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That has also happened in the background.

See the Graphic Novel "Deathwatch" - the Inquisition deliberately infects the population of a planet with a dormant-inert genetic plague, designed to respond to a psychic trigger (the shadow in the warp) by becoming active, virulant, and lethal.

It worked - ish. The genopsychic trigger turned out to be too sensitive, and was triggered by the keening call of a genestealer cult rather than the arrival of the hive fleet itself. Which killed off the genestealers, at least, but meant that the presence of the virus would be obvious to the hive fleet once it arrived (and therefore, the end of the story implies, fairly easily overcome).

I'm sure creating new viruses wouldn't be that difficult and even if it was you'd probably only get away with this trick a few times.

I respectfully disagree. Creating a new virus would be insanely hard to do. Especailly since they would all have to be almost completly novel each time. (ie you could proly never use the same transmission vector twice because they would develop so way of getting around it)

It was airborne last time, well now that fleet has bio filters in thier lungs etc.

Now if you had one that could kill off the entire population then you are set and can use it more than once (make sure you burn all the biomass left so another fleet doesnt stumble across it and find a way to beat it), but making something with a 100% casualty rate is almost impossible. There will most likely be, in the billions of life forms on the ship, some mutation that will lead to, at least, resistance.

Still and all, it would proly weaken them up enough that you could sweep the survivors with a solid pass from a flame thrower and settle the situation

Thing is, you don't launch one life eater warhead at one ship. You launch enough warheads to hit the entire tyranid fleet. Then mop up whatever remains.

If you manage to kill all the nids that enter the system then the exact same tactic will work on the next batch you go after. Why? Because the problem will never have been communicated to the rest of the hive fleet.

The Tau tactic could certainly work against a second hive fleet. There is even fluff that supports this as the battle for Valedor (Apoc Warzone: Valedor) is essentially about the Eldar trying to stop 2 hive fleets from coming into contact and sharing information.

As well as with the tau thing was only active for a couple of hours. Might not be enough time to examine it.

clively wrote:
Thing is, you don't launch one life eater warhead at one ship. You launch enough warheads to hit the entire tyranid fleet. Then mop up whatever remains.

If you manage to kill all the nids that enter the system then the exact same tactic will work on the next batch you go after. Why? Because the problem will never have been communicated to the rest of the hive fleet.

The Tau tactic could certainly work against a second hive fleet. There is even fluff that supports this as the battle for Valedor (Apoc Warzone: Valedor) is essentially about the Eldar trying to stop 2 hive fleets from coming into contact and sharing information.

That's like saying "shoot enough bullets to hit all of the planet at once".

Tyranid Hive Fleets cover multiple light-years of space. They can amass a front that stretches across several independent starsystems. The Imperium simply does not have enough ships, or torpedoes, to cover that much space.

I think virus bombs with the actual world eater virus are rare, so no, you wouldn't waste such a precious resource trying to hit everything and possibly failing to hit the one ship you want to hit.

Not to mention the potential collateral damage if it's a battle within close proximity to a valuable world.

Also, taking their rareness out of it, the ships that are allowed and sanctioned to stock them are also rare. They are truly one of the worse weapons to have fall into the hands of a rogue faction.

Also, is not the head Hive Ship of each fleet connected to the galaxy-spanning Hive Mind network?

Depends on who's Tyranid fluff you read. There may not *be* a "head Hive ship", by some accounts, the Hive Mind just being the gestalt consciousness of all of the Tyranid biomorphs present.

Hive Fleet Behemoth was defeated by the Dominus Astra taking out the head Hive Ship, yes?

No, Dominus Astra detonated its Warp Drives, which tore open a rift in Realspace that sucked the entire Hive Fleet into the Warp, not just one "main ship".

Ah, now I remember where I read that. Seems it's unconfirmed though.

They also have theories of a "Norn Queen" that is supposedly the closest you get to a "leader" of a Tyranid Hive, though they have not, afaik, confirmed that one actually exists (its an Imperial Theory).

Personally, I think I like the idea of the Hive being an entire gestalt hive-mind, rather than having a clear, single "ruler", better. Adds to the alienness of the Tyranids, especially in this setting where everyone has a leader of some kind.

It also makes them a lot more threatening, the actual chances of being able to wipe them out are slim if there isn't a central control, only chance the imperium could have of surviving is to hold out long enough for the nids to start running so low on biomass it is weakening them and fending them off just becomes routine.