding by that. And now you're slamming me for abiding by his analogy?
Blackstone fortress wipes entire systems in a single firing. It fires pretty rapidly for a weapon that does that. Eldar at its peak had multiple blackstone fortress firing at full capacity and fully organized. And Tyranids have been royally ****ed by super weapons over and over and the story ends there with the Tyranids defeat.
Just explain to me how exactly the Tyranids would combat multiple blackstone fortress firing in tandem, or hell how they would even take out a single blackstone fortress firing at full capacity, without inventing system killers of their own.
This entire discussion thread has been
"They have numbers so they beat system wipers by sheer numbers"
"No, they can't. They're slow so they can't close the distance before the system wiper can fire again"
*while later*
"WW2 Nazis dodged maginot line so tyranids still win without system wipers of their own"
"Better analogy is nukes vs no nukes. An army of millions strong will still die to a single nuclear bombing run."
"NO! Nukes only work on industry! And you are a fool for using ww2 analogy!"
wtf.
You want to keep it in lore? Sure. Tell me how current Tyranids can defeat a single blackstone fortress. And no, genestealer infiltration does not work because genestealers do not work on Eldars unless they intentionally submit themselves.
By destroying it in space combat which is a fairly easy task. Read my posts where this has been stated over and over again: Blackstones have BFG stats. They are straightforward to take out on their own.
Blackstones are not rapid firing for their combined shot as shown by BFG background. Having a shot that takes a month to take effect is of no use on a battlefield timescale despite its uses at a strategic level. Having a shot that can be dissipated by a single sacrificial ship of the Imperium shows how the Tyranids could do it too.
Quite simply you are just making stuff up about the Blackstones now and ignoring the actual GW provided evidence as to their abilities and vulnerabilities. Go read some BFG background on Blackstone Fortresses.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/21 23:53:12
2021/11/21 23:51:55
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Well in WW2 no nuclear weapons were used on military targets - they were used on civilian and urban targets. It's even hotly debated if they were even needed at all as the Japanese forces were already in a state of general disarray/retreat at the time.
They also highlight the critical element you keep overlooking - that destroying whole systems/using nuclear weapons harms the user as much as the attacker. You can't "Win" against the Tyranids by blowing up whole systems. You can stall them, distract them, nudge them to take a different path; but you can't win unless you can also take out key elements of their forces which, hither too, we don't know about because they come from the blackness of deep space.
So you're constantly sacrificing systems to them - be that if you blow them up or if they devour them. Only with the former there's zero chance of using that system again - in theory a devoured system "could" be used again with the right investment or just leaving it alone for millennia.
And a weapon designed to blow up worlds can't just fire that in every angle during an attack on repeat.
Finally you also overlook that you can't blow everything up - just like you can't use nuclear weapons on everything. If the enemy comes at you from multiple angles or attacks areas you don't have your mega-fortress in how do you combat them?
We aren't saying that super-mega weapons aren't powerful, just that they aren't a be-all-end-all solution to the problem that is Tyranids.
From what I read the Blackstone Fortress firing into the void is just as devastating as it firing at a celestial object.
Nope. Just nope. You clearly have not read much about Blackstones then. 8 lance shots can on average cripple a cruiser only. Hardly devastating on the star system level.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/22 00:25:51
2021/11/22 00:27:45
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Space is big, you know. It's 238,900 miles from the Earth to the Moon.
The Earth is a tad under 8,000 miles in diameter.
You can fit about 30 Earths in between the Earth and the Moon.
A Blackstone Fortress, if I gather from this thread correctly, is aimed usually at stars. Those have very predictable movements. They're also BIG targets. Our sun is 865,370 miles in diameter. It's 338,102,469,632,763,460 cubic miles in volume. The Earth is 259,875,159,532 cubic miles in volume. Or, put another way, you can fit over 1,000,000 Earths in the sun.
A Hive Ship is, at its largest, maybe the size of Earth. Probably much smaller. So something that can be aimed at a star would also need to be able to be aimed at something a literal million times smaller than its intended target. And there's a lot of space to miss.
Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne!
2021/11/22 00:31:31
Subject: Re:Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
Why don’t people go read the BFG rule book which explicitly lays out stats for a Blackstone and describes the feats they did in the Gothic War? Seriously, it seems some people are just flailing and making things up now without reference to the source material.
I don't understand how this isn't getting through. Leviathan crossed above and bellow the galactic disk and nearly cut the galaxy in half.
Thats just one hive fleet. The nids have the collected biomass of entire galaxies at their disposal. And every planet consumed is another planets biomass added.
Whatever anyone else can do at their peak, total galactic annihilation wasn't it. Let alone multiple galactic annihilations. Necrons are closest and the only other galactic scale threat in 40k. But nids are the inevitable heat death of 40k.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/11/22 05:53:25
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
2021/11/22 05:57:31
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
You can't argue with Roboemperor because they are convinced that they are 100% right and you're 100% wrong regardless of any citations or arguments you make. It's taken 5 pages of people saying the exact same thing and only now have they decide they might have been wrong about one of their statements despite the same conclusion being applicable to all of them.
You'd have an easier time knocking down a wall with your skull.
I don't understand how this isn't getting through. Leviathan crossed above and bellow the galactic disk and nearly cut the galaxy in half.
Thats just one hive fleet. The nids have the collected biomass of entire galaxies at their disposal. And every planet consumed is another planets biomass added.
Whatever anyone else can do at their peak, total galactic annihilation wasn't it. Let alone multiple galactic annihilations. Necrons are closest and the only other galactic scale threat in 40k. But nids are the inevitable heat death of 40k.
Logic.
4% of matter in the galaxy are stars. 12% of matter in the galaxy is gas. 84% of matter in the galaxy is dark matter. 0% is planets. Of those 0%, 0% has life on it. Of those 0%, about 1% of the planet is eaten by tyranids.
Spoiler:
That is an absolute pathetic amount of matter "consumed" by Tyranids.
And perhaps the most ubiquitous and dangerous of the weapons of this terrible war were the omniphages, swarms of intelligent, microscopic nano-machines that could consume everything across the surface of a world in only solar hours.
Not only does it take Tyranids longer than mere solar hours to consume the surface of a planet, but omniphages, being mechanical, can most definitely utilize a greater percentage of mass in the galaxy.
In addition Sun snuffers ate suns. So Men of Iron not only did what Tyranids did better and faster, they also were able to utilize an insane more amount of matter in the galaxy. 4%/0 = infinite. Men of Iron utilize infinite more matter than Tyranids.
And Imperium of Man took them out using black hole cannons and other epic gak. Imperium of Man at their peak is when they fully enslaved and fully controlled the Men of Iron.
I just don't see it. What do Tyranids do better than Men of Iron and Imperium of Man? And then there's the Emperor and his Primarchs on top of all this.
Current Imperium of Man is a total joke to pre-age-of-strife Imperium of Man. And from what I'm reading and seeing, Tyranids are also a total joke to pre-age-of-strife imperium of man.
The only way this is not true is if Tyranids are able to nom stars and shoot blackholes or something similar in scale. Which could be the case. But anyone saying that the current hive fleets x 1,000,000 with no new technology/bioforms is gonna totally take out Imperium of Man at his height, or Necrons at their height, is completely wrong. Just like Tyranids nom biomass and make soldiers, the Omniphages will nom Tyranids and make soldiers too.
I mean Tyranids at their finest lose to orks. And they only won Octarius because Ghazzy left and Orks fought themselves rather than the Tyranids. I highly doubt the Octarius Tyranids could beat The Beast let alone Krorks.
Organic mater isn't just life. It's oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, ect ect. You know comets? They eat them. A lot of lifeless rocks still have water, and carbon, and useful minerals. They suck in passing nebula that can span light years, even MILLIONS of light years across. When a hive fleet finishes killing off the life on a planet and they suck clean the digestion pools and reabsorb the capillary towers they then devour the oceans and atmosphere until every molecule of useful mater has been strip mined from the planet. Now, they are DRAWN to planets with life. But they EAT everything they find along the way.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/11/22 11:47:50
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
2021/11/22 11:50:36
Subject: Are the Tyranids a total joke to all the factions at their peak?
It's also clear that they don't just feed, there is intelligence behind the feeding patterns. Hence why they go for prime targets like Chapter Homeworlds; or how some fleets pre-digest worlds for others so that fleets who have less to feed on at worlds (eg those fighting demons) can recover lost reserves.
Tyranids might be slower at processing some minerals and rocks and other objects/materials; however they are very fast with biomatter on worlds. Plus each world they take denies it to their enemies. It's a tactical move.
Whilst other races might use a scorched earth tactic to deny worlds to Tyranids, but in turn weaken their own hold. Tyranids use a devouring tactic to deny worlds to their enemies, but also directly replenish their own resources.
It's a landslide/avalanche effect in that each world lost potentially makes the hive fleet stronger.
Overread wrote: It's also clear that they don't just feed, there is intelligence behind the feeding patterns. Hence why they go for prime targets like Chapter Homeworlds; or how some fleets pre-digest worlds for others so that fleets who have less to feed on at worlds (eg those fighting demons) can recover lost reserves.
Tyranids might be slower at processing some minerals and rocks and other objects/materials; however they are very fast with biomatter on worlds. Plus each world they take denies it to their enemies. It's a tactical move.
Whilst other races might use a scorched earth tactic to deny worlds to Tyranids, but in turn weaken their own hold. Tyranids use a devouring tactic to deny worlds to their enemies, but also directly replenish their own resources. It's a landslide/avalanche effect in that each world lost potentially makes the hive fleet stronger.
It's not a potential. It's always a net gain. They regain everything they deployed, cannibalize any hive ships that were lost carcasses, birth new hive ships, and gain everything on the rock they found. The BA won't recover what they lost in Baal. Planets have become dead rocks. Entire chapters just don't exist anymore. Veterans and their ancient wargear were shredded to pieces and rendered into uselessness.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/22 12:05:31
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
