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I know the Tyranids have a hive mind mentality, but how smart are Hive Tyrants? Do they have cunning animal intelligence i.e. raptors or crows or are they actually smart enough to think like humans and form tactics?

Hive Tyrants are field tacticians and strategists. They probably are highly incapable in areas like philosophy and they do vary significantly but they seem to be viciously intelligent for battlefield purposes.

Intelligence isn't a straight progression. More intelligence does not mean more human-like.

A Hive Tyrant's individual intelligence is probably quite similar to a supercomputer designed specifically to think tactically, backed up by the massive calculating power and knowledge base of the "cloud computing" Hive Mind. The Swarmlord has an even greater capacity for individual intelligence.

A Hormagaunt or Carnifex are about as smart as a dog. Creatures like Genestealers and Lictors are smarter than humans (but that does not mean they think like humans do), while the forms of leader-beast get more and more intelligent up the chain. Warriors are very smart, a Prime is smarter, and a Hive Tyrant smarter still. Zoanthropes are extraordinarily intelligent, too. The main intelligence of the Hive Mind comes from the sheer number of individually dumb creatures.

This raises an interesting question about the Trygon, though. A Trygon Prime isn't fundamentally different to a non-Prime. Are Trygon Primes even intelligent, or are they just Synapse nodes? If they are intelligent, are standard Trygons similarly so?

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Intelligence isn't a straight progression. More intelligence does not mean more human-like.

A Hive Tyrant's individual intelligence is probably quite similar to a supercomputer designed specifically to think tactically, backed up by the massive calculating power and knowledge base of the "cloud computing" Hive Mind. The Swarmlord has an even greater capacity for individual intelligence.

A Hormagaunt or Carnifex are about as smart as a dog. Creatures like Genestealers and Lictors are smarter than humans (but that does not mean they think like humans do), while the forms of leader-beast get more and more intelligent up the chain. Warriors are very smart, a Prime is smarter, and a Hive Tyrant smarter still. Zoanthropes are extraordinarily intelligent, too. The main intelligence of the Hive Mind comes from the sheer number of individually dumb creatures.

This raises an interesting question about the Trygon, though. A Trygon Prime isn't fundamentally different to a non-Prime. Are Trygon Primes even intelligent, or are they just Synapse nodes? If they are intelligent, are standard Trygons similarly so?

Right, but I was getting more at the war-like intelligence, which you answered. So can Hive Tyrants wage guerilla-warfare? I guess I'm just wondering how much intelligence they have in terms of thinkining tactically and being able to command decisions.

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Intelligence isn't a straight progression. More intelligence does not mean more human-like.

A Hive Tyrant's individual intelligence is probably quite similar to a supercomputer designed specifically to think tactically, backed up by the massive calculating power and knowledge base of the "cloud computing" Hive Mind. The Swarmlord has an even greater capacity for individual intelligence.

A Hormagaunt or Carnifex are about as smart as a dog. Creatures like Genestealers and Lictors are smarter than humans (but that does not mean they think like humans do), while the forms of leader-beast get more and more intelligent up the chain. Warriors are very smart, a Prime is smarter, and a Hive Tyrant smarter still. Zoanthropes are extraordinarily intelligent, too. The main intelligence of the Hive Mind comes from the sheer number of individually dumb creatures.

This raises an interesting question about the Trygon, though. A Trygon Prime isn't fundamentally different to a non-Prime. Are Trygon Primes even intelligent, or are they just Synapse nodes? If they are intelligent, are standard Trygons similarly so?

Right, but I was getting more at the war-like intelligence, which you answered. So can Hive Tyrants wage guerilla-warfare? I guess I'm just wondering how much intelligence they have in terms of thinkining tactically and being able to command decisions.

There are two ways a Hive Tyrant might come to excel at guerrilla warfare (as an example).

1) It accesses the Hive Mind's past experiences on guerrilla warfare and tries to implement the lessons learnt by others to the local situation.

2) It learns by trial and error, employing what works when it needs to. Given that Hive Tyrants are essentially immortal, a Hive Tyrant that faces guerrilla warfare from let's say... Catachans on a world may be respawned when the Hive Fleet faces Catachans on another world a hundred years on. I would imagine that a Hive Fleet has a catalog of Hive Tyrant minds it can employ depending on the situation, suiting each invasion force for the specifics of the war ahead (big advantage of sending down advance vanguard creatures there too). I would even like to think that this is how the Swarmlord got to where it is today; it is essentially just a very (very) old and experienced Hive Tyrant that has fought so many battles that it has mastered a vast number of forms of warfare.

I would imagine that 2) is slightly better than 1) in a pinch because 2) will simply know what to do, where as 1) has to download the knowledge and figure out how to apply it to the situation at hand.

It could also think of it logically. Swarms lacking a Hive Tyrant have shown the capacity for such tactical thinking, so a Hive Tyrant is more than capable of assessing a situation and deciding that what we would refer to as guerrilla tactics would be the most beneficial, even if it's never encountered this situation before.

It would, perhaps, be better to consider the Tyranids to be a form of idiot-savant. They are very, very good at one thing (warfare of some form)... but you would not ask one to perform art critique, or to perform long-form division.

They are tacticians. What makes them different is their lack of emotion, as a human commander might do something to stop the suffering of others, a hive tyrant wouldn't

 Psienesis wrote:
It would, perhaps, be better to consider the Tyranids to be a form of idiot-savant. They are very, very good at one thing (warfare of some form)... but you would not ask one to perform art critique, or to perform long-form division.

They're pretty much the same as computers. Mathematics is probably one of their strongest points.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
It would, perhaps, be better to consider the Tyranids to be a form of idiot-savant. They are very, very good at one thing (warfare of some form)... but you would not ask one to perform art critique, or to perform long-form division.

They're pretty much the same as computers. Mathematics is probably one of their strongest points.

Exactly, but just like computers, when emotion or logic becomes involved, or really anything that involves free thinking, they would fail

I'm not sure what you mean by lacking logic. Emotion is certainly not an asset, and logic is pretty much all they have.

I have adopted the thought process that tyranid hive mind is akin to borg and cylon. The collective knowledge is bestowed upon every re-birthed Hive Tyrant who has lived countless lives and learned millions of tiny little things through the lineage of the specific Hive Fleet it belongs to. So lets say War one, Tyranids have never encountered Predator tanks before. Get ROFL owned. War two the nids now know the destructive power of the Predator tank and that it needs to be dispatched ASAP as to not get ROFL owned.

I dont think it is capable of advance math or philosophy.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I dont think it is capable of advance math or philosophy.

advanced math being applied geometry with artillery, flight and fulcrums. Judging velocity and impact time when ramming things as well as battlefield tactics, pincer movments and other strategies employed by tyranids to om nom nom most things in their path (other than plot armor) suggest a very good grasp of both Philosophy and mathematics

"I eat therefore I am?"

or more like "I ate you, therefore you are not"

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by lacking logic. Emotion is certainly not an asset, and logic is pretty much all they have.

I'm assuming logic as in the form of logic puzzles

 Great White wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
It would, perhaps, be better to consider the Tyranids to be a form of idiot-savant. They are very, very good at one thing (warfare of some form)... but you would not ask one to perform art critique, or to perform long-form division.

They're pretty much the same as computers. Mathematics is probably one of their strongest points.

Exactly, but just like computers, when emotion or logic becomes involved, or really anything that involves free thinking, they would fail

Not exactly. While they lack emotion, they understand how it is useful at breaking the prey's morale and thus they are probably very good at psychoanalyzing their targets.

 Tyran wrote:

 Great White wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
It would, perhaps, be better to consider the Tyranids to be a form of idiot-savant. They are very, very good at one thing (warfare of some form)... but you would not ask one to perform art critique, or to perform long-form division.

They're pretty much the same as computers. Mathematics is probably one of their strongest points.

Exactly, but just like computers, when emotion or logic becomes involved, or really anything that involves free thinking, they would fail

Not exactly. While they lack emotion, they understand how it is useful at breaking the prey's morale and thus they are probably very good at psychoanalyzing their targets.

I guess I didn't think about it like that

Kavik_Whitescar wrote:
I have adopted the thought process that tyranid hive mind is akin to borg and cylon. The collective knowledge is bestowed upon every re-birthed Hive Tyrant who has lived countless lives and learned millions of tiny little things through the lineage of the specific Hive Fleet it belongs to. So lets say War one, Tyranids have never encountered Predator tanks before. Get ROFL owned. War two the nids now know the destructive power of the Predator tank and that it needs to be dispatched ASAP as to not get ROFL owned.

They could still make an educated guess as to the rough capabilities of a Predator in-battle. They don't know how to accurately predict how an unknown asset will be used, but they're still intelligent enough to adapt their strategies in the moment. I doubt a Hive Tyrant, when confronted with something the Tyranids have never seen before, simply loses all ability to deal with the situation.

@Great White: Logic puzzles? That's still just logic. That's kind of the point!

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

Kavik_Whitescar wrote:
I have adopted the thought process that tyranid hive mind is akin to borg and cylon. The collective knowledge is bestowed upon every re-birthed Hive Tyrant who has lived countless lives and learned millions of tiny little things through the lineage of the specific Hive Fleet it belongs to. So lets say War one, Tyranids have never encountered Predator tanks before. Get ROFL owned. War two the nids now know the destructive power of the Predator tank and that it needs to be dispatched ASAP as to not get ROFL owned.

They could still make an educated guess as to the rough capabilities of a Predator in-battle. They don't know how to accurately predict how an unknown asset will be used, but they're still intelligent enough to adapt their strategies in the moment. I doubt a Hive Tyrant, when confronted with something the Tyranids have never seen before, simply loses all ability to deal with the situation.

@Great White: Logic puzzles? That's still just logic. That's kind of the point!

Im not saying that in reality that's what would happen, but upon the discovery of something that Rofl owns that the next generation and every generation will then know about it

My imagining of the operations of the hive mind is rather odd, but it makes sense. The way I see it, the hive mind is the literal embodiment of the shared experience of every tyranid that has ever lived, simply living on through echoes within the shared link that Tyranids possess. A Tyrant may only have its own experiences as it is born again and again, but through the hive mind they are able to share those experiences, learning through each other. Without the hive mind, a Tyranid is just a hyper-evolved super predator with little in the way of a mind and occasional direction, unless it is a synaptic link to the hive mind and therefore able to influence the swarm around it. A tyrant will not be a direct puppet slave to it, but as has been said in the codexes before, it is fully self-aware and can make it's own choices. It won't follow an exact plan. The hive mind can say, "Get X done." and the Hive Tyrant has quite a bit of latitude to do it in the way it seems fit, even consulting other Tyrants. Here might be a prime example for just how intelligent they are, but also how limited it can be, depending on situation.

Chipped Carapace is leading a splinter fleet swarm on the world of Ghiji VII. As it crosses the continent, it finds the barely surviving remnants of another far older splinter fleet holding on in a few struggling basic lesser evolved feral tyranids running in packs. The shadow in the warp around these creatures is small, but it still exists. As it exerts influence over these creatures and brings them back into the hive mind, the synaptic links strengthen and what memories might be possessed by them can be transferred into the greater mind. And it just so happens that one of the things carried is the memories of the tyrant Broken Claw. Broken Claw, still alive through these memories but unable to act due to a lack of synaptic creatures around to enforce control, suddenly imports the last remaining days of its life, revealing a powerful DAOT relic capable of summoning moving walls of flame controlled by the local population to protect themselves, and how to recognize signs of it being used, how best to avoid it, etc, etc. And so now Chipped Carapace has important information, as well as an adjutant to advise it as it continues the devouring of the world. It will still have its own experiences, but it can learn rapidly through the shared knowledge of another tyrant.

The only way to stop something that can literally skype its way across time and space is to separate them and completely obliterate them. As the swarms move throughout the galaxy, the shadow grows larger. However, it can only grow to a certain extent around the Tyranid population. if you take a single population and let it split, it can continue to grow and share knowledge within itself as long as the bond remains strong. Spread it too thin or kill a section of the chain however, and you can have two separate hive fleets very easily as they lose contact with each other. If a fleet has relatively few Tyrants within it, you can actually hamper and lessen the effective combat strength by allowing it to theoretically ressurect all Hive Tyrants from limbo, and then separate them. At which point, because they only share on a need to know basis, rather than a communal basis because otherwise there would be far more than just the one Swarmlord, you have a much easier time overwhelming them.

Anyhow, just my thoughts.

Deathleaper is a perfect example of Tyranids being very capable of understanding and exploiting the psychology of their targets.

Indeed. Remember that hive tyrants are psykers and capable of telpath-type abilities such as 'The Horror' - which requires a reasonable understanding of how other species minds work.

Equally, Deathleaper's Mind-Eater warlord trait implies a reasonable understanding of human psychology, if only to be able to 'parse' the data so gleaned.

As to not being able to appreaciate art - we'll never know. Maybe some hive tyrants co-ordinate extremely aesthetically pleasing assaults, maouvring hormagaunt broods to the tune of "Swan Lake"....