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What it says on the tin, the tyranid hive mind, how smart is it? Can it form larger plans than just "send in more chompy things!" can it target certain planets to destabilize others?Or is it just simply a force that keeps the tyranids from eating each other?

The hive mind is smart enough to prank call astropaths with fake orders on intergalactic pizza, whose out-of-this-world shipping gives them aneurysms that everyone blames on the "Shadow in the Warp". So yeah, the hive mind is a smart aleck.

I don't think the Hive Mind is a single entity is it? I thought it was the amalgamated group consciousness of all Tyranid organisms. Kind of like the Hive Mind of the Borg Collective in Star Trek.

Still, I'd imagine it to be extremely intelligent, even if it doesn't posses anything resembling a human psyche or personality.

The Hive Mind is an entity that is formed from the combined intelligence of the Tyranid race. So... seeing as each Hive Fleet doesn't seem to cooperate with each other in any meaningful way I would say that the Hive Mind is better described as a collection of "Sub-minds" working loosely together towards some vague goal. As in "We'll go there cause there has food!" is their main strategy when attacking. Each Hive Fleet is capable of performing more complex tactics, sure, but the overall race isn't like a single organism with many bodies attacking.

It's pretty stupid. It has attacked a galaxy where the multitude of different life forms are highly aggressive, requiring hive fleets to spend staggering amounts of resources on changing their attack modes to the most efficient one every time they blunder into a new opponent. Couple this with the incredibly inefficient "living technology" that eats resources even when not in use and the likelyhood the Tyranid race ever gets to leave for another galaxy grows slimmer by the day.

Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

Because then they wouldn't be a starship troopers knock off.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also look out, it's the Tyranid hater brigade!

Smart enough to outsmart Marneus Calgar.

 thepowerfulwill wrote:
What it says on the tin, the tyranid hive mind, how smart is it? Can it form larger plans than just "send in more chompy things!" can it target certain planets to destabilize others?Or is it just simply a force that keeps the tyranids from eating each other?

Smart enough. What it genuinely cannot out-clever, things like finances and resource management, it can simply brute force through. That's not to say that it's dumb though. As other people have mentioned it can tap into the minds of lesser psykers and skew their abilities and does cast a shadow across an immaterial pocket of pseudo-space (PRETTY SERIOUS gak IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE LAWS OF OPTICS OR BASIC PHYSICS).

The Hive Mind also has the tremendously valuable power of consensus. It could simply poll the various Dominatricies, Crones, Tyrants, and other assorted "brain bugs" in a particular area... gain all the information it could possibly want on both a micro and macro level and then go from there. All in the blink of an eye. That level of non-verbal and nearly instantaneous communication can make up for most failings in higher thought or imagination.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

A space ship the size of a continent is scary
A space ship the size of a continent made of secreted resin and bone is scary and disconcerting
A space ship the size of a continent that bleeds, poops, makes noise, and can land on your continent so it can lay eggs is utterly horrific and mind-numbingly terrible.

The Hive Mind is a collective consciousness. For all intents and purposes, we can't measure its "intelligence" by a measure of human intelligence; it's more complicated, primeval, and instinctual than that.

 Dust wrote:

 thepowerfulwill wrote:
What it says on the tin, the tyranid hive mind, how smart is it? Can it form larger plans than just "send in more chompy things!" can it target certain planets to destabilize others?Or is it just simply a force that keeps the tyranids from eating each other?

Smart enough. What it genuinely cannot out-clever, things like finances and resource management, it can simply brute force through. That's not to say that it's dumb though. As other people have mentioned it can tap into the minds of lesser psykers and skew their abilities and does cast a shadow across an immaterial pocket of pseudo-space (PRETTY SERIOUS gak IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE LAWS OF OPTICS OR BASIC PHYSICS).

The Hive Mind also has the tremendously valuable power of consensus. It could simply poll the various Dominatricies, Crones, Tyrants, and other assorted "brain bugs" in a particular area... gain all the information it could possibly want on both a micro and macro level and then go from there. All in the blink of an eye. That level of non-verbal and nearly instantaneous communication can make up for most failings in higher thought or imagination.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

A space ship the size of a continent is scary
A space ship the size of a continent made of secreted resin and bone is scary and disconcerting
A space ship the size of a continent that bleeds, poops, makes noise, and can land on your continent so it can lay eggs is utterly horrific and mind-numbingly terrible.

It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Dust wrote:

 thepowerfulwill wrote:
What it says on the tin, the tyranid hive mind, how smart is it? Can it form larger plans than just "send in more chompy things!" can it target certain planets to destabilize others?Or is it just simply a force that keeps the tyranids from eating each other?

Smart enough. What it genuinely cannot out-clever, things like finances and resource management, it can simply brute force through. That's not to say that it's dumb though. As other people have mentioned it can tap into the minds of lesser psykers and skew their abilities and does cast a shadow across an immaterial pocket of pseudo-space (PRETTY SERIOUS gak IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE LAWS OF OPTICS OR BASIC PHYSICS).

The Hive Mind also has the tremendously valuable power of consensus. It could simply poll the various Dominatricies, Crones, Tyrants, and other assorted "brain bugs" in a particular area... gain all the information it could possibly want on both a micro and macro level and then go from there. All in the blink of an eye. That level of non-verbal and nearly instantaneous communication can make up for most failings in higher thought or imagination.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

A space ship the size of a continent is scary
A space ship the size of a continent made of secreted resin and bone is scary and disconcerting
A space ship the size of a continent that bleeds, poops, makes noise, and can land on your continent so it can lay eggs is utterly horrific and mind-numbingly terrible.

It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

In this setting space elves who looked almost exactly like humans sixty million years before there were humans ended up orgying a lust goddess into existence who tore a ten thousand light year negative space wedgie into being, and now lusting after things too hard will summon half-naked crab women made out of excess who will promptly fondle you to death.

Realism.

Well... Convergent evolution and all of that. I could buy humanoid aliens in the galaxy if they came from a world like Earth.

Pointing out that trying to rationalize 40k is a futile task is soooo 2013. Get with the times, Kain. These days its more vogue to say, "I'm right and you're wrong because my version of the fluff says so!".

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Well... Convergent evolution and all of that. I could buy humanoid aliens in the galaxy if they came from a world like Earth.

Pointing out that trying to rationalize 40k is a futile task is soooo 2013. Get with the times, Kain. These days its more vogue to say, "I'm right and you're wrong because my version of the fluff says so!".

Except the Eldar were created, not evolved.

Oh yeah. Huh. Maybe the Old Ones were humanoid in form because of the environment in form and they modeled their creations after themselves?

 TheCustomLime wrote:


It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

If you want rational, well thought out mechanical designs then look at Necrons.

Tyranids are Gwar-tier Meat magic and it's why they're awesome.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Oh yeah. Huh. Maybe the Old Ones were humanoid in form because of the environment in form and they modeled their creations after themselves?

But then they also created the Hrud, Orks, Slann and Jokaero and are implied to have meddled with proto-humanity.

 Dust wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:


It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

If you want rational, well thought out mechanical designs then look at Necrons.

Tyranids are Gwar-tier Meat magic and it's why they're awesome.

Implying Necrons are realistic. Heck, they have magical technology. It doesn't matter what you are, 40k leaves realism at the front door and dances around with swords and magic that works just fine in a world of guns.

As per the hive mind. Depends. Unlikely to be very into culture or mathematics. It does one thing great, everything involved with consuming more biomass. Intelligence for stealth, cunning, tactics, adaptability, etc. That's what it's good at which I suppose you could say is extremely intelligent.

 StarTrotter wrote:

 Dust wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:


It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

If you want rational, well thought out mechanical designs then look at Necrons.

Tyranids are Gwar-tier Meat magic and it's why they're awesome.

Implying Necrons are realistic. Heck, they have magical technology. It doesn't matter what you are, 40k leaves realism at the front door and dances around with swords and magic that works just fine in a world of guns.

As per the hive mind. Depends. Unlikely to be very into culture or mathematics. It does one thing great, everything involved with consuming more biomass. Intelligence for stealth, cunning, tactics, adaptability, etc. That's what it's good at which I suppose you could say is extremely intelligent.

Much like how Orks are actually as smart as humans are, they just apply themselves entirely differently and don't waste time with a lot of activities we see as the epitome of culture.

Spetulhu wrote:
It's pretty stupid. It has attacked a galaxy where the multitude of different life forms are highly aggressive, requiring hive fleets to spend staggering amounts of resources on changing their attack modes to the most efficient one every time they blunder into a new opponent. Couple this with the incredibly inefficient "living technology" that eats resources even when not in use and the likelyhood the Tyranid race ever gets to leave for another galaxy grows slimmer by the day.

Consider the absolutely vast distances between galaxies. I think it's safe to say that the Tyranids have no way of knowing what kind of lifeforms a galaxy contains until they get there, and that they have to commit to a destination in the blind. There's hardly any choice of just turning around and going in another direction for many millennia if a galaxy isn't to their liking once they arrive.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

 Dust wrote:

A space ship the size of a continent is scary
A space ship the size of a continent made of secreted resin and bone is scary and disconcerting
A space ship the size of a continent that bleeds, poops, makes noise, and can land on your continent so it can lay eggs is utterly horrific and mind-numbingly terrible.

It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

Isn´t it exactly the other way around? Life goes far beyond machine, at least at the moment.
Just to name a good known example, engineers have been studying spider silk since forever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Properties

And it applies to everything. DNA goes beyond anything humanity can imagine, plastics are organic and are considered the next step in materials, with plastic alloys becoming more and more important, and so on.

If you think about it, Inorganic Chemistry is a joke compared to Organic Chemistry.

And then you have the Warp, which is another name for Magic. Nids are alive and thus can go beyond the law of physics using their own kind of Warp-powers.

Asking the OP, I see the Hive Mind as a Chaos God. Barely intelligent in itself, something like a psycological construct created by incredibly powerful (and intelligent) minds. But I will consider a Hive Tyrant or a Norm Queen, agents of the Hive Mind, quite intelligent.

The Hivemind adapts to the tactics of its enemies.

In the novel Warriors of Ultramar, the Imperials used a tactic of detonating a refinery packed with explosives and volatile plasma. It destroyed a Tyranid hive ship and caused disruption in the fleet. When the Imperials tried to use a second refinery, not only did the Tyranids not take the bait, they turned the tables on the humans by taking the refinery and flinging it back to detonate it in the middle of the Imperial fleet, taking care to protect it from Imperial fire until it was well and truly in range to cause maximum damage. The Hivemind had learned not to attempt to consume the refinery, learned how to use it against its enemies, and had innovated to develop creatures to haul and protect the refinery (and then these creatures detonated the refinery when it was in position). It was the failing of the Imperials to underestimate the Tyranids' intelligence, first by attempting the same tactic twice, and refusing to believe the Tyranids could learn and use their own trap against them. Individual creatures can vary greatly with the more expendable creatures being animalistic but the Tyranids as a whole, the Hivemind, is certainly intelligent even though all its intelligence is bent towards achieving simple primal goals.

Maybe cause it's not rational to build your technology around resources you can't reproduce when you travel to another galaxy that you know nothing about. While organics is their main aim anywayz. No organics = no need for technology to fight and consume it.

The whole organic thing is a pseudo-science concept. Sure it might not be realist (someone mentionned that just the energy to move the biomass up to the ship is more then the energy gained) but that's the norm with so many scifi stuff. Just wait 10 years and new discovery will make X concept impossible.


The Hive Mind is extremely intelligent. And it's a single entity that includes all the Hive Fleet (anyone read the tyranid codexes?) The things it's "cells" ( all the tyranids) learn, are learned by the Hive Mind. It can then use it by giving orders to the mindless ones via synapse. Special characters like the Swarmlord are immortal. It's consciousness can be put in a new body anytime it gets killed or recycled (bio-soup-ing cause it's no longer needed).And it outmanoeuvered the smartess general of the smartest marine chapters (don't remember his name). The Hive Mind's strategy evolves to beat any enemy. Most of the time, infinite numbers of body and huge creatures does the trick. In other cases, it sended a single assassin (deathleaper) to crush the will of a whole world, formed an insanely massive bio-titans that destroyed most of a Titan legions before being destroyed, produced a gunline to beat demons who were owning in melee and invented the Parasite to counter X (don't remember what)

The only race that can adapt about as quick as the Tyranids are the Tau with technology. Otherwise, real inorganic techs could never be invented as quickly as just taking some hours to grow a new kind of units.

 da001 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

 Dust wrote:

A space ship the size of a continent is scary
A space ship the size of a continent made of secreted resin and bone is scary and disconcerting
A space ship the size of a continent that bleeds, poops, makes noise, and can land on your continent so it can lay eggs is utterly horrific and mind-numbingly terrible.

It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

Isn´t it exactly the other way around? Life goes far beyond machine, at least at the moment.
Just to name a good known example, engineers have been studying spider silk since forever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Properties

And it applies to everything. DNA goes beyond anything humanity can imagine, plastics are organic and are considered the next step in materials, with plastic alloys becoming more and more important, and so on.

If you think about it, Inorganic Chemistry is a joke compared to Organic Chemistry.

And then you have the Warp, which is another name for Magic. Nids are alive and thus can go beyond the law of physics using their own kind of Warp-powers.

Asking the OP, I see the Hive Mind as a Chaos God. Barely intelligent in itself, something like a psycological construct created by incredibly powerful (and intelligent) minds. But I will consider a Hive Tyrant or a Norm Queen, agents of the Hive Mind, quite intelligent.

No, it's the other way around. Machines are far superior to organic life when it comes to... well, everything. See, the thing about machines is that they are much easier to make, design and maintain. Say you wanted an organic door. You'd have to redesign a species's organic code from the ground up just to even design the damned thing. Then you'd have to grow it which takes a lot of energy to do. Then you'd have to keep feeding the door as long as you want to keep using it which wastes a lot more energy. A mechanical door requires you to do some drawings, cut some wood/forge some steel and install it onto the frame. It does take energy, yes, but much less than the organic door and you don't have to keep feeding it. The only energy you have to give it is the energy you impart on it as you operate it. You can also maintain a mechanical door with less fuss since you don't have to perform incredibly complex surgery to replace a knob.

See, organics are simply less efficient at obtaining energy than machines. Eating is an incredibly poor way to get energy out of food, for example. You only get 10% out of it I believe. Are machines completely efficient? No. But no system really is. You could argue that the Nids have evolved a super duper energy efficient metabolic process but they still would be better off with using machines for almost all of their needs. Including foot soldiers but people want their gribblies. I suppose a happy medium between cool and realism is if Tyranids were cyborgs of some sort. Their mechanical guns are "grown" with them and are physically integrated with the Nid. That's how I'm going to model my nids at the very least.

I still don't think the overall Hive Mind is as intelligent as people say. I think individual Hive Fleets are very smart but the overall "Mind" seems to be very fractured at best.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 da001 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why the Tyranids don't use machines is beyond me. Bugs in real life make things out of nonliving stuff and do a fine job of it so you can't say that it doesn't fit their theme.

 Dust wrote:

A space ship the size of a continent is scary
A space ship the size of a continent made of secreted resin and bone is scary and disconcerting
A space ship the size of a continent that bleeds, poops, makes noise, and can land on your continent so it can lay eggs is utterly horrific and mind-numbingly terrible.

It is also inefficient as all get out. Machinery is effective, energy and resource efficient and simple to design. If you want to make a new gun you just forge a bunch of steel parts. To make a flesh gun you'd have to invent an entire new organism which isn't simple to say the least. The Tyranids always struck me as being very pragmatic so I'd imagine they would abandon bad designs for better ones at the drop of a hat. Machines are better designs than organic structures.

Imagine a space craft that could swap out it's armor and weapons on the fly as the situation would call for it. Imagine holes that would repair themselves in seconds as swarms of small gribblies work together to rebuild the hull. That would scare me more than something that makes a bunch of noises. Especially if I was a Navy Officer.

Isn´t it exactly the other way around? Life goes far beyond machine, at least at the moment.
Just to name a good known example, engineers have been studying spider silk since forever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Properties

And it applies to everything. DNA goes beyond anything humanity can imagine, plastics are organic and are considered the next step in materials, with plastic alloys becoming more and more important, and so on.

If you think about it, Inorganic Chemistry is a joke compared to Organic Chemistry.

And then you have the Warp, which is another name for Magic. Nids are alive and thus can go beyond the law of physics using their own kind of Warp-powers.

Asking the OP, I see the Hive Mind as a Chaos God. Barely intelligent in itself, something like a psycological construct created by incredibly powerful (and intelligent) minds. But I will consider a Hive Tyrant or a Norm Queen, agents of the Hive Mind, quite intelligent.

No, it's the other way around. Machines are far superior to organic life when it comes to... well, everything. See, the thing about machines is that they are much easier to make, design and maintain. Say you wanted an organic door. You'd have to redesign a species's organic code from the ground up just to even design the damned thing. Then you'd have to grow it which takes a lot of energy to do. Then you'd have to keep feeding the door as long as you want to keep using it which wastes a lot more energy. A mechanical door requires you to do some drawings, cut some wood/forge some steel and install it onto the frame. It does take energy, yes, but much less than the organic door and you don't have to keep feeding it. The only energy you have to give it is the energy you impart on it as you operate it. You can also maintain a mechanical door with less fuss since you don't have to perform incredibly complex surgery to replace a knob.

See, organics are simply less efficient at obtaining energy than machines. Eating is an incredibly poor way to get energy out of food, for example. You only get 10% out of it I believe. Are machines completely efficient? No. But no system really is. You could argue that the Nids have evolved a super duper energy efficient metabolic process but they still would be better off with using machines for almost all of their needs. Including foot soldiers but people want their gribblies. I suppose a happy medium between cool and realism is if Tyranids were cyborgs of some sort. Their mechanical guns are "grown" with them and are physically integrated with the Nid. That's how I'm going to model my nids at the very least.

I still don't think the overall Hive Mind is as intelligent as people say. I think individual Hive Fleets are very smart but the overall "Mind" seems to be very fractured at best.

Try to remember what this setting is at it's core, adolescent over the top space fantasy, don't bring your science into it.

In any case, the hive mind pits hive fleets against each other because it wants only the fittest parts of it's body to survive.

So the physics of an organic ship being able to move in space not to mention at anything close to light speed in space just completely tilts me.

Pony_law wrote:
So the physics of an organic ship being able to move in space not to mention at anything close to light speed in space just completely tilts me.

Allow me to refer you to my Slaanesh comment as to why you should never be concerned with physics in 40k.

Repeat the MST3k mantra until you are blue in the face.

Why would the Hive Mind pit it's own Hive Fleets against each other? That's just... stupid. It's a waste of energy and biomass.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Why would the Hive Mind pit it's own Hive Fleets against each other? That's just... stupid. It's a waste of energy and biomass.

The Tyranids are specifically noted as losing nothing when two tendrils from different hive fleets scuffle to see who is stronger. So apparently when digesting Tyranid biomass the Tyranids have developed a perfect efficiency stomach or other handwavy magic.

The winner gets all the biomass and any useful genes the loser may have assimilated.