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pm713 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

quentra wrote:
Yeah, I always thought that the 'nids (once the opposition on the planet was dead) had specialized bioforms that would 'digest' the planet's biomatter into a slurry, then the capillary towers would 'suck' the slurry up to the bioships.

Those specialized organism that do the digesting are digestion pools. Feeder organisms gather the biomass then head to the nearest digestion pool and dive in killing themselves and adding all their content to the slurry. Cappilary towers form at the pools.

Man this sounds all very inefficient. like how much energy would it take to make a feeder bot, have that feeder move around, come back and be dismantled and the remade for another round of eating.

also im imagining a cow nid running around harvesting grass.

Tyranids aren't the most sensible faction.

I think they use Rippers for grass but a cownid would be so much better.

If nids approached the galaxy from the mental perspective of sentience they would flat-out win with no contest. Nid behavior is more like how an invasive species of ant would behave, which is the only context in which an army like them could even work properly in the setting.

 Desubot wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

quentra wrote:
Yeah, I always thought that the 'nids (once the opposition on the planet was dead) had specialized bioforms that would 'digest' the planet's biomatter into a slurry, then the capillary towers would 'suck' the slurry up to the bioships.

Those specialized organism that do the digesting are digestion pools. Feeder organisms gather the biomass then head to the nearest digestion pool and dive in killing themselves and adding all their content to the slurry. Cappilary towers form at the pools.

Man this sounds all very inefficient. like how much energy would it take to make a feeder bot, have that feeder move around, come back and be dismantled and the remade for another round of eating.

also im imagining a cow nid running around harvesting grass.

My personal theory is that the 'nids we see are a bioweapon invasion force that has the ultimate goal of removing threats to the Tyranid species. I think that the biomass they harvest when they take over a planet is the equivalent of battlefield salvage-they don't rely on it to keep fighting, it just helps make them stronger. I think they prefer to avoid Necrons because Necrons are a challenge that can be ignored if not provoked. I think the Tyranid plan boils down to eat everything that isn't Necron, use the biomass to make up for some of the casualties, then break all the Necrons.

The thing that is wrong about the tyranids is that one single tyranid has even less identity than one single necron.

Imperium has heroes like Yarrick and Trajann Valoris. Orcs have Ghazgkull and Snikrot. Eldar have Eldrad and the Phoenix Lords. Chaos has the likes of Kharn and Ahriman. Even Tau have... um, Farsight? And Necrons have their... individual tomb lord characters, right? Tyranids... have none of that interesting character based motivations.

Instead, tyranids have this supposed invincibility thing where they eat everything.

The nerve. Only the imperium is invincible, as a whole.

 Desubot wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

quentra wrote:
Yeah, I always thought that the 'nids (once the opposition on the planet was dead) had specialized bioforms that would 'digest' the planet's biomatter into a slurry, then the capillary towers would 'suck' the slurry up to the bioships.

Those specialized organism that do the digesting are digestion pools. Feeder organisms gather the biomass then head to the nearest digestion pool and dive in killing themselves and adding all their content to the slurry. Cappilary towers form at the pools.

Man this sounds all very inefficient. like how much energy would it take to make a feeder bot, have that feeder move around, come back and be dismantled and the remade for another round of eating.

also im imagining a cow nid running around harvesting grass.

In truth most of the harvesting is performed by co-opted local plant life. Tyranid biology hacks it and sends it into overdrive. Minerals are leached at unsustainable rates, global temperature increased and the entire planet becomes a biological furnace designed to deposit everything of use on the surface. Digestion pools swell to the size of oceans and capillary towers grow out of areas rich in minerals into the atmosphere.

The mobile Tyranid feeder beasts are largely used to kill the things that won’t just sit there and be swallowed up, but are none the less useful because there might be useful information or genetics for the Tyranids to deploy later. That’s why things like Malanthropes exist; to understand why the prey put up such good resistance. In that way, the Tyranids have bag of genetic tricks they can call on to overcome any situation.

The whole thing may be horrendously energy inefficient, but I don’t think the Tyranids care. As long as they gain more energy than they spent, it’s a win for the Hive Ships and that’s all that matters. The whole cycle might well be a really inefficient way of existing, but there you go, that’s 40k. Even the faceless alien planet eaters have an element of tragedy about them. The Hive Mind is the largest, most complex sentience in the universe as far as we know, and for all it’s intellect and power it’s trapped in an unending cycle of violent feeding which it seems it cannot escape (assuming it wants to escape of course, though the few times words other than endless and infinite are used to describe the hunger it’s usually something like painful...)

 RedCommander wrote:
The thing that is wrong about the tyranids is that one single tyranid has even less identity than one single necron.

Imperium has heroes like Yarrick and Trajann Valoris. Orcs have Ghazgkull and Snikrot. Eldar have Eldrad and the Phoenix Lords. Chaos has the likes of Kharn and Ahriman. Even Tau have... um, Farsight? And Necrons have their... individual tomb lord characters, right? Tyranids... have none of that interesting character based motivations.

Instead, tyranids have this supposed invincibility thing where they eat everything.

The nerve. Only the imperium is invincible, as a whole.

I like that the Tyranid characters are just strange evolutions. The way it works now (you can get them in any fleet of your choosing) is just great.

Tyranids are only energy inefficient if you assume they depend on biological metabolism for their large scale energetic needs.

That is wrong. We are told that Tyranids are made of weirder stuff than biological matter in the Haemonculus Covens Codex. We know they are insanely energy efficient from the Genestealer Cult Codex. We also know that plenty of Tyranid organism are basically plasma reactors and Tyranids devour insane amounts of resources from a planet, not only biological ones. For example there is enough energy in the ocean to sustain our energetic needs as a civilization for millennia, and Hive Fleets drink oceans with each planet they consume.

And even if that is not enough, Tyranids can draw energy from the Hive Mind and the souls they devour.

I didn't know Tyranids ate souls. When did that happen?

pm713 wrote:
I didn't know Tyranids ate souls. When did that happen?

The Doom of Malan'tai did it but that's the only example I know of.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I didn't know Tyranids ate souls. When did that happen?

The Doom of Malan'tai did it but that's the only example I know of.

Neurothropes have been described as draining souls, or “soul stuff” was the actual term I think. It’s in SOB: Leviathan. Kronos is experimenting with this as well if you read into the few fluff snippets they have.

Neurothropes eat souls, and the novel Valedor has the Eldar tracking a tendril by the psychic footprint of devoured Eldar.

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
Tyranids wouldn’t ignore Necrons or Chaos Daemons. In several accounts in codexes the Tyranids have fought them. In one case Tyranids killed so many humans that a Warp Portal opened up and Khorne Daemons poured out. By the account he Tyranids saw the Daemons as competing predators and attacked the Daemons even though they leave no biomass when killed.

Similarly Necrons will protect their world’s from attack regardless of who is there and Necron planets are not all lifeless rocks. There is fauna and such that they can devour. And Nids could feasibly start destroying Necron structures without realizing it, threatening the Tombworld stability.

Per Newcron fluff, maybe there's some crazy Lord or Overlord who still thinks he/she is still living flesh and is tending to their garden Tomb World. Occasional visitors include some uppity humans looking to colonize, those damn Orks again, some puny Exodite Eldar...

And then these new space locusts start showing up, eating everything. Everything that this Lord has toiled at for MILLENNIA.

Well, that Lord's not going to let eons of effort go to waste because some space bugs got the munchies, he/she's going to make SURE that they LEAVE and NEVER come back!

...so yeah, I can see why Tyranids wouldn't want to fight cuckoo Necrons.

Just a thought but what if Tyrannid navigation is psychic - being the shadow in the Warp and all - and the Necrons simply don't show up to them because they're nulls, all the advance forces like Genestealer Cults just see black holes when they try to look at Necron Tomb Worlds.

Tyranids avoid the Necrons because the Necrons easily kill the Tyranids.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Tyranids avoid the Necrons because the Necrons easily kill the Tyranids.

Most races. If you kill them you gain biomass and materials.
Necron metals are impossible or next to impossible to digest and they phase out yielding you little to no again. They are hard to kill also and have very powerful fleets. The loss of a hive ship, is a tad expensive.

There planets are slow to wake but once they do, there defences are formidable.

They basically are a higher cost. Lower reward planet to raid vs one of less advanced fleshy organics.

 jhe90 wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Tyranids avoid the Necrons because the Necrons easily kill the Tyranids.

Most races. If you kill them you gain biomass and materials.
Necron metals are impossible or next to impossible to digest and they phase out yielding you little to no again. They are hard to kill also and have very powerful fleets. The loss of a hive ship, is a tad expensive.

There planets are slow to wake but once they do, there defences are formidable.

They basically are a higher cost. Lower reward planet to raid vs one of less advanced fleshy organics.

Sometimes. I think it depends on how active that Necron tomb world is at the time, how many resources the Tyranids have at their disposal and what else is on the planet (or even in the system). A Hive Fleet would be much more likely to expend a lot of resources destroying a tomb world if the rest of the system is rich in biomass. Net gain overall. A lone tombworld with nothing else in the system is more likely to be a waste of time, and instead handled by whatever anti-Necron biotech the Tyranids end up deploying to fight the Necron once they become a greater threat (just as it has spawned Kronos as it’s first real anti-Daemon biotech).

Patriarch Phyrx wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Tyranids avoid the Necrons because the Necrons easily kill the Tyranids.

Most races. If you kill them you gain biomass and materials.
Necron metals are impossible or next to impossible to digest and they phase out yielding you little to no again. They are hard to kill also and have very powerful fleets. The loss of a hive ship, is a tad expensive.

There planets are slow to wake but once they do, there defences are formidable.

They basically are a higher cost. Lower reward planet to raid vs one of less advanced fleshy organics.

Sometimes. I think it depends on how active that Necron tomb world is at the time, how many resources the Tyranids have at their disposal and what else is on the planet (or even in the system). A Hive Fleet would be much more likely to expend a lot of resources destroying a tomb world if the rest of the system is rich in biomass. Net gain overall. A lone tombworld with nothing else in the system is more likely to be a waste of time, and instead handled by whatever anti-Necron biotech the Tyranids end up deploying to fight the Necron once they become a greater threat (just as it has spawned Kronos as it’s first real anti-Daemon biotech).

True. The fleets evolve.
And value of systems vs reward worth thr losses.

However, adapting to necron tech.. Maybe the impirum did make anti phasing ammo for deathwatch. Unknown how effective but that does show someone can potentially find work around.

 jhe90 wrote:

Patriarch Phyrx wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Tyranids avoid the Necrons because the Necrons easily kill the Tyranids.

Most races. If you kill them you gain biomass and materials.
Necron metals are impossible or next to impossible to digest and they phase out yielding you little to no again. They are hard to kill also and have very powerful fleets. The loss of a hive ship, is a tad expensive.

There planets are slow to wake but once they do, there defences are formidable.

They basically are a higher cost. Lower reward planet to raid vs one of less advanced fleshy organics.

Sometimes. I think it depends on how active that Necron tomb world is at the time, how many resources the Tyranids have at their disposal and what else is on the planet (or even in the system). A Hive Fleet would be much more likely to expend a lot of resources destroying a tomb world if the rest of the system is rich in biomass. Net gain overall. A lone tombworld with nothing else in the system is more likely to be a waste of time, and instead handled by whatever anti-Necron biotech the Tyranids end up deploying to fight the Necron once they become a greater threat (just as it has spawned Kronos as it’s first real anti-Daemon biotech).

True. The fleets evolve.
And value of systems vs reward worth thr losses.

However, adapting to necron tech.. Maybe the impirum did make anti phasing ammo for deathwatch. Unknown how effective but that does show someone can potentially find work around.

Anti-Necron tech could come in lots of flavours.

Something that interferes with Living Metal, reducing it’s capacity to heal?

Ablative chitin designed to be “sacrificed”when hit with a Gauss weapon so that nothing vital is stripped away on the first hit?

Some sort of bio electric or psychic signal which prevents Necrons from transmitting their minds back to the tomb?

In the end it could just be done by the Hive Fleets quietly marking the locations of Tomb worlds and then smashing them with superior numbers after gorging on richer worlds. There is some fluff somewhere from Necron POV which talks about the Necrons’ biggest fear at the moment being that if the Tyranids are allowed to feed on humans, Orks and rich biospheres for too long there will be too many of them to stop even with all their reawakened tech. The Necrons are incredibly powerful, but they cannot combat galactic swarms... otherwise they would have wiped out the Orks long ago. Eldar, humans etc all breed too slowly, but Orks and Tyranids on sufficient scale can reproduce faster than the Necrons can kill them.

The Eldar (some of them at least) actually think that the Necrons will decide to let the Hive Fleets pass by and then rule what’s left. That would require a change in the bio transference policy though...

All speculation in the end

In Valedor one of the futures seen by the Eldar was that the Tyranids would consume almost everything and leave, then Daemons would rampage and kill everything else and die off and Necrons would rule the ruins for eternity.

 Duskweaver wrote:
Please stop trying to make sense of the Tyranids from a how-biology-really-works standpoint, because nothing about them works (for a start, just try comparing the energy densities of living tissue and rocket fuel, then ask how they can ever get anything off a planet's surface). 40K is a fantasy setting, not sci-fi. It's Spelljammer with the grimdark turned up. It's not Asimov.

Tyranids avoid Necron tomb worlds because a wizard cryptek did it, not because of some logical real-world-biology reason.

Just as a side point, human body fat (with no adaptations towards, well, rocket propulsion) has an energy density of ~37MJ/kg or 34MJ/L. Kerosene (used as aviation fuel and in some jet fuels, such as the first stage of the Saturn V rocket) has an energy density of 42.8MJ/kg or 37.4MJ/L, and hydrogen (also used in a variety of rocket fuel combos) has an energy density of 142MJ/kg or 9.17MJ/L.

Body fat: 37MJ/kg or 34MJ/L
Kerosene: 42.8MJ/kg or 37.4MJ/L
Hydrogen: 142MJ/kg or 9.17MJ/L

Not so different in many ways. Now, energy density is far from the only factor in rocket fuels, but the point stands that existing biomatter can store energy in similar densitis to rocket fuel, and in addition those rocket fuels are organic chemicals, or components of organic chemicals, which could be feasibly synthesised by a living organism.

'Nids achieving space is not impossible, just a difficult technical challenge that will probably be possible with genetic engineering in the next few hundred years for humans if we weirdly wanted to make a bio-rocket (which lets face it, is the kind of stupid science humans would want to do). Plausible but unlikely is actually pretty good by 40k standards.

Just found this quote from book...

“The tyranids were a threat to the necrons. They were life unfettered, anarchic, predictable only in their insatiable hunger. Their consumption of the lesser races proved problematic in the establishment of necron dynastic rule and the eventual goal of the imposition of lifeless order against a galaxy teeming with Chaos.”
Shield of Baal : The Silent King

Maybe it’s Necron who attack Tyranids instead of Tyranids go to dead planet with tomb world.

That makes no sense. Tyranids help massively with that goal.

I always saw Tyranid "Avoidance" of necrons less to do with any actual ingrained aversion and more due to circumstance. The only way a Tyranid fleet ever actually crosses a Necron planet is if they attempt to consume it in the wake of a greater prize. Necron's cannot be infested by Genestealers due to the lack of a biological body so the only engagements likely to occur is the harvesting of a necron planet by chance as the fleet moves on a more prosperous feeding ground, if Necron's actually decide to engage a tendril for their own purposes or if there is a foreign species on the world surface that has a cult infestation that draws the Tyranids to the planet, but this final point is still one of circumstance, rather than Tyranids actually favouring or avoiding necrons.

Tristanleo wrote:
I always saw Tyranid "Avoidance" of necrons less to do with any actual ingrained aversion and more due to circumstance. The only way a Tyranid fleet ever actually crosses a Necron planet is if they attempt to consume it in the wake of a greater prize. Necron's cannot be infested by Genestealers due to the lack of a biological body so the only engagements likely to occur is the harvesting of a necron planet by chance as the fleet moves on a more prosperous feeding ground, if Necron's actually decide to engage a tendril for their own purposes or if there is a foreign species on the world surface that has a cult infestation that draws the Tyranids to the planet, but this final point is still one of circumstance, rather than Tyranids actually favouring or avoiding necrons.

That’s normally how it works, but in the Red Scar region of the galaxy the Tyranids built up a huge fleet entirely to smash a stronghold of the Imperium (Baal and the Sanguinius bloodline) despite it being a toxic wasteland which would have been just as sensible to avoid in terms of biomass spent vs biomass gained. The Tyranids could simply be waiting for the right time to smash the Necron empires when they have enough biomass to be sure of victory even in the face of the various Necron advantages.

bibotot wrote:
Stop pointing out because the Necrons have no biomass, the Tyranids won't eat them. It makes very little sense that way. Eldar Craftworlds have very little biomass since the whole planet is made of not-so-edible Wraithbone and the Tyranids still go after them. Fauna and flora only consist of a small portion of total biomass available on a planet. The Tyranids devour land and water until the planet is a dried, barren piece of rock. If a Necron Tomb World still have those, the Tyranids will still come and eat them. The inhabitants matter very little. The only exceptions are Chaos because the biomass might be tainted to the point the Tyranids would have to evolve further to even start to chew and Orks whose worlds are so overpopulated (there are overall more Orks than any other race, but they hold one-tenth worlds as the Imperium) that they might actually account for a larger portion of the total biomass available.

This also means that Tyranids prefer eating worlds unpopulated by intelligent species since they will encounter less resistance there.

Tyranids have fought Necrons before. Just look at the infamous Blood Angels/Necrons team up. But as long as the planet has enough biomass and resources on them should lure the Tyranids, sentient biology or not. So yeah they probably should stop off at every tomb world with biomass and resources. But I think GW just doesn't really focus on them. But as jhe90 points out, taking a Necron world will involve losing biomass through casualties, but yields less reward than say a human world. So it could simply be a case of the Hivemind doing a cost benefit analysis and aiming for maximum net increase in biomass. We just don't read about it.

Tristanleo also makes a good point that Genestealer cults play a big part of Tyranid invasions and the Necrons would be immune to that, which is probably another factor why they are less attacked. If you want macro meta reasons it's probably because GW doesn't tend to do Xenos vs Xenos wars as much as those that involve the Imperium or Chaos.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Just a thought but what if Tyrannid navigation is psychic - being the shadow in the Warp and all - and the Necrons simply don't show up to them because they're nulls, all the advance forces like Genestealer Cults just see black holes when they try to look at Necron Tomb Worlds.

It is. The Horus Heresy novel Pharos covers this.

Big E caused everything to go wrong confirmed.

 Duskweaver wrote:
Please stop trying to make sense of the Tyranids from a how-biology-really-works standpoint, because nothing about them works (for a start, just try comparing the energy densities of living tissue and rocket fuel, then ask how they can ever get anything off a planet's surface). 40K is a fantasy setting, not sci-fi. It's Spelljammer with the grimdark turned up. It's not Asimov.

Tyranids avoid Necron tomb worlds because a wizard cryptek did it, not because of some logical real-world-biology reason.

Nids use space elevators. The send down huge tendrils to suck up pooled biomass.

If they ever wanted to get a whole section of biomass from ground into space they could either use psychic powers, or make biological helium balloons.

I mean, I'll crack a crawfish open and eat the tiny bit amount of meat in it before I start chewing on tin cans... Hell, I'll eat a mushroom or two before trying out a burned rock.

Seems like like... which restaurant would you go to? The one that burned down last week, or that one across the highway that is open and just busy enough to show that the food is good? Sure, there might be a rat you could kill in the burned down one, maybe even a hobo for some good old cannibalism! Or you could get a rib rack across the highway.

It's not so much that there's effort above normal involved, it's more that the Nids might lose way more biomass than they'd gain in trying. moreso even that just waiting for the next planet. It's more like being offered "one apple if you lift a few thousand heavy objects and put them over there" versus, "there's a plate of spaghetti half a mile down the road"

The Tyranids make no sense.

They'd be better off eating the CHNOPS from a nebula and never touching a planet ever.

They just don't make sense.