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 Peregrine wrote:

 TapedTempest wrote:
Unless there is some huge event that heavily weakens them, Tyranids should eventually overcome every race overall.

An event like the Tau continuing their trend to become a grimdark Culture clone and overwhelming the Tyranids with sheer numbers of combat drones (each of them more powerful than a 40k battleship)? This is why the Tau win any of these long-game scenarios, they're the only faction with pragmatism in science/engineering and developing technology. They may not be able to conquer the whole galaxy now, but give them time...

I can't picture any Tau world surviving a tendril the size and like of which hit Baal. All they have ever face is very small tendrils with dozens/hundreds of hive ships. Never anything like the hundreds of thousands that layed waste to the whole cryptus system.

Now, I also think that the Tau having no psychic potential and the fact that psychics seem to draw the tyranids may result in the Tau ending up surviving the tyranid purge of the galaxy and inheriting the next broken remains. The Necrons WOULD be ignored as well except that the necrons won't sit back and just survive so they will egg the hive fleets on. But the Tau already avoid the orks if they can because it's not worth their time and resources. I could see them doing the same with the nids. Eventually and just turtling up for a few hundred years and hoping to go unnoticed until they can start to try to colonize the dead rocks the nids have left behind.

 Lance845 wrote:
I can't picture any Tau world surviving a tendril the size and like of which hit Baal. All they have ever face is very small tendrils with dozens/hundreds of hive ships. Never anything like the hundreds of thousands that layed waste to the whole cryptus system.

Again, not currently, but project their development out to a higher level and they will. And not just survive, effortlessly slaughter it. Hundreds of thousands of ships can't compete with billions of AI drone warships, each of them more powerful than a current-era Imperium battleship. Or with planetary shields that can laugh off exterminatus-scale weapons. Or with effectively infinite supplies of gun drones on the ground, each armed with "pulse rifles" comparable to titan guns.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I can't picture any Tau world surviving a tendril the size and like of which hit Baal. All they have ever face is very small tendrils with dozens/hundreds of hive ships. Never anything like the hundreds of thousands that layed waste to the whole cryptus system.

Again, not currently, but project their development out to a higher level and they will. And not just survive, effortlessly slaughter it. Hundreds of thousands of ships can't compete with billions of AI drone warships, each of them more powerful than a current-era Imperium battleship. Or with planetary shields that can laugh off exterminatus-scale weapons. Or with effectively infinite supplies of gun drones on the ground, each armed with "pulse rifles" comparable to titan guns.

They cannot make that stuff out of thin air. The Tau require resources like everyone else. To have the numbers of warships and drones to "outnumber" the nids would require a level of expansion they would never reach at this stage of 40k. They simply don't have the materials or production capabilities to get there.

I think Peregrine has a point. Unlike pretty much all other factions in the setting, the Tau strive to improve their technology. Given time, they may surpass their competitors, assuming that they won't get annihilated before that.

Then again, there are probably some limits to how far the tech can go. I think the Necrons and the Eldar at their height pretty much maxed the tech and no further progress is really possible.But the Tau could attain those levels.

If the Necrons are already at the max possible tech level though, is it really reasonable to assume the Tau will surpass them?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
If the Necrons are already at the max possible tech level though, is it really reasonable to assume the Tau will surpass them?

That was my second point. So probably not. They could match them though.

Anyone who says anything other than the Imperium is a dirty heretic.

Especially now that Guilliman is here to turn the boat around!

 Crimson wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
If the Necrons are already at the max possible tech level though, is it really reasonable to assume the Tau will surpass them?

That was my second point. So probably not. They could match them though.

Probably. Assuming they survive that long. I'm pretty sure that if the Necrons or Eldar detect a possible technological rival, they might actually do something for once instead of sleeping or writing angst-ridden poetry about how much they screwed up.


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 Crazyterran wrote:
Anyone who says anything other than the Imperium is a dirty heretic.

Especially now that Guilliman is here to turn the boat around!

Perhaps. But does the Imperium know how many licks it will take to reach the center of a white dwarf? Only the C'tan know, so they win hands down

Well, right now the imperium is shattered, only marginally kept together by Guilliman. I'd say Chaos has the upper hand in the galaxy.
That being said, Orks occupy the most worlds by a great margin and prior to the 13th black crusade Ghazgkull was about to unify them all, creating waaaaghs all over the galaxy. I'm really curious what GW makes out of this.

And then there's Tyranids of course. The fluff seems to be vague on how many of them are there, but it's implied they could rival Orks. I don't think we'll ever see the endgame of 40K, instead Tyranids will always be uncountable, yet every space marine kills a hive fleet single handedly and keeps them away.

Necrons actually don't seem that powerful to me since the retcon. They are fractured and insane, kind of like the imperium, but with robots.

Tau are irrelevant, Eldar are practically dead.

 Lance845 wrote:

They cannot make that stuff out of thin air. The Tau require resources like everyone else. To have the numbers of warships and drones to "outnumber" the nids would require a level of expansion they would never reach at this stage of 40k. They simply don't have the materials or production capabilities to get there.

The Tau homeworld has been space capable for probably 3000 years, and stripping nearby star systems for materials for almost as long. They use drones for construction, so they make forge worlds look slow by comparison. The Tau's biggest problem isn't materials or production, it's communication and ship speed. Hive Fleet Gorgon had to be repelled by basically what ships and warriors were close at hand in the outer Tau systems.

The Tau first and second sphere worlds probably have populations in the trillions, possibly the quadrillions. They've had several thousand years of space age development and they had to use sub-light, then near-light transit to expand, meaning population densities in the first systems will be huge. This isn't an issue if you're willing to devote time and effort into quality of life, and the Tau have technologies we currently cannot fathom (gravitic, inertial) that make space colonization trivial, and allow for massive infrastructure.

Basically, the Tau's relatively slow expansion due to lack of good FTL means they have an incredible concentration of military and industrial capacity, compared to the other races that are spread through the galaxy. Every Tau first and second sphere world should be a combination of hive, fortress and forge world, because they've had millennia to build them up. The Second Sphere had almost 2000 years to establish before the Damocles Crusade. The third sphere is relatively young (few hundred years), but drone construction and the outflow of billions of Tau to the new worlds means they'll industrialize very, very quickly.

The Startide Nexus could be very, very bad for the Tau if they expand faster than they can fortify. OTOH it should make reinforcing segments of their empire easier, so if they keep the expansion rate manageable, then they're in an even stronger position overall.

The Tau still have the problem that they have no idea how to deal with the Warp.

The Tau are nothing new, the galaxy has already seen a civilization like the Tau come and go. You know what civilization it was? it was humanity.

The Silent King said that he fears that, if Necrons let Tyranids feed upon the galaxy, not even a united Necron race would stand a chance agaisnt them.

Assuming the Silent King is the only guy in the galaxy that has actually saw the Tyranids in all of his glory and not only the first tendrils that entered the milky way, we can assume than a united Necron race is more powerfull than the Tyranids that will invade the Galaxy, unless those Tyranids feed upon the galaxy and grew stronger.

 Galas wrote:
The Silent King said that he fears that, if Necrons let Tyranids feed upon the galaxy, not even a united Necron race would stand a chance agaisnt them.

Szarekh's concern is/was that the Tyranids will kill everyone else, and the Necrons will be unable to find new living bodies (Codex: Necrons (5th ed.), pg.24 'The Return of the Silent King'), not specifically that the Necrons will be unable to defeat them.

 Lance845 wrote:
They cannot make that stuff out of thin air. The Tau require resources like everyone else. To have the numbers of warships and drones to "outnumber" the nids would require a level of expansion they would never reach at this stage of 40k. They simply don't have the materials or production capabilities to get there.

Not currently, but the building blocks are there. They have advanced AI, the next step is to use that AI to create self-replicating factory systems. From there it's a very small step to converting entire planetary masses of raw materials into combat drones.


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Tyran wrote:
The Tau still have the problem that they have no idea how to deal with the Warp.

The Tau are nothing new, the galaxy has already seen a civilization like the Tau come and go. You know what civilization it was? it was humanity.

How do you deal with the warp? Shoot the things that come out of it. Repeat until the problem is solved.

And there's a huge difference between the Tau and humanity: humans are vulnerable to Chaos corruption, the Tau aren't. As humanity became stronger it just made itself a more useful pawn for Chaos, creating its own defeat. The Tau, on the other hand, would not have to worry about that. There wouldn't be anything to slow them down or consume them in self-destructive corruption.

The issue with that approach is that they don't stop coming out. You need to kill Chaos which in turn opens up more problems.

 Peregrine wrote:

How do you deal with the warp? Shoot the things that come out of it. Repeat until the problem is solved.

Agreed, though the Tau are trying to mess with the warp all the same. Their warp-skimming technology is probably the best of both worlds; FTL with minimal warp risk. But we'll have to see what the Startide Nexus turns out to be. Can't be a webway portal unless they're using other xeno psykers to open them, could be reverse engineered Dolmen Gates.

Dolmen Gates seem like a downgrade for Tau travel to me.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Galas wrote:
The Silent King said that he fears that, if Necrons let Tyranids feed upon the galaxy, not even a united Necron race would stand a chance agaisnt them.

Szarekh's concern is/was that the Tyranids will kill everyone else, and the Necrons will be unable to find new living bodies (Codex: Necrons (5th ed.), pg.24 'The Return of the Silent King'), not specifically that the Necrons will be unable to defeat them.

He also mentions that that the Tyranids might feed enough that even the united might of the Necrons would be unable to prevail. Currently the Tyranids aren't a direct threat to the Necrons, but the incompetence of the mortal races may change that.

 Peregrine wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyran wrote:
The Tau still have the problem that they have no idea how to deal with the Warp.

The Tau are nothing new, the galaxy has already seen a civilization like the Tau come and go. You know what civilization it was? it was humanity.

How do you deal with the warp? Shoot the things that come out of it. Repeat until the problem is solved.

And there's a huge difference between the Tau and humanity: humans are vulnerable to Chaos corruption, the Tau aren't. As humanity became stronger it just made itself a more useful pawn for Chaos, creating its own defeat. The Tau, on the other hand, would not have to worry about that. There wouldn't be anything to slow them down or consume them in self-destructive corruption.

Their souls burn less bright and thus are less vulnerable than human ones, but they still feel the same emotions that feed Chaos, they are vulnerable to it just like any other sentient species, and they will discover it the bad way.

And artificial intelligence is also vulnerable to Chaos, there is an entire subfield of Chaos corruption that specializes in turning artificial intelligence against its masters.

In the end, In a war between the Tau and Necrons, the winner will be the one with better tech. However, seeing as how the Necrons are the Apex of physical (non-Warp) technology, to go beyond would require usage of the Warp; and result in either Ascension to the status of the old ones (thus making the war irrelevant to begin with as the Gods of Chaos fustercluck the new Smorgasbord of godlike souls into nonexistence) or simply expose them to the Warp without psychic protection (with even more gruesome results the the former). Assuming, of course, that NOTHING ELSE interrupts them in the tens of thousands of years required to reach that level (even for the Tau).

Oh, and the Tyranids are never expressly stated to have conquered other galaxies. we MIGHT just be the next door neighbors. They MIGHT be running from whatever is kicking their collective ass in the galaxy they came from (as in Half-Life).
The Tyranids are an X factor: Undefined, Unreliable, but POTENTIALLY Unstoppable.

At least, if I am correct in my lore. But who but GW really knows anyway?

 Squidsy22 wrote:
In the end, In a war between the Tau and Necrons, the winner will be the one with better tech. However, seeing as how the Necrons are the Apex of physical (non-Warp) technology, to go beyond would require usage of the Warp; and result in either Ascension to the status of the old ones (thus making the war irrelevant to begin with as the Gods of Chaos fustercluck the new Smorgasbord of godlike souls into nonexistence) or simply expose them to the Warp without psychic protection (with even more gruesome results the the former). Assuming, of course, that NOTHING ELSE interrupts them in the tens of thousands of years required to reach that level (even for the Tau).

Oh, and the Tyranids are never expressly stated to have conquered other galaxies. we MIGHT just be the next door neighbors. They MIGHT be running from whatever is kicking their collective ass in the galaxy they came from (as in Half-Life).
The Tyranids are an X factor: Undefined, Unreliable, but POTENTIALLY Unstoppable.

At least, if I am correct in my lore. But who but GW really knows anyway?

Yes they have, Tyranids having nomnomed other galaxies is an old statement.

 Squidsy22 wrote:
In the end, In a war between the Tau and Necrons, the winner will be the one with better tech. However, seeing as how the Necrons are the Apex of physical (non-Warp) technology, to go beyond would require usage of the Warp; and result in either Ascension to the status of the old ones (thus making the war irrelevant to begin with as the Gods of Chaos fustercluck the new Smorgasbord of godlike souls into nonexistence) or simply expose them to the Warp without psychic protection (with even more gruesome results the the former). Assuming, of course, that NOTHING ELSE interrupts them in the tens of thousands of years required to reach that level (even for the Tau).

Oh, and the Tyranids are never expressly stated to have conquered other galaxies. we MIGHT just be the next door neighbors. They MIGHT be running from whatever is kicking their collective ass in the galaxy they came from (as in Half-Life).
The Tyranids are an X factor: Undefined, Unreliable, but POTENTIALLY Unstoppable.

At least, if I am correct in my lore. But who but GW really knows anyway?

The Tyranids are for sure not running. They were having a post meal hibernation nap out in the void between galaxies when the pharos devise got their attention during the horus heresy. They woke up and started descending on our galaxy.

Also genestealers and other nid descended bioforms were scattered throughout the galaxy before the hive fleets arrived, implying they have been here and done this before.

Tyran wrote: Yes they have, Tyranids having nomnomed other galaxies is an old statement.

Lance845 wrote: The Tyranids are for sure not running. They were having a post meal hibernation nap out in the void between galaxies when the pharos devise got their attention during the horus heresy. They woke up and started descending on our galaxy. Also genestealers and other nid descended bioforms were scattered throughout the galaxy before the hive fleets arrived, implying they have been here and done this before.

Well then, I stand corrected! The question then, I suppose, becomes: Who can stop them?