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I always thought the Tyranid hunt for the macguffin of 'biomass' was inherently a little bit flawed- rather than expend the resources to create huge monstrosities, if the nids dropped something more akin to a virus (using their genome manipulating skills to make it work along the best infection vectors) imagine an airborne ebola virus that had a 100% fatality rate dropped on a major population center- you could have an entire planet dead and being converted into tyranid chow within a month.

Kilkrazy wrote:No it's not.

Tyranids can make their own genes.

They have no reason at all to pinch the genes of a 21,798th human planet.

To get material. It's logical to think they can digest biomass easier than processing raw materials like a machine as per all known life. You can't make it not make sense Kilkrazy no matter how much you try!

Mewiththeface wrote:Also, if they have no planet, food can't regrow on the planet.

Food can't re-grow on the planet as it is? once the Tyranids are done with it it's a lifeless rock with no atmosphere or water. Without those things life can't come back to the planet.

They'll replenish with time actually (volcanic activity releases a lot of both), though I don't know that nids plan a billion or two years in advance.

KK, it doesn't matter how much extra stuff there is in space. They'll still attack the planets. Tyranid are literally insatiable and they will not stop eating until:

A) They are destroyed.
B) There is nothing in the universe left to eat.

Slick wrote:I always thought the Tyranid hunt for the macguffin of 'biomass' was inherently a little bit flawed- rather than expend the resources to create huge monstrosities, if the nids dropped something more akin to a virus (using their genome manipulating skills to make it work along the best infection vectors) imagine an airborne ebola virus that had a 100% fatality rate dropped on a major population center- you could have an entire planet dead and being converted into tyranid chow within a month.

They already do this - not that fatal though. The same spores that promote explosive growth of the flora on the planet also kills fauna. Basically the air becomes toxic to anything not a plant. The reason this doesn't do anything in game terms - and why they don't do anything even more lethal on a planet wide scale, is again, the army needs to be playable on the tabletop. It's fluff for a tabletop wargame.

However, also related to this, the Tyranids have something more fatal than the spores released at the start of an invasion. Venomthrope spores. These literally liquefy your organs after a minute or so of exposure. Why don't they use these on a planet wide scale to remove all defenses? Tabletop wargame.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:They do. All that's left is the most useless rock.

And not so useless metal.

Metals and minerals are consumed, broken down into their base chemicals. They leave rock behind, nothing else.

Metals are essential to life forms. We do happen to have iron in our own blood, afterall.

edit - bad wording

-Loki- wrote:Metals and minerals are consumed, broken down into their base chemicals. They leave rock behind, nothing else.

Metals are essential to life forms. We do happen to have iron in our own blood, afterall.

edit - bad wording

What he said. They take the all the Iron, Gold, platinum and the other good stuff too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well I shouldn't say all the Iron and nickel. They wouldn't take the molten core obviously.

Requia wrote:They'll replenish with time actually (volcanic activity releases a lot of both), though I don't know that nids plan a billion or two years in advance.

Volcanic activity dosen't release water unless it opens up underground rivers or lakes which then evaporate do to the heat, the water that woulden't evaporate has either been consumed by the Nids or boiled away due to the lack of an atmosphere that previously protected it from the sun.

Volcanic activity may release gas but not enough to re-create an entire atmosphere and even if it did have time to build up enough to be stable there woulden't be any water at that point which is essential to life. Without an atmosphere and direct contact with space the planet would cool, the core would die and stop spinning, when the core stops spinning the electromagentic field surround the planet dies causing the surface to be bombarded with radiation.

The planet would litterally be dead and would never have life again. Why do you think the Moon is lifeless and has no atmosphere or enternal heat. When it says that it's a barren lifeless rock it means it's a barren lifeless rock, planets have to walk a very tight balancing act to be able to support life and the only reason so many of them do in 40k is because the Old Ones engineered them to. So no the planets devoured by the Tyranids will not re-grow life.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

-Loki- wrote:Metals and minerals are consumed, broken down into their base chemicals. They leave rock behind, nothing else.

Metals are essential to life forms. We do happen to have iron in our own blood, afterall.

edit - bad wording

Trace amounts of Iron. We get the minerals in our bodies as transfer from what we eat either directly from plants or from the animals that ate the plant. We don't eat metal or rock and so the Tyranids woulden't need to eat it to get essential minerals because they would get it as transfer from the bio matter they harvest which is easier to break down then billions of tons of rock and metal.

The Tyranids don't consume entire planets because the energy gained would not be greater then the energy spent.

-Loki- wrote:Metals and minerals are consumed, broken down into their base chemicals

So you're saying that they devour a planet's metallic core? Because I find that idea to be laughably ludicrous.

I always thought that the Tyranid's may just leave what is left directly above the mantle. It is probably very hard to gather and digest rock that is thousands of degrees.

Why don't they just devour planets whole?

Well... they do. Surrounding it and falling on the planet the way we know is just the way they do it.

Tyranids will consume the first few layers of rock in order to consume metals. Metal will obviously be left on the inside of the planet, but it takes too much energy to consume the inside of a planet.

Can Tyranids kill a planet completely? Shutting down the core, stopping its magnetic field?

It's not unlikey that the 'Nids could process almost all useful materials from a Planet. They could quite easily strip a planet clean.

They're already here!

As for bacteria living in lava? You never know what goes on in the core, bacteria can be found around thermal vent today so...

Arsenic bacteria has recently shattered perceptions about life and survivable conditions in which it can develop.


The reason they don't devour planets whole is simply because they would end up being space basking sharks of colossal proportions. You couldn't field that now could you. 'Nids could work as a virus type effort, a la 'The Thing' or 'The Flood'. Virus digests host, while the host proliferates the contagion.

Once again, I find it extremely unlikely that they devour a planet's core. The amount of mass in a planet's core, most of which is usually metal, is enough to cover the surface millions of times over. We're talking about a 5000 kilometer sphere of iron and nickel for an earth-sized planet. Radius, not diameter.

With the mass gained from eating a single planet's core, they'd have so much more iron than biomass that tyranids would have to be MADE of iron in order to actually make use of it all-- there's more iron in a SINGLE planet's core than is likely used by the entire Imperial Navy. I don't think you guys comprehend just how tiny the crust of a planet is.

Medium of Death wrote:Can Tyranids kill a planet completely? Shutting down the core, stopping its magnetic field?

By cause and effect yes they can. I was hoping I didn't have to go through this but here it is.

The Tyranids remove all biomatter and the majority of water from a earth like planet, the flora which once converted carbon dioxide into oxygen are now gone (also remember that oceans produce oxygen to).

The build up of Carbon Dioxide eats through the ozone letting increased amounts of radiation break through the atmosphere. This combined with the heat already trapped by the Carbon Dioxide would increase the temperature of atmospheric gases, as their molecules began moving faster the gases escape velocity would increase which would allow them to escape the planets gravitational pull causing the atmosphere (composed of various gases at various temperatures and densities) to slowly bleed off into space.

Then the reverse happens. As gases bleed off there is less and less atmosphere, since there is less atmosphere the temperature of the planet starts to drop because it is gases that trap healthy amounts of radiation (and heat) which keep a planets surface warm.

As the temperature of a planet drops eventually the molten material at it's center will start to harden and prevent the core from spinning either entirely or partially. If the planets core is no longer spinning or spinning at a slower rate then the planets electromagnetic feild will be gone, what little water that may have been left on the planet would be frozen pockets trapped deep inside the planets mantel.

By this point those gases that where dense enough to stick to the planet based off gravity alone are gone because if a core stops spinning the planet also loses momentum in it's rotation lessening some of the planets gravitational pull (the same principle as G-forces pulling you down into your seat when on a roller coaster) so it's no longer strong enough to hold the gases.

So now the planet has become a cold, barren and iradiated rock with no atmosphere, very little water and no way of supporting life. It is a dead planet, and while this woulden't happen instantly and the time period that this happened in would depend on the size and density of the planet it would happen alot quicker then the time it took for a planet to "re-grow" life. So yes Tyranids can kill a planet if they're invasion is successfull.

Here is a quote directly from the codex which describes a planet after a Tyranid invasion

Kryptman found a blasted and sterile planet, now unrecognisable as the teeming ocean world it had once been. The planet had been sucked dry, every scrap of vegetation and every drop of water consumed

No one said they eat the core! In fact I specifically said they don't.

Who was that in response to?

Are you responding to me? I was responding to melissia. Got ninja'd.

To clear things up, I asked why the Nids eat a planet in one single gulp, sort of like a giant meatball made of Iron and rock. Here's my theory: It's been mentioned the current nids could be just a scouting force for the bigger bugs. One of these types could be a the Galactus version. I know that planets have more rock than the crust in exponential numbers, but the Tyranids are an extragalactic race. They should have more than enough resources to make something of that magnitude.

We know what you're asking and it's been answered, the Tyranids don't just swallow whole planets because they have no need to. The amount of energy spent digesting so much mass would be greater then the energy gained from eating it.

And the problem with your theory is if there was just a huge bug that swallowed entire planets why would they need a scouting force, something that big woulden't send out scouting forces to devour the biomass of every planet only to come along and eat a barren hunk of rock. Something that big would just drift through space untill it found a planet and it would consume it since there would be nothing that could stop it.

Also something that big is going to be generating gravity close to a planet itself. Something biological just can't be that big.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:No it's not.

Tyranids can make their own genes.

They have no reason at all to pinch the genes of a 21,798th human planet.

To get material. It's logical to think they can digest biomass easier than processing raw materials like a machine as per all known life. You can't make it not make sense Kilkrazy no matter how much you try!

Yes, I can.

Plants and bacteria process raw materials just fine. That is how an ecosystem works.

Tigers need to eat deer, and deer need to eat grass. Tyranids don't need to be tigers or deer, they are a complete ecosystem of interdependent organisms which control their own evolution and have access to collossal resources in space without ever having to touch a planet.

The slight advantage of sucking up decayed biomass from a planet's surface, rather than simply harvesting resources in space, is more than offset by the effort required to do the job.

Tyranids don't make any kind of sense, except as an excuse to have an "Aliens" style army in the game.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:No one said they eat the core! In fact I specifically said they don't.

No, they said that the Tyranids also eat all of the valuable metals on the planet.

Which the core is made of.

Dominatrix! Surely the inner nature of the Nids is evil and feeds off negative psychic energy? The suffering of a pre devoured population and war in general are juicy etheric yum yum.

Rochronos wrote:Dominatrix!

Not sure why you brought this up since it isn't large enough to eat a planet whole

Melissia wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:No one said they eat the core! In fact I specifically said they don't.

No, they said that the Tyranids also eat all of the valuable metals on the planet.

Which the core is made of.

They have to get to the core first...

Kilkrazy wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:No it's not.

Tyranids can make their own genes.

They have no reason at all to pinch the genes of a 21,798th human planet.

To get material. It's logical to think they can digest biomass easier than processing raw materials like a machine as per all known life. You can't make it not make sense Kilkrazy no matter how much you try!

Yes, I can.

Plants and bacteria process raw materials just fine. That is how an ecosystem works.

Tigers need to eat deer, and deer need to eat grass. Tyranids don't need to be tigers or deer, they are a complete ecosystem of interdependent organisms which control their own evolution and have access to collossal resources in space without ever having to touch a planet.

The slight advantage of sucking up decayed biomass from a planet's surface, rather than simply harvesting resources in space, is more than offset by the effort required to do the job.

Tyranids don't make any kind of sense, except as an excuse to have an "Aliens" style army in the game.

What is this thing in space that is more fruitful than planets btw?

The little itty bits of stuff floating around. Interstellar Hydrogen, and bits of Carbon, and Iron, and all the rest of the elements. The thing is, even though there's maybe only one atom per lightyear, there's a whole freakin' ton of lightyears out there. There's probably more than a million times as much matter floating around in the void as there is tied up in planets and stars.