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Simple Question about these guys: How do they get from planet to planet??? Or do they just stay at one planet for there entire life? Answers would be much appreciated

In a nutshell: By using the Hive Ships. After an invasion everything is rendered into biomas goo, absorbed by the ships and remade into new nids. From there they sail throuhg the void to new planets.

Wow how resourceful.

Storm Lord wrote:In a nutshell: By using the Hive Ships. After an invasion everything is rendered into biomas goo, absorbed by the ships and remade into new nids. From there they sail throuhg the void to new planets.

This. Gigantic hive ships bascially have capilliary tubes to drink up all the processed biomass from the organic and mineral matter of the crust and the atmosphere. Hive fleets aren't fast at travelling but are like unstoppable waves. Taking usually the majority of a sectors fleet + astartes + merchant vessel conscripts to fight off an established fleet. Of course if they get defeated the remains of the fleet split off and form new splinter fleets. As long as there are hive ships + synapse creatures and biomass to feed off. The splinter fleet will begin growing again.

Tyranids are that big? And who pilots these giant fleets??

Hive ships are a tyranid creature themselves. They act as a sort of parent creature for the Tyranids, and they assimilate the biomass of planets. They are rumored to have been void whales that came to close to the tyranid's home world and was taken over by the hive mind.

There are also different species of hive ships, some are transports that create huge amounts of Tyranid creatures, some have jaws to crush other ships. The most important one is the narvhal which manipulates gravity to travel near the speed of light, towing the fleet behind it.

ironhand45 wrote:Tyranids are that big? And who pilots these giant fleets??

No one, the hive ships are just giant tyranid creatures that either store or create the smaller tyranids.

Im losing my mind!

to the hivemind? It can do that too.

ironhand45 wrote:Im losing my mind!

And now you know why the lowly Imperial Guardsmen usually cry themselves to sleep.

"So we kill them, and then they eat the corpses, and make new things for us to kill. And after they get tired of being killed, they tend to evolve to counter our attacks. And even if we survive, the atmosphere is going to be so poisened that we choke to death. And after that, the entire planet is covered is one huge massive swarm of rippers, who then throw themselves into acid pools, so the bigger hive ships can basically drink the planet dry like it was damn slurpy!!!1! That it, ritual suicide is the only correct answer."

I drink your planet! I drink it up!

Freakin' 'nid magic! That's how.

Storm Lord wrote:In a nutshell: By using the Hive Ships. After an invasion everything is rendered into biomas goo, absorbed by the ships and remade into new nids. From there they sail throuhg the void to new planets.

qft. Also, they do NOT use warp transportation. They literally just float through space. This is basically impossible (as it would take millions of years to get even close to another system), but 40k is weird like that

The Hive Fleets are guided by a Narvhal, a specialised hive ship that is able to detect, at massive distances, a planetary system and is able to use the gravity of that system to create a 'compressed-space transit corridor' that the rest of the fleet travels through in order to cross space swiftly.

Actually, since they use gravity, they don't float through space, but fall through it, near the speed of light.

Since there is no up or down in space they cannot 'fall', any object travelling through space can be said to be going up, down or sideways relative to the position of the observer.

Since Hive Ships move under their own power it still wouldn't be accurate to describe their movement as floating, suffice it to say, they travel through space.

"Falling" is gravity pulling on you, they are falling towards their next destination.

Except that the Tyranids are moving under their own power, they are not in free fall, moving only because the force of gravity is acting upon them. The Narvhal uses gravimetric forces to create a compressed-space transit corridor through which the fleet flies and hence they do not 'fall'.

Samus_aran115 wrote:

Storm Lord wrote:In a nutshell: By using the Hive Ships. After an invasion everything is rendered into biomas goo, absorbed by the ships and remade into new nids. From there they sail throuhg the void to new planets.

qft. Also, they do NOT use warp transportation. They literally just float through space. This is basically impossible (as it would take millions of years to get even close to another system), but 40k is weird like that

No, they use the The Narvhal!
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/319519.page

thats how you cripple a fleet, kill the narvhal. Im sure they would just create a new one but it would buy time no? If I was in command of a fleet I would aim for that thing first. This would stop a retreat to a new world to subjugate.

I think everything is replaceble but the Hive Ship.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I think everything is replaceble but the Hive Ship.

Hive ships are replaceable too, check out what happened in the Octavius sector (iirc).

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I think everything is replaceble but the Hive Ship.

Nope, Tyranids can replace their Hive Ships with little effort. They are "just another Tyranid" in the grand scheme of things. Of course, the biomass required to grow a large Hive Ship is extreme, but it's nothing out of the ordinary in the long run. When critical Hive Ships/Norn Queens are killed, the rest of them calf as a response to the threat. When a world has been consumed, the majority of the ships calf there and then as well. Finally, Tyranids can produce new ships on the surface of a world and leave a planet they were otherwise stranded on (this is what happened after they attacked and consumed the Ork world Ghorala, despite being annihilated in space and reduced to seriously out-numbered ground forces at one point).

Heck, the Anphellion project campaign documents the Tyranids developing a complete swarm with everything up to Bio-Titans when all they started with was a few broods of gaunts living in captivity.

All of this the Tyranids can accomplish in a few months - other races would spend generations. The only other race in the setting capable of that is the Orks, and even they are a lot more situational in what they can/do actually accomplish. This i something we don't see very often because of the usual Tyranid tactic of smashing worlds with over-powering force, but make no mistake they are going to be as har,d if not harder than the Orks to purge once they're in (and the Orks have endured for what, sixty five million years give or take a galactic apocalypse or two?).

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I think everything is replaceble but the Hive Ship.

Any hive ship is expendable as long as enough synapse creatures exist within the fleet to keep the hive fleet together. Everything else can be replaced. If they lose their synapse creatures they lose coherency. As what happened to hive fleet Gorgon.

Any hive ship is expendable as long as enough synapse creatures exist within the fleet to keep the hive fleet together. Everything else can be replaced. If they lose their synapse creatures they lose coherency. As what happened to hive fleet Gorgon.

Im not so sure about the synapse thing, there have been multiple occasions when mere gaunts reproduced to create a descent sized attack force. Synapse beasts and everything.

So basically if mommy 'nid gets nailed, someother big 'nid poops out a new mommy, simples . "yawn" yad yad yad, the thing about 'nids is that really piss off the Chaos Spawn something rotten. The Chaos gods must have a plan for these beasties or else they will consume their fan base and no fanatics / cultists = a life stuck in the warp which is worse than being locked in a Walmart overnight, by a considerable margin. Just like the A-teams Hannibal Smith, Tzeentch has a plan

Well maybe the hive mind resides in the warp, and the forces of chaos will destroy it to halt the tyranid.

Not exactly, it effects the warp and warp users, but does not reside within the warp.

Mustela wrote:Hive ships are a tyranid creature themselves. They act as a sort of parent creature for the Tyranids, and they assimilate the biomass of planets. They are rumored to have been void whales that came to close to the tyranid's home world and was taken over by the hive mind.

Aside from fan speculation, not at all. They're from another galaxy, not ours.

xXSir MontyXx wrote:Well maybe the hive mind resides in the warp, and the forces of chaos will destroy it to halt the tyranid.

The Hive Mind is the collective conciousness of the entire Tyranid race. Anything within range of synapse creatures would be pretty immune to the machinations of warp entities.