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TrollPie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:
But not out of fear or cowardice, but because they know that they would serve more use if they fall back. A good soldier knows when to retreat.

And retreating before the Tyranids is not actually a good idea.

There's a reason the Imperium holds the line as long as they can, and it's not pure stubbornness.

Programme them to be more reluctant to retreat. That's the advantage of Drones- they'll reliably follow any orders they're given.

Except when there's no one there controlling them.

But not to as high a standard as a regular biological life form like the Tau. A Drone will do what it's programmed to do, a Firewarrior will follow orders, but it's their decision making ability that makes a Drone useless as the main body of an army unless it's either an AI or has a significant amount of controller input, to the point where the Tau is telling it absolutely everything, so you might as well have that Tau do a better job himself.

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:
But not out of fear or cowardice, but because they know that they would serve more use if they fall back. A good soldier knows when to retreat.

And retreating before the Tyranids is not actually a good idea.

There's a reason the Imperium holds the line as long as they can, and it's not pure stubbornness.

Programme them to be more reluctant to retreat. That's the advantage of Drones- they'll reliably follow any orders they're given.

Except when there's no one there controlling them.

Except there's always someone controlling them. A Fire Caste Commander a hundred miles away sending them instructions would have just as much influence as a Fire Warrior a few feet away shouting at them. As soon as they leave the factory, you can give them programming to perform a certain mission and they'll do it. Programming that includes when and when not to retreat, what to aim at, where to go etc...

TrollPie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:
But not out of fear or cowardice, but because they know that they would serve more use if they fall back. A good soldier knows when to retreat.

And retreating before the Tyranids is not actually a good idea.

There's a reason the Imperium holds the line as long as they can, and it's not pure stubbornness.

Programme them to be more reluctant to retreat. That's the advantage of Drones- they'll reliably follow any orders they're given.

Except when there's no one there controlling them.

Except there's always someone controlling them. A Fire Caste Commander a hundred miles away sending them instructions would have just as much influence as a Fire Warrior a few feet away shouting at them. As soon as they leave the factory, you can give them programming to perform a certain mission and they'll do it. Programming that includes when and when not to retreat, what to aim at, where to go etc...

So that's why when they're outside of the range of a Drone Controller(mounted on a Crisis Suit or a Fire Caste Warrior's jewelry, whatever) they need to be networked with at least 4-5 other Drones.

Drones are not a solution.

iproxtaco wrote:

nomotog wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:It's because Tau armies are generally smaller, not because they're mostly machine.
And no, a Tau planet won't. Tau aren't noted for entrenching themselves, and wars of attrition are how Tyranid engagements are fought. They would fair much, much worse.

They are smaller and mostly mechanized. Every element in the tau (except kroot vespin) is a mechanized element.

Which generally means lot of small squads, and lots of vehicle pilots. The Tau's mechanization has little to do with it. Their forces are generally smaller, that's why.

Then there is two things. You don't actually have to engage in an attrition war with the nids. Actually such a war is the worst way to fight the nids. You will slowly grow weaker well they get stronger. To stop a nid fleet, you need to be fast deadly taking them out in a killing blow.

Oh yes, it is. You have to be strong, and hold the line. You can't rely solely on this, Tarsis Ultra is evidence enough, but a Tyranid swarm numbering in the tens of millions isn't going to be taken down by guerilla tactics and mechanized infantry.

The next thing, even though the tau codex says that the tau don't defend land or entrench. In stories, the tau are almost always entrenched. It's a disconnect between what they say and what they do. What version is right? Bugger if I know.

I don't know about almost always. A few times, yes, but there are plenty of instances where they follow the doctrine.

I don't know if i am explaining this right. Tau army mostly tech. Nids don't eat tech. Tau army has less to eat.

Guerrilla tactics is attrition. Again you do not want to fight a war of attrition with the nids.

Entrenching is part of the doctrine. It's the patent hunter side. You set up a trap and let the enemy fall into it. Farsight was good at this.

iproxtaco wrote:But not to as high a standard as a regular biological life form like the Tau. A Drone will do what it's programmed to do, a Firewarrior will follow orders, but it's their decision making ability that makes a Drone useless as the main body of an army unless it's either an AI or has a significant amount of controller input, to the point where the Tau is telling it absolutely everything, so you might as well have that Tau do a better job himself.

Drones have decision making ability. It sees an enemy convoy appraoching from the flank, it knows that the squad to the left has anti-tank weapons, it knows that the other squad needs a diversion if they are to get within range of the tanks, it knows that the squad to the right is vulnerable to the weapons they have, it knows that it isn't. So the Drone draws the convoy's fire- completely free from the fear that would cause a normal soldier to panic and retreat- while ordering the squad to the left to advance under their cover fire and destroy the convoy, as well as ordering the squad to the right to hold the infantry off while they do this and to stay in a building hidden from the convoy's view. All by taking in information and following it's programming. A normal squad would probably be too distracted by enemy fire to act rationally. It then gets orders from a Shas'o far from the fight to hold the line until reinforcements arrive and follows them to the letter.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:
But not out of fear or cowardice, but because they know that they would serve more use if they fall back. A good soldier knows when to retreat.

And retreating before the Tyranids is not actually a good idea.

There's a reason the Imperium holds the line as long as they can, and it's not pure stubbornness.

Programme them to be more reluctant to retreat. That's the advantage of Drones- they'll reliably follow any orders they're given.

Except when there's no one there controlling them.

Except there's always someone controlling them. A Fire Caste Commander a hundred miles away sending them instructions would have just as much influence as a Fire Warrior a few feet away shouting at them. As soon as they leave the factory, you can give them programming to perform a certain mission and they'll do it. Programming that includes when and when not to retreat, what to aim at, where to go etc...

So that's why when they're outside of the range of a Drone Controller(mounted on a Crisis Suit or a Fire Caste Warrior's jewelry, whatever) they need to be networked with at least 4-5 other Drones.

What's why? And the only time a Drone won't have 3 other Drones nearby is if something's gone badly wrong.

As I recall individual drones need some sort of organic guidance (EG from the tau) beyond certain specific tasks (like farming, manufacturing, surveillance, etc.) They can be joined to gether to form some sort of higher-intelligence network, but this doesnt mean they are neccesarily as capable as a normal human (Why that is, I dont know.) All we know is that they still use massive numbers of squishy organics to fight, so either they need to or they choose to, or it simply hasn't occured to them to switch to an all robot army. I suspect the last one is least likely, as the Tau, while naive, are not stupid and they do adapt.

Connor MacLeod wrote:As I recall individual drones need some sort of organic guidance (EG from the tau) beyond certain specific tasks (like farming, manufacturing, surveillance, etc.) They can be joined to gether to form some sort of higher-intelligence network, but this doesnt mean they are neccesarily as capable as a normal human (Why that is, I dont know.) All we know is that they still use massive numbers of squishy organics to fight, so either they need to or they choose to, or it simply hasn't occured to them to switch to an all robot army. I suspect the last one is least likely, as the Tau, while naive, are not stupid and they do adapt.

An all-Drone army would have less initiative and flexibility than an organic force. But when using an organic force would mean literally feeding the enemy they could switch to a majority-AI force.

nomotog wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:

nomotog wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:It's because Tau armies are generally smaller, not because they're mostly machine.
And no, a Tau planet won't. Tau aren't noted for entrenching themselves, and wars of attrition are how Tyranid engagements are fought. They would fair much, much worse.

They are smaller and mostly mechanized. Every element in the tau (except kroot vespin) is a mechanized element.

Which generally means lot of small squads, and lots of vehicle pilots. The Tau's mechanization has little to do with it. Their forces are generally smaller, that's why.

Then there is two things. You don't actually have to engage in an attrition war with the nids. Actually such a war is the worst way to fight the nids. You will slowly grow weaker well they get stronger. To stop a nid fleet, you need to be fast deadly taking them out in a killing blow.

Oh yes, it is. You have to be strong, and hold the line. You can't rely solely on this, Tarsis Ultra is evidence enough, but a Tyranid swarm numbering in the tens of millions isn't going to be taken down by guerilla tactics and mechanized infantry.

The next thing, even though the tau codex says that the tau don't defend land or entrench. In stories, the tau are almost always entrenched. It's a disconnect between what they say and what they do. What version is right? Bugger if I know.

I don't know about almost always. A few times, yes, but there are plenty of instances where they follow the doctrine.

I don't know if i am explaining this right. Tau army mostly tech. Nids don't eat tech. Tau army has less to eat.

I understand, I just think you're wrong.

Guerrilla tactics is attrition. Again you do not want to fight a war of attrition with the nids.

Different phrase then. Holding the line is the way Tyranids are fought. Mixing things up works if you hold the line somewhere else.

Entrenching is part of the doctrine. It's the patent hunter side. You set up a trap and let the enemy fall into it. Farsight was good at this.

That's laying a trap, not entrenching and holding a position. Tau don't like defending places, all their doctrines make the point of keeping mobile.

TrollPie wrote:
The population of 20 Earths is roughly 140 billion. The Tau have thirty well developed worlds and many small ones. Therefore the Tau Empire could easily number in the hundreds of billions, especially given their industrialised nature.

Like I said, imagined and made up numbers, not provided by GW.
Earth and TaU have nothing in common. So maybe you can't have drones doing all the work and claim lots of Tau because they are Sooo
industrialized. Either they use drones and don't need as many living creatures, or they are a lazy bunch that won't work and are not prepared to face the hardships of incoming tyranid invasions.

TrollPie wrote:
Tyranids eat the important planets and then the Empire crumbles? Well, since the Tau Empire's most important planets are all 1st Phase Sept worlds which are heavily industrialised and produce a large proportion of the Fire Caste, this will be no easy feat. The complete lack of importance that the Tau place on territory means that if they needed they would evacuate all of their endangered worlds and send their leaders to safer places anyway. Simply destroying their important planets isn't enough; you have to destroy every safe haven they have to ensure their leaders don't escape. Not to mention the Tyranids would have no way of knowing which Tau worlds are important anyway.

Last time I've checked, nids take all the biomass, thus worlds are bereft of life. Its a concept I personally deem weird as the mass they have to transport if they take 'everything' would be too much to move without spending extreme amounts of energy. But Gw wrote it so.
Nids were able to take iron warriors fortress worlds, so why should they even slow down against Tau who flee but can't escape because the nids encircled them? Threats don't play to 'your' tune, nids don't fight like any species in this Galaxy wants them to.
The map of the Tau empire doesn't hint at varied worlds, but on specialized worlds. Specialization is a double edged sword.

What happens if the 'pheromone control' thing is true and the nids find out and mimic it? Tau willingly sacrificing their biomass ?

TrollPie wrote:
Name one known Empire in 40k outside the Warp bigger than the Tau. I can only think of one.

Really?
The tau are just one of the species of this galaxy and you can't think of more than one empire bigger than theirs?
A start could be the BRB, as no alphabetical order could mean the xenos are listed per size and the Tau are not on N°1 there....

There'd be ways around that. Have the tau all deploy in either heavily shielded battlesuits, or placed within their various armoured vehicles, seveing as command and control nexus for various drones. We know they have good networking amidst the fire warriors (They can communicate, transmit visual and audio or even HUD information between themselves and vehicles, etc.) and you wouldn't have to even deploy infantry - all Tau would be drone/remote controllers, and I suspect if they ca make drones they could just make bigger drones to serve the function of tanks and battlesuits.

Kanluwen wrote:

Drones are not a solution.

It depends. There's the good point that drones would not supply biomass to a tyranid invasion force whereas "boots on the ground" would. For every tyranid that's killed by a drone, you make the tyranid force weaker whereas every drone destroyed supplies zero benefit to the tyranids.

I won't say that the tau would fare any better than any other faction vs. a full-blown hive invasion; just that their technology adequately compensates their lack of numbers. As someone else mentioned before, they wouldn't fare any better, just cope differently out of necessity.

As to the drone discussion. I think you would be well advised to go back and read the fluff on drones. IA:3 has drone sentry towers and drone defense turrets that have no controller within visible distance. They're programmed with FoF software and left to defend an area or provide intel in an area as per their programming. Also, they can't run so there's no chance of breaking and they can be dropped from ships. As for the group programming of drone squads; we all know what the effect of unbreakable drone squads would have in game terms so GW writers added the bit about a form of self-preservation being programmed into them. In reality, if I were manufacturing drones to fight a battle on a planet I knew didn't have Tau citizenry, in this case a Tyranid invaded planet that had been evacuated (as seems their standard protocol), I program them to kill everything and drop them en masse all over the planet. Even in today's age, software upgrades can be completed without a tech touching the piece of equipment, heck we can tell robots on mars what to do; I would hope that 40,000 years in the future they can do at least that much.

Again. Would the Tau live? Nope; just like every other faction. Heck, the IoM may have millions of worlds but if they just willy-nilly throw them away, they'll be as small as the Tau before long. Between exterminatus, cleansings, chaos invasions, tau poachings, ork invasions and the tyranids if GW advanced the storyline the IoM would be in as much hot water as everybody else.

1hadhq wrote:The tau are just one of the species of this galaxy and you can't think of more than one empire bigger than theirs?
A start could be the BRB, as no alphabetical order could mean the xenos are listed per size and the Tau are not on N°1 there....

You think the rule book lists armies based on size? I always thought it was based on popularity.

Evacuting planets is NOT a good idea. For one thing it would bea logisticla nightmare.

The tau probably have hundreds of billions, if not trillions of people. Let's be generous and assume they have tons of transports capable of hauling oh, 10 million people apiece. If they have a 1 trillion population, that needs 100,000 transports which are, in all probability, as large as a very large cruiser/battlecruiser or small Imperial battleship and I'm assuming they can multiply holding cpaacity by a factor of 100 there without any problems on life support or maintenance. I'm not even sure the Tau have 100,000 transports (10x more than the biggest numbers I've seen for an Imperial sector's transport capacity, or a fair fraction of the Imperium's TOTAL implied shipping if you wantt o be strictly literal.) So they probably have less. a few tens of thousands at most, more like thousands (say 20K) which means they have to make mulitple trips.

Then there's travlel time. The Tau empire is spread out over a few hundred LY as I recall. Best "typical" imperial wpar speeds are something like A few LY to a few tens of LY per hour, and probably less (inter sector travel times for Chartist ships run into the days or even weeks.) So lets say hours or days.. It could take days, or weeks to haul the entire population into those core worlds. Less time the closer you get in, but it sstill petty damn slow (esp since ether drive is nowhere near as fast as warp to begin with.. we're talking days at a minimum, and more probably weeks for round trips.. and probably longer since there has to be time to refuel, to do maintanece and repairs, etc.)

But let's say they do all this and the Hive Fleet doesn't interfere. There are STILL massive problems. Its debatable whether you hauled out any equipment (that requires more transports and more time to transit) or any resource. You gave up all the planets that were your industry, your sources of materials, and so on. Your populations per planet will have ramped up massively and you have to find housing for them, provide food and supplies to sustain them, etc. which is a further logistical nightmare (where do you find that food, etc.) You also have fewer planets to sustain your military. And you have basically conceded all the territory you won over decades, centuries or evne millenia, lost everything you buit up there (a massive economic loss) and the 'Nids STILL get to eat all those biosystems, whcih is only going to STRENGTHEN their forces. And if that's bad enough, they have the forces derived from scores if not hundreds of worlds to divvy up amongst a smaller number of planets to take.

I cannot even begin to see a single part of that which is a good idea, and as much as Tau have seemed to like overly detailed, compelx planning, they simply can't hope ot rely on things going completely their way (except by authorial fiat) and pull this off. There's too much that can go wrong and too much relies on them having the sorts of capacities I ascribe to them. Lower population would help some, but that just means you have a lower population base with which to sustain your military from, making you that much weaker. Overall this is perhaps the WORST possible thing oyu could do to fight hte Tyranids.

It's their doctrine and they've done it; I can't recall the world involved but I'm sure someone does. Fluff doesn't have to make sense to us, GW writers are infamously terrible (I'll just carve my initials on this demon-lord's heart for larfs).

As for population; the Tau population is relatively small, especially in Third Sphere worlds that haven't reached Sept level yet. You have to remember that Tau settlers are mostly coming from one of 20 sept worlds or the Tau homeworld; not the millions of IoM worlds with limitless population, etc.

Tau make up for small population with technology; that is something that is constant in the fluff. IoM and the other factions have huge populations (except maybe DEldar) but Tau have tech.

nomotog wrote:

1hadhq wrote:The tau are just one of the species of this galaxy and you can't think of more than one empire bigger than theirs?
A start could be the BRB, as no alphabetical order could mean the xenos are listed per size and the Tau are not on N°1 there....

You think the rule book lists armies based on size? I always thought it was based on popularity.

It lists at least 4 other xeno empires ( without fleshing them out, but naming them on page 119 ), as examples of dozens or hundreds of civilizations in this galaxy. Tau are within this list.

Necrons for example are stated as awakening on thousands of worlds... thousands...

agnosto wrote:It's their doctrine and they've done it; I can't recall the world involved but I'm sure someone does. Fluff doesn't have to make sense to us, GW writers are infamously terrible (I'll just carve my initials on this demon-lord's heart for larfs).

You're really going to bring Matt Ward into this when the Tau have Andy "Pathfinders killed a Titan!" Hoare?

Tau make up for small population with technology; that is something that is constant in the fluff. IoM and the other factions have huge populations (except maybe DEldar) but Tau have tech.

No, they supplement small population with technology.

Fire Warriors train to fight alongside Drones and other Auxiliary. They also practice a method of warfare which is honed to a 't' and involves drawing the foe in and minimizing allied casualties.

If stuff doesnt make sense ehtn why even bother defending it? It will just be "authorial fiat will deicde the Tau win due to Greater Good" or something silly and that will be it. It doesn't have to be discussed more than that.

If logic is being employed, then there are going to be certain obvious criteria and constraints they meet. Yes, if they have lower populations evacuations are easier. And yes, I suspect they could evac populations - they have to be able to move colonists from world to world, and the Imperium can certainly evacuate people. The question is lnot whether or not they can do it, its whether "can they do it in the face of a Tyranid force, how long do they need to do it, and do they have the ability to maintain their fighting ability despite the loss of the worlds and resources those evacuated worlds represent, whilst at the same time manintaining the increased populations on the more heavily defended planets." That's not a simple question to address, and I suspect we own't have enough information to answer it.

The fact of the matter is - they can't simply keep falling back in the face of a Hive Fleet, not without suffering losses of some kind which simply hamper them (they'd have to destroy the worlds behind them, which means losing everything they have built up at the same time. That is not a trivial setback here. And if they don't destroy it, the Tyranids will. They strip planets down to bare, airless balls of rock remember.) Sooner or later they have to make a stand and fight, (which they can do) but that means a kind of warfare they do not like nor are well suited to fight. I do believe Planetstrike had them developing fixed fortifications in fact to help them against Tyranids.

Also for whatever reason, pure robotic armies are out. They've had plenty of motivation to use them by now if the capacity (or the will) existed. The most they can do is "supplement existing forces with drone troops." Maybe its limits in computer technology or data sharing or networking or whatever. Or maybe its logistics (maybe drones are more disposable but more maintenance intensive. Or they may not exactly be "cheap" to build. They could be quite expensive, but the material tradeoff is seen as being worth it sometimes rather than losing organics.)

Also, Hoare has gotten better about things since Rogue STar/Star of Damocles. I found hunt for Volodrious rather enjoyable, and Savage Scars was a vast improvement compared to the previous two novels (I still find the Arcadius arrogant and intolerable though.)

Trollpie wrote:Because they wouldn't sell as well without actual Tau models.

Yet in the background the importance of the Tau in battle is continually emphasised. The Drones play a limited role.

And what reason would that be? Maybe they're just on standbye in case of a malfunction. Maybe so that they can add a little initiative. But against Tyranids, they could easy be replaced by less juicy meals and combat capability would barely drop at all-it would probably increase.

Since the Air Caste have a lot of pilots, I'd assume that they pilot the ships. And I doubt Drones would increase combat performance - machines are rarely as good at reacting to unexpected circumstances as a sapient being.

nomotog wrote:Can nids recover from a combat where they gain no biomass? I mean if a squad of nids gets flatted by a drone force, they lose biomass. If the nids flatten the drone force, they get no biomass. It dosen't just delay them it weakens them.

Only if the Tyranids lose overall. If they destroy the Drone force and then eat the world, they gain a lot. They have to hold the line, and Drones are poor for that especially since they'll struggle to adapt alongside the Tyranids.



For the whole bad background idea, I'd put the Tyranids near the top. The Hive Mind doesn't seem that intelligent to me when it can create creatures capable of destroying Titan Legions but rarely does so.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
For the whole bad background idea, I'd put the Tyranids near the top. The Hive Mind doesn't seem that intelligent to me when it can create creatures capable of destroying Titan Legions but rarely does so.

Why should it?

It takes massive amounts of resources to create Hierophants and anything larger. Why create those when you can create a few hundred Gaunts for the same resource cost?

Kanluwen wrote:
You're really going to bring Matt Ward into this when the Tau have Andy "Pathfinders killed a Titan!" Hoare?

Touche

I think Andy's not working for GW any longer though, right?

agnosto wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
You're really going to bring Matt Ward into this when the Tau have Andy "Pathfinders killed a Titan!" Hoare?

Touche

I think Andy's not working for GW any longer though, right?

Not "officially".

He works at FFG as a freelancer and still writes for BL occasionally.

Kanluwen wrote:
Why should it?

It takes massive amounts of resources to create Hierophants and anything larger. Why create those when you can create a few hundred Gaunts for the same resource cost?

A few hundred Gaunts are so much easier to kill. We're talking about something that can apparently withstand the most powerful mobile ground weaponry the Imperium can muster and then breach one of the Imperiums strongest fortresses on its own. How would most planets even be able to stop it without orbital fire?

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Why should it?

It takes massive amounts of resources to create Hierophants and anything larger. Why create those when you can create a few hundred Gaunts for the same resource cost?

A few hundred Gaunts are so much easier to kill. We're talking about something that can apparently withstand the most powerful mobile ground weaponry the Imperium can muster and then breach one of the Imperiums strongest fortresses on its own. How would most planets even be able to stop it without orbital fire?

It probably not very biomass effective. Locking up all your biomass into one giant creature is a risky move that could stall your biomass economy. Imagine if they kill your hierophants; all that biomass down the drain. To put it another way. If you spend all your money on a hierophat, you cant spend it on spawning pools. It's kind of a trade off between larger less adaptive creatures and smaller more adaptable creatures.

This trade off actually played a role in fleet gorgon. It went for smaller more adaptable creatures to try and out pace the tau. That left it with mostly small creatures. That ended up being a poor move because they had few command creatures and the tau where able to deliver a strike to brake the fleet.

Maybe gorgon would have done better with hierophants?

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Why should it?

It takes massive amounts of resources to create Hierophants and anything larger. Why create those when you can create a few hundred Gaunts for the same resource cost?

A few hundred Gaunts are so much easier to kill. We're talking about something that can apparently withstand the most powerful mobile ground weaponry the Imperium can muster and then breach one of the Imperiums strongest fortresses on its own. How would most planets even be able to stop it without orbital fire?

Heirophants are only roughly as powerful as Warhound titans. At about 15 metres (7 stories approx.) tall they're vulnerable to massed fire from anything of HB size or bigger. Titans in general are nowhere near as powerful as BL novels and the like say they are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nomotog wrote:

It probably not very biomass effective. Locking up all your biomass into one giant creature is a risky move that could stall your biomass economy. Imagine if they kill your hierophants; all that biomass down the drain.

Actually, unless the carcass is burned, the nids just eat the corpse and get all their biomass back.

I'd say a standard hammerhead/broadside firing line would rip your avarage Hierophant to shreds, and that's not even taking in the heavy weaponry some of their ships are packing.

As for tau vs full hive fleet.

No chance in hell, they might last for a bit, but eventually, the lack of FTL travel would just make their response fleets to slow, and they would be left with nowhere to run.

Also, the tau wouldn't last long in all out ground based battle. When the nid lines reach the tau, it's over. They really have no close combat counter.

TrollPie wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Why should it?

It takes massive amounts of resources to create Hierophants and anything larger. Why create those when you can create a few hundred Gaunts for the same resource cost?

A few hundred Gaunts are so much easier to kill. We're talking about something that can apparently withstand the most powerful mobile ground weaponry the Imperium can muster and then breach one of the Imperiums strongest fortresses on its own. How would most planets even be able to stop it without orbital fire?

Heirophants are only roughly as powerful as Warhound titans. At about 15 metres (7 stories approx.) tall they're vulnerable to massed fire from anything of HB size or bigger. Titans in general are nowhere near as powerful as BL novels and the like say they are.

You know why they're "nowhere near as powerful as BL novels and the like say they are"?

Because gameplay factors in and balance is important, even in Apocalypse Games.

There's a reason Hammerhead and Broadside railgun shots don't pass clean through multiple tanks, as they do in the fluff and it's the same reason that Reaver Titans can't oneshot an enemy army in a single barrage.

Ah the old Rules=/=fluff stupidity going round these days is so annoying...

nomotog wrote:
It probably not very biomass effective. Locking up all your biomass into one giant creature is a risky move that could stall your biomass economy. Imagine if they kill your hierophants; all that biomass down the drain. To put it another way. If you spend all your money on a hierophat, you cant spend it on spawning pools. It's kind of a trade off between larger less adaptive creatures and smaller more adaptable creatures.

While true, it was something that the Imperial forces of a Forgeworld were apparently unable to counter short of their bastion guns. I don't think most Imperial or Tau worlds would actually have something capable of doing much damage to it.

TrollPie wrote:Heirophants are only roughly as powerful as Warhound titans. At about 15 metres (7 stories approx.) tall they're vulnerable to massed fire from anything of HB size or bigger. Titans in general are nowhere near as powerful as BL novels and the like say they are.

I don't think I'm talking about Heirophants. If I recall correctly it was the creature used on Gryphonne IV and seemed to single-handedly take down a Titan Legion and breach the basilica since only the mighty guns of the basilica were capable of killing it.

Actually, unless the carcass is burned, the nids just eat the corpse and get all their biomass back.

And even if you do burn it, if the Tyranids then take the planet regardless then they absorb the atmosphere anyway.

Kanluwen wrote:

TrollPie wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Why should it?

It takes massive amounts of resources to create Hierophants and anything larger. Why create those when you can create a few hundred Gaunts for the same resource cost?

A few hundred Gaunts are so much easier to kill. We're talking about something that can apparently withstand the most powerful mobile ground weaponry the Imperium can muster and then breach one of the Imperiums strongest fortresses on its own. How would most planets even be able to stop it without orbital fire?

Heirophants are only roughly as powerful as Warhound titans. At about 15 metres (7 stories approx.) tall they're vulnerable to massed fire from anything of HB size or bigger. Titans in general are nowhere near as powerful as BL novels and the like say they are.

You know why they're "nowhere near as powerful as BL novels and the like say they are"?

Because gameplay factors in and balance is important, even in Apocalypse Games.

There's a reason Hammerhead and Broadside railgun shots don't pass clean through multiple tanks, as they do in the fluff and it's the same reason that Reaver Titans can't oneshot an enemy army in a single barrage.

Where did I say anything about the rules? I said that BL authors massively exaggerate their power. I never made any comparisons to the rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:.

TrollPie wrote:Heirophants are only roughly as powerful as Warhound titans. At about 15 metres (7 stories approx.) tall they're vulnerable to massed fire from anything of HB size or bigger. Titans in general are nowhere near as powerful as BL novels and the like say they are.

I don't think I'm talking about Heirophants. If I recall correctly it was the creature used on Gryphonne IV and seemed to single-handedly take down a Titan Legion and breach the basilica since only the mighty guns of the basilica were capable of killing it.

That's probably a Hydrophant you're thinking of. They're the Tyranid equivalent of a Warlod titan. However I don't think any Tyranid beast can single-handedly take down a Titan legion, so it's probably a case of poor writing.