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**Storm Shadow**

IOM is the most frightful force IMO. Just send billions upon billions of soldiers, accompanied by some space marines, to conquer and destroy all xenos.

**Kain**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Kain wrote:

Kain wrote:

I have a masters in Paleontology and took some courses in Nanotechnology. I know what I'm talking about, and the thing is, a mechanical hegemonizing swarm is going to be vastly larger and more efficient than an organic counterpart.

If I had a faction of robotic tyranid like enemies added to 40k, they'd quite quickly end up outnumbering the Tyranids by a massive margin because there's so much more material for the creation of inorganic devices than there is biomass for living beings.

Even disregarding nanotech, there is two trillion tons of biomass on the Earth, that's a big number right?

Well the Earth is primarily Iron and Nickel by weight when taken as a whole (the 50% oxygen, 25% silicon figure is mostly based on the crust), to the point where there is sextillions of tons of metal on the Earth.

That is literally a billion times more matter to work with.

So what the Tyranids would need to strip an entire galaxy of life to achieve, my robot doomswarm would need only a single planet.

And this doomswarm would keep on growing, and it can devour any planet or space rock, not just those with biomass or chemicals useful for organic life. So it can eat the whole solar system too, and then this swarm keeps on growing, devouring every solid object it finds, and by now dwarfs the Tyranids, Orks, and Humanity combined in terms of numbers by multiple orders of magnitude.

When it runs into an inhabited planet, it can throw what amounts to the entire Tyranid genus with the most generous possible estimates, at this one single planet, and it would be at best a drop in the bucket of it's total resources.

I keep on going with this berserker von neumann nightmare until the entirety of the galaxy is cleansed of anything but these constantly adapting, geometrically self improving machines that can keep on building smarter and smarter versions of their own A.I to design more and more sophisticated technology.

Even without FTL I could clean the entire galaxy in a few million years, with FTL I'd overwhelm every faction in 40k in perhaps even a few centuries, even Chaos flickers and dies as I completely cleanse the galaxy of all life capable of emotion. Maybe I can even kill everyone sooner depending on how fast I can von neumann my way to victory.

So that's right, a competently designed von neumann swarm I literally just scribbled out a few minutes ago, would break the entire setting through simply outproducing everyone by a ridiculous margin until I can fairly say that I have more capital ships than the Imperium has guardsmen.

But perhaps not quite so overpowering.

Necrons already do that, I believe.

Their scarabs are designed to break down mass down to it's atoms, so that it can be harvested and used for something else.

Like what happens in Supreme Commander.

Given that the Necrons haven't vastly outnumbered the Tyranids or blotted out the skies of every star with tombships and filled the ground of every world with Medusa V tomb-stalkers, I'm going to assume that the Necron dynasties are using these harvested resources for minecraft projects.

**the shrouded lord**

IIRC they convert living matter into energy.

**CthuluIsSpy**

Kain wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Kain wrote:

Kain wrote:

I have a masters in Paleontology and took some courses in Nanotechnology. I know what I'm talking about, and the thing is, a mechanical hegemonizing swarm is going to be vastly larger and more efficient than an organic counterpart.

If I had a faction of robotic tyranid like enemies added to 40k, they'd quite quickly end up outnumbering the Tyranids by a massive margin because there's so much more material for the creation of inorganic devices than there is biomass for living beings.

Even disregarding nanotech, there is two trillion tons of biomass on the Earth, that's a big number right?

Well the Earth is primarily Iron and Nickel by weight when taken as a whole (the 50% oxygen, 25% silicon figure is mostly based on the crust), to the point where there is sextillions of tons of metal on the Earth.

That is literally a billion times more matter to work with.

So what the Tyranids would need to strip an entire galaxy of life to achieve, my robot doomswarm would need only a single planet.

And this doomswarm would keep on growing, and it can devour any planet or space rock, not just those with biomass or chemicals useful for organic life. So it can eat the whole solar system too, and then this swarm keeps on growing, devouring every solid object it finds, and by now dwarfs the Tyranids, Orks, and Humanity combined in terms of numbers by multiple orders of magnitude.

When it runs into an inhabited planet, it can throw what amounts to the entire Tyranid genus with the most generous possible estimates, at this one single planet, and it would be at best a drop in the bucket of it's total resources.

I keep on going with this berserker von neumann nightmare until the entirety of the galaxy is cleansed of anything but these constantly adapting, geometrically self improving machines that can keep on building smarter and smarter versions of their own A.I to design more and more sophisticated technology.

Even without FTL I could clean the entire galaxy in a few million years, with FTL I'd overwhelm every faction in 40k in perhaps even a few centuries, even Chaos flickers and dies as I completely cleanse the galaxy of all life capable of emotion. Maybe I can even kill everyone sooner depending on how fast I can von neumann my way to victory.

So that's right, a competently designed von neumann swarm I literally just scribbled out a few minutes ago, would break the entire setting through simply outproducing everyone by a ridiculous margin until I can fairly say that I have more capital ships than the Imperium has guardsmen.

But perhaps not quite so overpowering.

Necrons already do that, I believe.

Their scarabs are designed to break down mass down to it's atoms, so that it can be harvested and used for something else.

Like what happens in Supreme Commander.

Given that the Necrons haven't vastly outnumbered the Tyranids or blotted out the skies of every star with tombships and filled the ground of every world with Medusa V tomb-stalkers, I'm going to assume that the Necron dynasties are using these harvested resources for minecraft projects.

Then how can spyders make scarabs? Those materials have to come from somewhere.
It probably takes a considerable amount of mass to make living metal, which would explain why necrons aren't just drowning everyone in warriors.

**Ashiraya**

-

**Kain**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Kain wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Kain wrote:

Kain wrote:

I have a masters in Paleontology and took some courses in Nanotechnology. I know what I'm talking about, and the thing is, a mechanical hegemonizing swarm is going to be vastly larger and more efficient than an organic counterpart.

If I had a faction of robotic tyranid like enemies added to 40k, they'd quite quickly end up outnumbering the Tyranids by a massive margin because there's so much more material for the creation of inorganic devices than there is biomass for living beings.

Even disregarding nanotech, there is two trillion tons of biomass on the Earth, that's a big number right?

Well the Earth is primarily Iron and Nickel by weight when taken as a whole (the 50% oxygen, 25% silicon figure is mostly based on the crust), to the point where there is sextillions of tons of metal on the Earth.

That is literally a billion times more matter to work with.

So what the Tyranids would need to strip an entire galaxy of life to achieve, my robot doomswarm would need only a single planet.

And this doomswarm would keep on growing, and it can devour any planet or space rock, not just those with biomass or chemicals useful for organic life. So it can eat the whole solar system too, and then this swarm keeps on growing, devouring every solid object it finds, and by now dwarfs the Tyranids, Orks, and Humanity combined in terms of numbers by multiple orders of magnitude.

When it runs into an inhabited planet, it can throw what amounts to the entire Tyranid genus with the most generous possible estimates, at this one single planet, and it would be at best a drop in the bucket of it's total resources.

I keep on going with this berserker von neumann nightmare until the entirety of the galaxy is cleansed of anything but these constantly adapting, geometrically self improving machines that can keep on building smarter and smarter versions of their own A.I to design more and more sophisticated technology.

Even without FTL I could clean the entire galaxy in a few million years, with FTL I'd overwhelm every faction in 40k in perhaps even a few centuries, even Chaos flickers and dies as I completely cleanse the galaxy of all life capable of emotion. Maybe I can even kill everyone sooner depending on how fast I can von neumann my way to victory.

So that's right, a competently designed von neumann swarm I literally just scribbled out a few minutes ago, would break the entire setting through simply outproducing everyone by a ridiculous margin until I can fairly say that I have more capital ships than the Imperium has guardsmen.

But perhaps not quite so overpowering.

Necrons already do that, I believe.

Their scarabs are designed to break down mass down to it's atoms, so that it can be harvested and used for something else.

Like what happens in Supreme Commander.

Given that the Necrons haven't vastly outnumbered the Tyranids or blotted out the skies of every star with tombships and filled the ground of every world with Medusa V tomb-stalkers, I'm going to assume that the Necron dynasties are using these harvested resources for minecraft projects.

Then how can spyders make scarabs? Those materials have to come from somewhere.
It probably takes a considerable amount of mass to make living metal, which would explain why necrons aren't just drowning everyone in warriors.

Technically speaking, due to the conservation of mass (which seems to at best be a guideline in 40k) it only ever takes X amount of mass to make X amount of mass in a different format.

But with the amount of resources in one planet, you could make as many robots as the Tyranids can with the biomass of an entire galaxy.

So unless the living metal creation process is far less efficient than it would seem, I don't think they use it all to make weapons of war. Now things like world engines or completely hollowed out tomb worlds probably do take a lot of resources, but if the Necrons were going all out on the Von Neumann swarm things like the battle of Armanah would have been the sector fleet going up against more fully fledged tomb ships than they have macro-cannon warheads to shoot at them with and at least a necron phalanx for every PDF trooper.

I'm inclined to think that the Necrons are capable of Von nuemanning, but mostly keep themselves restrained due to their sense of honor and desire to rule and retake their empire rather than consume. The same reasons that they technically could eradicate the entire galaxy via the celestial orrery, but don't. The Necrons and Tyranids very much have a "tip of the iceberg" feel to them. That as bad and destructive as they are with ships even the Eldar need to take three to one loss ratios to beat, casual manipulation of time and space, hyperdimensional muckery, science so advanced it may as well be magic, frightening combination of both quantity and qualtiy, and planet sized warships; the galaxy ain't seen nothing yet. Not only have the majority of Necrons yet to awaken, but they haven't even brought out their shiniest toys in bulk yet. In addition, the Necrons are currently playing with kid-gloves, giving fair warnings, holding back weapons and tactics deemed to be unsporting, offering honorable duels, and giving bond villain monologues.

Now in the War in Heaven things were probably different,

I suspect that if faced with my Berserker swarm; the Necrons would likely start getting much more serious. Much like how they don't go for any niceties when faced with the Tyranids and instead just blow them the feth up.

**CthuluIsSpy**

I was thinking more along the lines of Living Metal being really dense.

Like 1 molecule of LM is something like atomic mass 600. It is pretty resilient stuff after all.

**Kain**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I was thinking more along the lines of Living Metal being really dense.

Like 1 molecule of LM is something like atomic mass 600. It is pretty resilient stuff after all.

Well, unless the Necrons have mass-lightening technology handed out like candy (they very well could) to not end up sinking into the ground or having warriors have so much mass in the F=MV^2 equation that they could send you flying across the room with a punch think this may not quite be the answer.

**CthuluIsSpy**

Kain wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I was thinking more along the lines of Living Metal being really dense.

Like 1 molecule of LM is something like atomic mass 600. It is pretty resilient stuff after all.

Well, unless the Necrons have mass-lightening technology handed out like candy (they very well could) to not end up sinking into the ground or having warriors have so much mass in the F=MV^2 equation that they could send you flying across the room with a punch think this may not quite be the answer.

Why do you think they have anit-grav tech?

Still, good point about that. I considered that, but I reasoned that whilst an infantry sized necron would be heavy, he may not be heavy enough to fall through the earth (though there would be deep foot prints. Would explain why they are so slow). Electromagnetic repulsion may have something to do with it as well. That is why we aren't falling through the floor after all.