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Hello.

Inspired by a fellow Dakkan some time ago in a thread (can't find it at the moment), I've finished up building a large Tyranid space fleet from like 5 pounds of 'Nid bitz I've accumulated over the years (which was an absolute blast!), and I'll be priming them shortly - but I've decided against painting them to match my bumblebee-style yellow and black ground forces because it wouldn't make sense in space having no environment to need to blend with. Makes sense right?

Looking at official GW art of Tyranid fleets, they're basically all in B&W. The ones that are in color are unofficial artists from the Deviant Art community and whatnot so the sources are not canon.

Knowing that Tyranids adapt the colors and traits of their organisms to suit their environment for maximum advantage, would a Tyranid space fleet be anything other than . . . a darker gray or just plain black? I suppose if the fleet spent a protracted period of time in a particular nebula or in the penumbra of a massive star long enough perhaps it would adjust its color but then again, why would they be hanging around for that long in the first place?

Thanks for any input, friends!

Pics of fleet just in case you are curious and want to do something with all your Nid bitz. I don't know much about Battlefleet Gothic because it was discontinued shortly after I became interested in it, but from my basic research, my fleet was designed to have the following:

6 Vanguard drone ships
5 Escort drone ships
2 Cruisers
2 Kraken
2 massive Hive ships

Nice looking fleet, but colour in space or deepspace it's pretty much irrelevant.

I mean the distances are so vast and the Light it's so lacking due lack of near light sources that you can make a starship the more noticeable colour in existence and it would run almost invisible unless it is pretty pretty close.

But yep a darker version of colours may suit fine.

The studio BFG fleet is green.

EDIT: See also: the cover of Battlefleet Gothic Magazine #5.

Hmm I see the studio fleet is green - surprising tbh. Thanks Damocles I hadn't seen that cover before, appreciate it.

Yes Lord Perv, I think I will just do a very dark scheme with some very basic bone-coloring on spiky/bladed parts simply by virtue of the nature of the organic material used to construct that part of the ship.

Galaxy print Tyranid fleet!!!!

That would look cool.. but aren't they sposed to reflect their surroundings in the way they look as well? To me I'd sorta always pictured like nondescript chunks of asteroid or something and that being what their fleet had camouflaged itself in.. like, they blend and take on the characteristics of whatever their surroundings are right? and since there are no life forms in vacuum I thought their fleet would look like a bunch of unorganized looming rocks drifting through the void.

Why would the Hive Flee try to blend in? They would want to attract prey.

 Gobbla wrote:
Why would the Hive Flee try to blend in? They would want to attract prey.

I think that if we go by Earth standards, there are far more predators who use camouflage to get close than there are ones covered in riotous colours.

Perhaps they would have markings to make it easier for the tinier ships to see where to swarm and which ships to protect should someone block the Hive's communications?

You could paint them like zebra stripes. Not necessarily black/white though. It’s a functional heard pattern. The idea is not to hide the whole group, but to make it difficult to pick out specific individuals or pats.

See also: crazy quilt or dazzle camouflage. Where the idea is not to hide, but break up the silhouette, making it hard to judge range or identify specifics.

Nevelon wrote:You could paint them like zebra stripes. Not necessarily black/white though. It’s a functional heard pattern. The idea is not to hide the whole group, but to make it difficult to pick out specific individuals or pats.

See also: crazy quilt or dazzle camouflage. Where the idea is not to hide, but break up the silhouette, making it hard to judge range or identify specifics.

That's VERY interesting and I think I might need to look into this . . . it could still allow me to mix yellow and gray to match my ground fleet which is basically yellow stripes/patterns over black.

firstborn83 wrote:Galaxy print Tyranid fleet!!!!

That would look cool.. but aren't they sposed to reflect their surroundings in the way they look as well? To me I'd sorta always pictured like nondescript chunks of asteroid or something and that being what their fleet had camouflaged itself in.. like, they blend and take on the characteristics of whatever their surroundings are right? and since there are no life forms in vacuum I thought their fleet would look like a bunch of unorganized looming rocks drifting through the void.

I was going to do a galaxy print to certain Tau units to experiment with my airbrush, but honestly I'm nowhere near skilled enough to pull it off yet. I still don't even have consistent mixing down yet. It will probably be some time before I could pull off clean spheres and then do neat nebulae/star patterns along with it. Someday it will be my turn to be good.

I'd go with the hive colour but very pale shades of it due to bleaching from various light source over the life of the fleet. Though as said theres no real reason for colour except to make it yours.

The last Tyranid Codex contains pictures of Hive Ships (mean looking things, like a cloud of giant space-eels with armoured plates and teeth) that sport the colours of their ground forces.

I guess the thing with the nids is they wouldn't be bothered about colour on there ships, so if the most recent biological material had a useful gene in it that they wanted to make use of but it turned the ship pick with lime green pokadots they would use it.

Having said that the head cannon I always had was that ships would all be slightly different colours based on the dominant minerals and genetic material of the planet they were created from