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How 'bout Arby's?
5 sandwhich's for 5 bucks.

^^ thanks!

right... now I need a plane ticket to the US, an empty suitcase, and approximately....



...



...


$7,090,002,120,005....

Any ideas on how I can get the cash? And no, I will not rob a bank or become a rent-boy....

Deathbot wrote:

metallifan wrote:

sniperjolly wrote:with this whole net conservation of biomass thing, woulden't macragge be bueried in about five thousand feet of corpses? an entire hive fleet almost entirely destroyed on one planet has got to leave a LOT of leftovers, an entire sector or more of biomass piled in a gently steaming heap would leave maccragge the most lush planet in the galaxy, and a prime target for another hive fleet, almost doubling it's size.

Erm... You realize how long ago the Tyrannic Wars on Maccragge were, right?

So? Unless the Imperium moved the corpses off-planet before they rotted, all the biomass will still be there. Remember that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes forms.

Best fertilizer EVAR!

Deathbot wrote:So? Unless the Imperium moved the corpses off-planet before they rotted, all the biomass will still be there. Remember that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes forms.

Nah I think that might be energy.

oggers wrote:

Deathbot wrote:So? Unless the Imperium moved the corpses off-planet before they rotted, all the biomass will still be there. Remember that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes forms.

Nah I think that might be energy.

matter is energy fool
E=MC^2

corpsesarefun wrote:

oggers wrote:

Deathbot wrote:So? Unless the Imperium moved the corpses off-planet before they rotted, all the biomass will still be there. Remember that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes forms.

Nah I think that might be energy.

matter is energy fool
E=MC^2

M=E/C^2

It's and equation as long as you have the corect components you can mix them up a few ways so both of yours are correct.

Many races are resistant to viruses and spores.

The Imperium has filters, helmets, some pretty advanced medical equipment, bunkers, shields, enclosed vehicles, and all that jazz.

The Eldar have what are presumably extremely advanced helmets and medical equipment. The Tau are in the same boat.

Orks have natural resistance to all disease and most poisons as part of their engineering. They don't really need filters because of this.

Necrons obviously don't breathe.

Additionally, orbital bombardment either requires the Hive Fleet to be expending biomass and energy (spores, new viruses) or a lot of energy (throwing asteroids). Furthermore the Hive Fleet is in more danger the longer it tries to take a planet; the shadow in the warp will be noticed and whoever is interested in the planet will soon show up to retake it. Tyranid space capabilities are far inferior to their ground capabilities, they want to take as much of the fight to the ground if they can.

They are all part of the same digestive system. You have bacterial fauna in your stomach that help you break down certain chemicals your body can't use on its own. Same thing with a hive fleet. Have you ever seen a starfish eat something? I extrudes its guts all over the target organism and sucks it all back up again. Now imagine the same process but with a hive ship. Most of them are too large to land on a planet and take off again, so they puke up all of the necessary digestive agents onto the planet from orbit, including the assault organisms, to start the process. If they didn't it would be fairly easy for orbital defenses and anti-ship emplacements to kill them from the ground without letting them ever reach the desired resources, so that initial mix of digestive materials includes a severely large proportion of warrior-organisms to quiet any potentially fatal resistance. Other creatures like Lictors and Genestealers act like clusters of sensory cells that help the hive mind decide where it needs to send it's "parts"

When trying to understand why a hive fleet may take a particular action, it's best to think of it as one super organism with each individual cell developed into a full blown animal, rather than a collection of animals that think together. It's a macro-organism like ant hives and termite nests.

Railguns wrote:They are all part of the same digestive system. You have bacterial fauna in your stomach that help you break down certain chemicals your body can't use on its own. Same thing with a hive fleet..

<nitpick> Very few beneficial bacterium reside within the Stomach. The majority reside within the Small Intestinal Tract. </nitpick>

And in yogurt, according to TV.

No, according to the telly they have cut antibiotics and most helpful bacteria from certain dairy products

Things like Actimel are all a scam anyway as any sort of benefit is killed off by the stomach.

WTF Gwar!?! You joined this year but you have 7550 posts!

Just to make things clear, matter can be turned into energy fairly easily without destroying it. It is called combustion.

Here's the plan: they should build a system of power plants designed solely to burn tyranid corpses, like a coal plant, just much, much cheaper.

Fertilizer works too...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I should clear that up a little with matter = organic matter.

I don't see why Tyranids can't just suck up the ash and convert it to something useful, if they are already converting every useful atom on an entire planet into a nice, acidic soup.

I said stomach, but you get the idea.

Railguns wrote:I don't see why Tyranids can't just suck up the ash and convert it to something useful, if they are already converting every useful atom on an entire planet into a nice, acidic soup.

I said stomach, but you get the idea.

Take a Lump Of Wood. Now Burn it.

Now take the Ashes and Burn them again. See, it's a Lot Harder.

Also Nids need DNA, fresh DNA to help them Experiment and Splice and make new grubbins (Like how Zoanthropes are allegedly from Eldar DNA, Biovores from Ork and Tyrant Guard from Space Marine). Turning all that DNA to ash is not a good Idea.

It may be useful in some regards, but I doubt it would be as useful as consuming actual biomass. It's one thing to eat carbon and water, it's another to eat meat and vegetables.

Not that they would intentionally ash things, but if they encounter enough volcanic planets and enemies that render significant portions of what was needed materials into ash they may find a way to use it, being the hyper evolving super-organism they are. You'd think that if enough of their creatures were surviving Exterminatus, like the codex states is happening, then perhaps they'd find a way to use it to their advantage if it becomes a prevalent enough problem.
Edit: DNA is valuable and a desired resource, but they are primarily shaking down planets for their natural resources and elements necessary for the continued life and development of the hive. If they could find a biological niche to fill with ash that was a win-win situation I'm sure they'd evolve a way to take advantage of it.

SilverMK2 wrote:Because you can't have a game where one side deploys and the 'nid player just looks them in the eye and says "We release spores into the atmosphere which kill all your soldiers and turns them into yummy soup".

Mostly because it means that GW can't sell any tyranid models, but also because it would mean that there would be very little point have tyranids as a playable race if they had no ground troops

This is the obvious answer folks, but feel free to stuff your fluff in here anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

penut the butter wrote:WTF Gwar!?! You joined this year but you have 7550 posts!

I nominate GWAR as the next playable race in 40K, he's like the Borg and his posts seem to be increasing exponentially; it's scary.

The fluff is molded to suit the needs of the game.

Why do I feel this discussion is a big "which came first, the chicken or the squig" sort of thing...

Fearspect wrote:Just to make things clear, matter can be turned into energy fairly easily without destroying it. It is called combustion.

Somewhere in the world, a chemist is crying.

Blaznak wrote:Why do I feel this discussion is a big "which came first, the chicken or the squig" sort of thing...

Well, in this case the fact that the game represents ground combat between armies of from 20 to 200 roughly human-sized soldiers came along before the detailed fluff on the invasion process of the Tyranid fleets was written.

Raxmei wrote:

Fearspect wrote:Just to make things clear, matter can be turned into energy fairly easily without destroying it. It is called combustion.

Somewhere in the world, a chemist is crying.

Doubtful, as he probably has the ability to read an entire post...

Blaznak wrote:Why do I feel this discussion is a big "which came first, the chicken or the squig" sort of thing...

A circle has no beginnig.

Chicken. . . Squig. . .

Circle?

lolwut?

Besides. Everything tastes better when its fresh.

Yup!

Fearspect wrote:

Raxmei wrote:

Fearspect wrote:Just to make things clear, matter can be turned into energy fairly easily without destroying it. It is called combustion.

Somewhere in the world, a chemist is crying.

Doubtful, as he probably has the ability to read an entire post...

Almost as bad was earlier when some bright spark had the idea that nuking things would cause them to turn into energy themselves. About one step removed in the idiocy chain.

Nid fluff on the whole is problematic. Even more than most 40k fluff, it doesn't even come close to making sense, or working, mostly because it doesn't rely on hand-wavvium, it tries to use actual science to explain stuff. FAIL.

They derive all their energy from digesting crap. From releasing the potiential energy in chemical bonds. That is so incredibly weak sauce. It wouldn't even begin to cover a tiny, minute fraction of their immense power demands, just for planetary invasion, much less intergalactic travel. Imagine trying to run your automobile on burgers. You couldn't do it, the amount of power you liberate from the burger by digesting it is tiny in comparison to the amount of power it took to create the burger in the first place.

How do they travel from planet to planet? Someone mentioned 'sling shotting of dark matter' or some other tripe like that. Even if that was for a minute possible (IE there were aggregations of dark matter large enough for a large fleet of warships to use to jump to another uncharted galaxy with high precision), how would they stop when they got where they wanted to go? Burger power isn't going to give you the sort of juice you need for that kind of operation.

The problem with power destroys Nid fluff. They can't possibly have enough to mount invasions, and even if they did, why would they since they would only be acquiring stuff that isn't particularly useful. Do you really need hundreds of billions of tons of silicate? No, but they take it in every invasion. I could see taking water, air, fissible materials, and raw materials, but the whole 'strip everything bare and then travel through space on burger power' angle makes me want to slam a background writers head in a science book until it starts making wet sounds.