Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

SgtSixkilla wrote:Unsure if this has been said before, but 'Nids don't eat non-biological matter. That's why it's called BIO-mass.

This is 4th ed fluff from GW's website. While an edition old, new fluff doesn't dispute it. note that it mentioned that minerals are consumed. They literally eat the planet down to the bedrock.

Lord Commanders,

I bring you grave news. The threat we face may be far more vast than we ever dreamed. Technical analysis of Dalki-Prime pre Tyranid consumption survey information when cross-referenced with the data from Dalki-Mons post Tyranid consumption shows some startling information.

Dalki-Prime was an agricultural planet with a diameter of 12,500 km, slightly smaller than Terra. The Tyranid fleet was able to remove the following quantities of material from the planet within 100 days [Terran Standard].

1.55 billion cubic km water, one cubic km of sea water weighs over 1 trillion kg.
8.67 billion cubic km gases, at STP theoretically they could reduce this to 1 tenth its volume by super cooling and pressure (3 atm, and 0ºC).
72 million cubic km soil and minerals, weighing 1.4 trillion kg per cubic km.

It is nearly inconceivable how they were able to accomplish this in such a short time, much less explain where the materials were taken, as the typical hive fleets encountered historically are not capable of transporting even a fraction of this volume. Over 10 billion cubic kilometres of material was removed from the planet. This would require untold millions of ships and is far beyond the scope of the entire Adeptus Mechanicus to accomplish given a decade. Most astonishing is that this is insufficient to sate their hunger and they strike again and again, often within months. We must somehow determine if these fleets are somehow sending material back to their home systems for it seems obvious that they are not using all the materials.

Detailed analysis of devastated worlds have yielded the following data in conjunction with orbital surveillance satellite and data recordings which were recovered.

Magos Biologis Salk,
Draco Legion Biomedical Research station, New Hallefuss

-Loki- wrote:

SgtSixkilla wrote:Unsure if this has been said before, but 'Nids don't eat non-biological matter. That's why it's called BIO-mass.

This is 4th ed fluff from GW's website. While an edition old, new fluff doesn't dispute it. note that it mentioned that minerals are consumed. They literally eat the planet down to the bedrock.

Bold for emphasis. That means down TO the bedrock.

-Loki- wrote:

Lord Commanders,

I bring you grave news. The threat we face may be far more vast than we ever dreamed. Technical analysis of Dalki-Prime pre Tyranid consumption survey information when cross-referenced with the data from Dalki-Mons post Tyranid consumption shows some startling information.

Dalki-Prime was an agricultural planet with a diameter of 12,500 km, slightly smaller than Terra. The Tyranid fleet was able to remove the following quantities of material from the planet within 100 days [Terran Standard].

1.55 billion cubic km water, one cubic km of sea water weighs over 1 trillion kg.
8.67 billion cubic km gases, at STP theoretically they could reduce this to 1 tenth its volume by super cooling and pressure (3 atm, and 0ºC).
72 million cubic km soil and minerals, weighing 1.4 trillion kg per cubic km.

It is nearly inconceivable how they were able to accomplish this in such a short time, much less explain where the materials were taken, as the typical hive fleets encountered historically are not capable of transporting even a fraction of this volume. Over 10 billion cubic kilometres of material was removed from the planet. This would require untold millions of ships and is far beyond the scope of the entire Adeptus Mechanicus to accomplish given a decade. Most astonishing is that this is insufficient to sate their hunger and they strike again and again, often within months. We must somehow determine if these fleets are somehow sending material back to their home systems for it seems obvious that they are not using all the materials.

Detailed analysis of devastated worlds have yielded the following data in conjunction with orbital surveillance satellite and data recordings which were recovered.

Magos Biologis Salk,
Draco Legion Biomedical Research station, New Hallefuss

Again, bold for emphasis. Also, soil is mostly decomposed bio-mass, which is how plants can feed on it. The mineral part might just be ignorance on the part of the author, because everywhere I've seen it mentioned, it says that the 'nids leave the planets as barren husks of rock. Which means they don't eat rocks.

I notice a lot of people saying that tyranids can create their own DNA but as far as I've read in the fluff (if someone can quote me a page I'll accept I'm wrong) they don't create, they move like legos. By that logic, they'd need the lego bricks to move them in the first place...they don't create new dna, they adapt the dna they have catalogued to suit their needs. The prime example is the tyrant guard, who clearly have the same fused rib bone plate as the space marines they've killed. They adopt new genes that suit their uses, like the Borg in Star Trek, they don't just make new stuff. I.e., they're moving lego blocks, not melting them down into plastic and pouring them in a mold to make something new of plastic. Also, the reason they kill worlds is survival. To quote the Gah Lak Tus miniseries from the ultimates "Space is big, it takes a lot of energy moving that distance". They grab biofuels to revitalize their engines. As to the spore idea, so far only venomthropes and malanthropes have been witnessed producing those sorts of pathogens, and only on a small scale (compare to the size of a planet) it'd take millions of those creatures to generate the proper miasma (just like earth's atmosphere took millions of years to evolve into our breathable atmo from the volcanic smog it once was, changing the atmosphere takes a massive effort) Thus to prevent defenders from killing the thropes they need defensive forces, which they evolve like starcraft units to counter their opposing forces. Finally, they do subjugate worlds, that's what genestealer broods are for. They arrive from deep orbit (usually while the fleet's busy trucking along in space) to help subjugate the populace and make it so the planet has fewer defenses. From a logistcal standpoint, if you can accept worlds being overrun by orks in the span of months, its entirely feasable for nids to consume how they do. Sure they might have a massive sumthing or other, but even in the fluff a giant spacewale is slow, as slow as a hive ship, and even if it could consume whole planets it'd be one easily killed organism (compare battlefleet gothic to a spacewale. If the fleet can destroy a planet it can sure as hell kill one planet eater). By spreading out the swarm allows splinter actions, making it all the more difficult to eradicate, like a lizard evolving to lose its tail and survive. By being spread out, in the even of a defeat the individual organs and cells of the fleet can scatter, essentially like metasticized cancer. (probably spelled that wrong)

SgtSixkilla wrote:Again, bold for emphasis. Also, soil is mostly decomposed bio-mass, which is how plants can feed on it. The mineral part might just be ignorance on the part of the author, because everywhere I've seen it mentioned, it says that the 'nids leave the planets as barren husks of rock. Which means they don't eat rocks.

I always got the impression it was due to the destabilization of the crust. When the seas are finally removed, the planets crust would be destabilized and the surface would be an uninhabitable, volcanic mess.

Also, wether or not it was ignorance on the part of the author matters little - it was approved by GW and made public. They take the minerals.

Well. There's a single (outdated) mention of them eating minerals, but more mentions of them not eating it than I can remember. It's more likely that GW didn't have a clear picture about what "minerals" mean, than that all those other references (which are also all GW approved) are lying/wrong. They don't take the minerals.

That's the thing - GW fluff is basically 'valid until retconned'. This was never retconned. It's never been mentioned again, but that's not retconning. It's just not mentioning it. It's also the only solid bit of fluff regarding Phase 5 of the consumption of a world.

Again, wether or not they have a clear idea of what 'minerals' means doesn't stop it being written and posted on their site as official fluff.

But EVERY other official source (recorded after 4th ed.) where this is mentioned, says they leave the planet as a rocky husk. Which means they leave the rocks.

SgtSixkilla wrote:But EVERY other official source (recorded after 4th ed.) where this is mentioned, says they leave the planet as a rocky husk. Which means they leave the rocks.

Not disputing this. but it's very open to interpretation. it's possible to remove the minerals they need and still leave a rocky husk. In fact, that's what would happen. remove the minerals needed, remove the oceans, planet becomes an unstable, rocky, volcanic husk.

An outright retcon is like Ultramarines being a successor chapter to the original Ultramarines chapter that fell to Chaos. Which is how it was in Rogue Trader, but changed to them being a first founding legion in 2nd edition.

-Loki- wrote: An outright retcon is like Ultramarines being a successor chapter to the original Ultramarines chapter that fell to Chaos. Which is how it was in Rogue Trader, but changed to them being a first founding legion in 2nd edition.

I don't see the difference between the two. In your example, one source says something, a different source says something else. In mine, one source says something, a different source says something else. Aside from this, I believe we're in accord, since minerals and rocks are two distinctly different things.

Other sources say a barren husk of a planet was left.

This article just mentions what exactly was taken. Again, it's possible to remove easily reachable mineral that they need, and still leaving a barren surface.

Edit - Not to mention Hive Ships are described as having stone-like armour.

FourCartridge wrote:I recently played a flash game(Tasty Planet, if you're wondering), where you play play a glob of grey goo that eats planets wholesale. This got me thinking; Why don't the Tyranids do the same? Why do they bother with silly planetary invasions if their motivation is hunger?

Really the fluff is just bad. Done by someone who doesnt have a strong science back ground. Most of the earth's crust and mantle is made of granite which is mostly SiO2 which is biomass. They would eat everything down to the iron nickel core. They might even eat that.

It could be that the nids are incapable of making amino acids and that they need Organic material. Most animals cannot make ammino acids. Humans cant for instance, we need some intake of protein or we will die. If this was the case though they would leave more than just the rock, they would leave a lot of the excess dirt, fiber, and water around. Perhaps they strip everything off the planet and then process it in space separating the wheat from the chaff. That makes a lot more sense, but it would seem to be fairly crippling that the nids cant make their own amino acids. Perhaps they can but it just takes too much time and they want to move on faster and without wasting resources farming.

Clarifying the amino acids, animals (and humans) can still make some of those, just not all of them. Same applies to just about everything. The tyranids, having taken DNA from working ecosystem, would posess all genes necessary to produce any amino acids and other necessary molecules from scratch. This, however, is NOT efficient. Why else would we waste our time not doing so. Tyranids need energy, which is gained in large amounts only from biomass.

I think that the reason Tyranids leave the soil (and hard to reach minerals) behind is that it takes more energy to extract them and convert them to biomass than just going to the next planet and eating all biomass there. Biological matter is far easier to digest and break down to substances that provide energy. Tyranids do, after all, have to live the time that it takes for interstellar travel. I think that their ships are capable of photosynthesis or some other means of making nutrients (glucose) to live with. This would also explain why the atmosphere and oceans are taken as well. Those two, along with minerals from soil would provide raw materials for creation of nutrients during their journey to the next world. Also, although space does contain particles that can be used for creating these, they are not found in sufficient amounts to support even bacteria, let alone fleets of hive ships.