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 Overread wrote:
It's more than just functionality



1) Resources. Material and psychic/mental are clearly elements that restrict the free creation of some more advanced Tyranids.

2) Unique Elements. Swarmlord is perhaps the best example of something that has almost totally unique attributes that are preserved within the swarm.

3) Something in their very core. Gaunts are pretty weak and stupid, but genestealers are much smarter. Why not just make genestealers. Clearly there's some element of core design within the Tyranids, almost something that guides their designs down a preconceived pathway of development which focuses and crafts them around a certain type of swarm design. Perhaps something so core and primal within them its how they were originally whenever they started.

I would put the issue as one of the ruthless calculations of the Hive Mind in terms of cost/benefit and resource use analysis. Genestealers may be more effective in close combat but they would presumingly cost more in resources and time to create, since they are also intelligent enough to operate independently with their own brood telepathy. Gaunts are cannon fodder, acting as mobile ablative shielding, but also deadly enough to pose a threat to the normal average human. The original Battle of Macragge fiction from Epic Hive War even talked of Titans being pulled down by masses of Termagants, with the analogy of lions being pulled down by ants. That is a good trade for the Hive Mind given the relative rarity of Titans and their slow production rate.

Gaunts are cheap to produce and they can reproduce by themselves (at least Hormagaunts can according to the original Epic Hive War). Though the fiction focuses on Space Marines, realistically what the Hive Mind would be facing on most of the human worlds it attacks would be the PDF and Guard, so it would need billions to match their numbers. Small differences in costs of production of different organisms can be significant when at this scale.

Really what would be nice would be drops in points cost for Gaunts and options to take even more of them to emulate the massive scale of such assaults, to cover the board in a carpet of Gaunts. While there have been more big Tyranid monsters introduced over the years, which is understandable as they are more eye catching, for me the quintessential Tyranid army is the swarm army with a tide of Gaunts.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
You say "homogenizing", but we're still talking life forms ranging from viruses to space craft.

But diversity isn't a one dimensional spectrum from virus to spacecraft, it is depth. It is a million different viruses, a million different bacteria, a million different plants, a million different animals, etc.

Tyranids don't need a million different viruses, they need one that is capable of killing every unicellular organism at planetary scales, with optional modifications when going against supernatural pathogens. They don't need a million different plants, they only need one that can drain the soil of mineral resources while radically altering the world's atmosphere. They don't need a million of small sized organisms, they only need rippers. They don't need thousands of mid and large sized organisms, they only need a handful dozens of modular templates.

Devastation of Baal wrote:Even at this corpuscular level, it was a mistake to see the lictor as a lictor, one of millions; there were not many, there was one. The lictor was the lictor. Every iteration was a copy, better than perfect for aeons of improvement, party to the actions, mistakes and successes of every other lictor that had come before. Welded to the very genes of its being were untold millions of years of experience. And it was on Baal just as it was simultaneously on a thousand other worlds throughout the galaxy.

Diversity is variety, but Tyranids don't need variety. They need a tool for each job, and then clone that tool a trillion times a trillion.

Show us that Tyranids don't need/use variety. They clearly have a wide variety of war-making organisms as evidenced by the game itself, and they develop variations and new types all the time. Who's to say they don't pummel a planet with a million virus types?

 Insectum7 wrote:

Show us that Tyranids don't need/use variety. They clearly have a wide variety of war-making organisms as evidenced by the game itself, and they develop variations and new types all the time. Who's to say they don't pummel a planet with a million virus types?

That's why I quoted the Lictor example. Tyranids don't have a million Lictor types, they have one Lictor that they continuously iterate and improve.

The "wide variety" of war-making organisms are a handful of templates with modular modifications, which is further exemplified by the fact they all share an unified design theme like segmented carapaces and six limbs.
Now from a model perspective, I would like to have more modules and more templates to play with, but they should still follow the unified Tyranid design theme.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Show us that Tyranids don't need/use variety. They clearly have a wide variety of war-making organisms as evidenced by the game itself, and they develop variations and new types all the time. Who's to say they don't pummel a planet with a million virus types?

That's why I quoted the Lictor example. Tyranids don't have a million Lictor types, they have one Lictor that they continuously iterate and improve.

The "wide variety" of war-making organisms are a handful of templates with modular modifications, which is further exemplified by the fact they all share an unified design theme like segmented carapaces and six limbs.
Now from a model perspective, I would like to have more modules and more templates to play with, but they should still follow the unified Tyranid design theme.

But they have more than one type of organism developed for the purpose of fighting battles. So why would they have only one virus? They very likely have more than one, just as Tyranids feel the need to develop Termagants in addition to Hormagaunts. Nids don't just go in to battle with only Termagants. And Nids are continually iterating on species patterns in their various subfleets (hence Hive Fleet sub-rules, as well as their earlier mutation-capable codexes).

Probably Nid viruses don't have six legs, because they're viruses.

 Insectum7 wrote:

But they have more than one type of organism developed for the purpose of fighting battles. So why would they have only one virus? They very likely have more than one, just as Tyranids feel the need to develop Termagants in addition to Hormagaunts. Nids don't just go in to battle with only Termagants. And Nids are continually iterating on species patterns in their various subfleets (hence Hive Fleet sub-rules, as well as their earlier mutation-capable codexes).

Tyranids are continually iterating, but that doesn't make diversity as new iterations replace the old ones. You do have a point that there is a degree of diversification when it comes to the different Hive Fleets, as each one seems to have their own separate iteration process, but Hive Fleets never diverge enough to the point of being radically different from each other, one has to be able to represent all of them with the same models after all.

As for the mutation mechanic, that actually forced you to be even less diverse, as that mechanic rewarded having as few units as possible (and termagants, hormagaunts and gargoyles were considered the same unit with different upgrades).

Probably Nid viruses don't have six legs, because they're viruses.

Ever heard of the bacteriophages? viruses can have legs.

But well yes the different scale is probably going to force different design principles, but also we are never going to see a nid virus on the tabletop.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

But they have more than one type of organism developed for the purpose of fighting battles. So why would they have only one virus? They very likely have more than one, just as Tyranids feel the need to develop Termagants in addition to Hormagaunts. Nids don't just go in to battle with only Termagants. And Nids are continually iterating on species patterns in their various subfleets (hence Hive Fleet sub-rules, as well as their earlier mutation-capable codexes).

Tyranids are continually iterating, but that doesn't make diversity as new iterations replace the old ones. You do have a point that there is a degree of diversification when it comes to the different Hive Fleets, as each one seems to have their own separate iteration process, but Hive Fleets never diverge enough to the point of being radically different from each other, one has to be able to represent all of them with the same models after all.

As for the mutation mechanic, that actually forced you to be even less diverse, as that mechanic rewarded having as few units as possible (and termagants, hormagaunts and gargoyles were considered the same unit with different upgrades).

Probably Nid viruses don't have six legs, because they're viruses.

Ever heard of the bacteriophages? viruses can have legs.

But well yes the different scale is probably going to force different design principles, but also we are never going to see a nid virus on the tabletop.

Interesting @ biophages, but there are definitely lore references to nid creatures with more or less than six legs in some novels. Although Tyranids may be in effect less diverse than a pan-galactic span of life developing independently (because the Hive Mind propagates specis updates) none of the above precludes Nids from being obviously more diverse from Eldar, Humans etc, or from being their own ecosystem.

This thread went to a very weird place...