Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

vorpalhit wrote:Evil & Stupid,

Neutral Evil on the dnd scale as they just consume they do what they want, when they want as long as they can get away with it.

Stupid as they consume EVERYTHING on a planet, yes a lion will kill and eat a gazelle, but they will not eat a whole herd because they can, they will leave the majority of the herd so the is somthing to eat next week. nids just eat everything then move to the next area, consume and repeat. They don't leave anything behind.
Example the wraith in sg atlantis kiill hundred and thousands of humans, but, leave enough to repopulate for the next time they pass the planet. Evil but smart.

Well, a Lion is the top of the food chain. Sure there's another gazelle to eat next week, but they just have to catch it.

If Tyranids left a planet only partly consumed, and came back decades or centuries later to eat again, it would be shored up with defenses by whoever came back to colonize it. They might get fought off and even defeated. This logic also still goes on the idea that Tyranids want to stay around.

They're not indigenous to the galaxy. They don't care about holding planets. There's plenty of other planets to eat. Once they have consumed all of the biomass in the galaxy, there is always something to move on to. Another galaxy. They're not stupid, they're simply doing what they do. Consume and adapt from both what was consumed and their collective experiences to become the perfect predator.

Does anybody know how to subscribe to a thread without leaving pointless comments? BTW: I wanted to subscribe

Bottom left corner there is a subscribe button.

ChrisWWII wrote:Exactly. They are a disastrous force of nature

If Tyranids are a force of nature, then so are Orks, Tau, Humans, Eldar, and every other sentient race.

Tyranids.

Are.

Sentient.

Their sentience is collective rather than individual, yes, but that does not change this fact. If Tyranids needed to eat so damn bad, they should seed planets and focus on long-term sustenance instead of strip them for a short term benefit. But no, they don't do this. The Hive Mind, in all of its stupidity (And yes, I do believe it isn't really all that smart), is incapable of comprehending the idea of sacrificing short term benefits for a greater long term yield. They do not care that they leave nothing behind. This is abhorrent to almost any moral standpoint, it's ludicrously and stupidly selfish. If Tyranids aren't "evil", then they're probably closer to chaotic stupid.

Wanna know why Orks are able to combat Tyranids? Orks don't strip planets, they seed them. Every single planet that has ever had an Ork on it is constantly producing more Orks. This is why, when directed at an Ork empire, Tyranids falter and fail, and do nothing but provide Orks with a good time as the Tyranids struggle to maintain a war of attrition that they cannot win. All because they made the decision to strip worlds they come across instead of seed them so they produce.

While the amount of resources on a world doesn't change (conservation of matter and all), the amount of energy the world's sun is constant, and therefor providing far more energy and more useful substances via said energy over time. Plants absorb this energy, change the various compounds on the planet into far more useful compounds, and thus the yield is higher because less energy is expended by the actual race in question in order to harvest the resources and turn them into more useful compounds. Tyranids, compared to every other sentient race in 40k, must expend far more energy converting raw material into food.

necrongod wrote:there is no way they are even as close as being as old as the necrons (if we are including the c'tan)

Tyranids could even be older than the necrons, they are an extra-galactic race, as in they are not from this galaxy, and therefore little is known of their ancestry. They could be millions of years older than any other race in 40k, who knows, the fact that they are able to travel across the void to multiple galaxies suggests their age.

ChaosGalvatron wrote:The generic tyranids are neutral.
The hive mind is evil.

The first part is debatable--see: Instinctive Behavior.
The second part seems to be true, as well as it can be applied.

Melissia wrote:Wanna know why Orks are able to combat Tyranids? Orks don't strip planets, they seed them. Every single planet that has ever had an Ork on it is constantly producing more Orks. This is why, when directed at an Ork empire, Tyranids falter and fail, and do nothing but provide Orks with a good time as the Tyranids struggle to maintain a war of attrition that they cannot win. All because they made the decision to strip worlds they come across instead of seed them so they produce.

While the amount of resources on a world doesn't change (conservation of matter and all), the amount of energy the world's sun is constant, and therefor providing far more energy and more useful substances via said energy over time. Plants absorb this energy, change the various compounds on the planet into far more useful compounds, and thus the yield is higher because less energy is expended by the actual race in question in order to harvest the resources and turn them into more useful compounds. Tyranids, compared to every other sentient race in 40k, must expend far more energy converting raw material into food.

While this is true, Tyranids do well against Orks. Since Orks constantly reproduce, a War with orks presents an unlimited pool of biomass to consume. While they might not win every fight, there is always something they can consume to create more Tyranids. They don't need to strip a whole planet to create them, they just need biomass. Fighting a never ending horde of Orks gives them a never ending source of biomass. There's already a conflict in the codex that describes this, and both races are flourishing because of the war, and neither side is gaining the upper hand yet, though both have the ability.

-Loki- wrote:While this is true, Tyranids do well against Orks.

No they don't. A single Ork empire, one of thousands of not millions on the galaxy, stopped an entire HIVE FLEET. Not splinter fleet, Hive fleet.

That's true. But with Orks as numerous as they are, Tyranids wouldn't have gotten nearly as far into the galaxy as they have if they were terrible at adapting to fighting Orks. It was also a rather small hive fleet - no, not a splinter fleet, but not the size of the likes of Kraken, Leviathan and Behemoth.

-Loki- wrote:That's true. But with Orks as numerous as they are, Tyranids wouldn't have gotten nearly as far into the galaxy as they have if they were terrible at adapting to fighting Orks. It was also a rather small hive fleet - no, not a splinter fleet, but not the size of the likes of Kraken, Leviathan and Behemoth.

Tyranids have yet to wipe Orks out of the sections of galaxy they've invaded. In fact, it's really only around the region of the Eye of Terror that Ork presence is light.

Space is a big place, just because portions of the hive fleet skipped past Ork populated worlds and struck deeper in doesn't mean that they destroyed all Orks in their path. They didn't.

Melissia wrote:

-Loki- wrote:That's true. But with Orks as numerous as they are, Tyranids wouldn't have gotten nearly as far into the galaxy as they have if they were terrible at adapting to fighting Orks. It was also a rather small hive fleet - no, not a splinter fleet, but not the size of the likes of Kraken, Leviathan and Behemoth.

Tyranids have yet to wipe Orks out of the sections of galaxy they've invaded. In fact, it's really only around the region of the Eye of Terror that Ork presence is light.

That quote doesn't make sense. The Tyranid codex talks about entire systems being scoured of life. But if Ork presence is only light around the Eye of Terror, then the codex is wrong, since there should still be Orks there. It doesn't mention them still being there though.

Actually, could you point me to fluff stating the Tyranids can't defeat Orks? Wouldn't mind giving it a read.

Also, I reread the Octarius fluff. It's a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan that was diverted to fight the orks, so I was wrong there, since it is a major hive fleet. However, it's only part of it. The only hive fleet to commit its entire force to one area has been Behemoth.

edit - regarding your edit, that doesn't mean the Tyranids have failed at fighting or defeating Orks. They're migratory, so Orks migrating into dead systems is entirely possible.

I sincerely doubt that such a huge swath of the galaxy would be so quickly repopulated even by Orks.

My only doubt about going by that map, is the Tyranids have one too. There's also maps of Imperial Space that overlap it. The fact is, a zoomed out map of the galaxy like that fails to properly give the scale of such forces. There's about 20 notable Waaaaghs on that map. A Waaaagh could include millions of Orks. This could overrun hundreds of planets. There's hundreds of millions of planets left even after those major Waaaaghs are accounted for.

Going by that kind of generalized map to say Tyranids have never scoured systems clean of Orks is a bit silly. I wouldn't go to any extreme like that until I actually read it in fluff. Even then, GW would retcon it in a couple of years anyway.

I never said that Orks don't occasionally lose fights against Tyranids. Only that Tyranids aren't very good at fighting Orks, as evidenced by the continued existence of massive populations of Orks despite being in the way of every single hive fleet yet to hit the galaxy. Just because a hive fleet passed through an area doesn't mean they cleansed it. It's not as if the entire hive fleet stops at every single planet and cleanses them one by one.

Well, the fluff in the Tyranid codex does say they scour systems. It doesn't say they avoid Orks. So I'm going to go on those maps being exaggerated for the sake of scale rather than take them at face value.

I'm not, however, saying that Tyranids beat everything. Most of the fluff in the new Tyranid codex is them losing. But the significant inroads into the galaxy that they've made suggests they'd had a lot of success, and I doubt it's been by avoiding Orks. Tyranid fluff already describes how they deal with a difficult foe. They bring in the ridiculous Swarmlord that can overcome any foe

Man, Cruddace should be shot out of a cannon for what he did to the Tyranid fluff.