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I was writing for a Deathwatch campaign and the party must deal with gene stealer colt, and then must stop a nid invasion, but it came to my attention how does one do that? Is it that you kill the hive mind and all the bugs die off or what, if so where is the hive mind is it part of the hive ship, if so is it like cutting the brain of a giant organisms. Last question how do tyranids do ship to ship space combat. I didn't realize until now how ignorant I am on the exact details of nids other than their bugs that want to eat everything.

If I understand correctly...You want to either A. Kill every single last one of them (Unpractical for obvious reasons) or B. Destroy or infiltrate the hive ship(s) and kill the Norn-Queen(s), causing the remainder of the Tyranid forces to basically become wild animals. Either way, you're gonna need a lot more firepower than a single squad has.

Your planet has a local population consisting of Ultramarines.

yeah a squad of deathwatch troops won't win the battle single handedly. they'd likely be used to strike the norn queen.

Might be an idea to read the novel "defenders of Ultramar"

Even if the squad goes to assassinate the queen, they WILL need support getting there since the Tyranids aren't just going to watch a lone gunship fly up to their VIP ship and board it. There need to be either a fleet supporting them or really big guns on the ground. I think the fleet idea is a lot more reasonable, and makes sense since you know...there's a freaking Tyranid invasion going on, of course reinforcements are going to come.

First, see what the players come up with and go with it. if they want to infiltrate the hive ship, let them go with it. If they can find a plausible way of sneaking on to the hive ship then go with it, or if they want support then let them go with that, they will need to work out how to get the support thy need.

They may be a loan ship dodging and weaving past flack then fighting to the heart of the ship to make a one in a billion shot on the hive queen, or having to persuade the fleet commander that they need to make a frontal assault on the hive rather than just evacuating the planet as ordered. See what they want to do and say yes. Never say "no that won't work". This is a roleplay game, not a realistic depiction of life. The players will find a way to do something totaly unexpected no matter what you do. Don't write them a plan on how to do it and hope they find it. They may decide that actually a hive fleet is unstoppable and they just need to limit the losses.

As for ship to ship, I imagine nid will have troops specifically for that. Perhaps small flying nids that attack ships like dragons and start ripping them apart or living missiles that bore in to ships hulls and release thousands of mini nids to rip the inhabitants apart, or whale like nids that try and swallow small ships whole to dissolve them in acid. It's not a well fleshed out area so let your imagination run wild.

Exterminatus is a pretty good way of stopping the nids from getting a meal.

Take off and exterminatus the planet from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure...

They aint stupid like the Orks.... so drawing them away wont work that easily.. maybe only when luring them with Billions of humans that can be harvested for biomass... but not practical and a bad idea for obvious reasons...

Maybe some of those missles Horus used on Istvann.. Life eater virus it was called? A virus that multiplies rapidly at an insane rate, capable of annihalating planets in minutes.. Or the good old bombartment rivaling exterminatus... but the planet you 'Saved' wont be of much worth anymore

But seriously,... ask the Ultra Marines... Or the Eldar. They know best

Option 1: Exterminatus
Option 2: Have a huge fleet and army and outlast the Tyranids.
Option 3: While your huge fleet and armies keep the Tyranids distracted, send in special forces to all Tyranid capital ships to assassinate all the Norn Queens (the creatures which give birth to new Tyranids) simultaneously (that part is important). With the Norn Queens gone, the Tyranid fleet won't be able to generate new creatures anymore, thus allowing the planetside troops to finish them of.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Option 1: Exterminatus
Option 2: Have a huge fleet and army and outlast the Tyranids.
Option 3: While your huge fleet and armies keep the Tyranids distracted, send in special forces to all Tyranid capital ships to assassinate all the Norn Queens (the creatures which give birth to new Tyranids) simultaneously (that part is important). With the Norn Queens gone, the Tyranid fleet won't be able to generate new creatures anymore, thus allowing the planetside troops to finish them of.

I feel like the norn queen is more a giant hive tyrant, its a link to the hive mind more than an actual queen. They birth new bugs planetside while queens are confined to space fleets, so that would be impossible to do if the queen was the one birthing them. Killing them would be like killing a tyrant, it would result in a frenzy among the smaller bugs as they lose their connection the the Hive, but tyrants may be able to force control over them again. The hive fleets would be screwed though, they dont have a backup connection to the Hive Mind (afaik) and would rip into everything blindly.

Read the novella Catechism of Hate, Chaplain Cassius of the Ultramarines leads a company sized force against what remains of a hive fleet tendril after it gets blasted out of space onto a planet. It's very interesting to see how the Norn Queens fare outside of their ships.

The marines aren't going to take out an entire nid hive ship alone I'm not Mat Ward, they would have plenty of help from the PDF, Inquisitor, and local sisters of battle.

Burn it to ash!

On a storyline scope to be accurate to 40k fluff, the biggest problem is adaptability. The life eater virus would work one maybe 2 times before the tyranids evolved to be immune. The cyclonic torpedoes, if they could be fired accurately at something size of a hive ship could work if they figured out which ship the queen was on. But basically this is a death star type mission in that smaller scale is better. A large group (small on the space combat scale) of terminators, centurions and support squads breach a hive ship and execute the Norn queen (the campaign writes itself at that point, apart from designing what basically amounts to a dungeon crawl through the hive ship.)
But the real GM Leg work would come from getting the party there. After the party becomes aware of the issue and kills the genestealer cult, You would have to get them a source of knowledge (deathwatch repository, tyranid survivor, magos biologist who specializes in nids) to even know what to do about the hive fleet (much like you are asking the dakka community). Then convince a local chapter (Deathwatch wouldn't have enough men in the area to do it alone, and the PDF's and Inquisitors wouldn't really have access to the equipment necessary), to assist and put those elements at the players command. The players would then make their way through the halls of the hive ship using the other terminators and stuff as “allies and cohorts” (think d&d leadership feat). And probably for dramatic pacing have the cohorts die off at significant times so that the party is the last group alive when they reach the Norn queen. If there are not rules for her (which, given the little fluff on them as there is, I suspect is the case) id run her as a conjuration specialist (she summons other tyranids to fight for her, some of which may need special weapons to kill. Also if there is a librarian and they have a maguffin that overrides shadow of the warp, it shouldn’t work for at least a portion of the fight, like if she takes so much damage she can’t maintain the connection and the shadow dissipates.) all the while they have to figure out how to kill her from her protected and elevated position. It should be a pretty challenging and epic game.
I don’t mean to tell you how to GM, but this was what i though would be the way to do it.

Thatguyhsagun wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Option 1: Exterminatus
Option 2: Have a huge fleet and army and outlast the Tyranids.
Option 3: While your huge fleet and armies keep the Tyranids distracted, send in special forces to all Tyranid capital ships to assassinate all the Norn Queens (the creatures which give birth to new Tyranids) simultaneously (that part is important). With the Norn Queens gone, the Tyranid fleet won't be able to generate new creatures anymore, thus allowing the planetside troops to finish them of.

I feel like the norn queen is more a giant hive tyrant, its a link to the hive mind more than an actual queen. They birth new bugs planetside while queens are confined to space fleets, so that would be impossible to do if the queen was the one birthing them. Killing them would be like killing a tyrant, it would result in a frenzy among the smaller bugs as they lose their connection the the Hive, but tyrants may be able to force control over them again. The hive fleets would be screwed though, they dont have a backup connection to the Hive Mind (afaik) and would rip into everything blindly.

The giant hive tyrant would be the Dominatrix, not the Norn Queen. What little fluff there is on the Norn Queens makes it clear that their only function is to give birth and lead the swarm and decide the evolutionary paths of the Tyranid subspecies. All the biomatter that the Tyranids harvest from a planet is pumped up to the Norn Queen so that they can birth more creatures.
The Tyranids do not birth planetside afaik. They are birthed aboard the Hive Ships and then sent down by way of spores.
Also, what may be of importance is that during space travel, Tyranids are in a dormant state. Only Tervigons stay awake as guards.

 chazz huggins wrote:
I was writing for a Deathwatch campaign and the party must deal with gene stealer colt, and then must stop a nid invasion, but it came to my attention how does one do that? Is it that you kill the hive mind and all the bugs die off or what, if so where is the hive mind is it part of the hive ship, if so is it like cutting the brain of a giant organisms. Last question how do tyranids do ship to ship space combat. I didn't realize until now how ignorant I am on the exact details of nids other than their bugs that want to eat everything.

2 options:

Kill off the 'nids. Destroy the splinter fleet, and they no longer pose a threat

Fight the 'nids so hard they chose to go somewhere else to harvest biomass. They aren't set into a course, they will move somewhere else if the resistance is stiff enough.

Deathwatch armed with this... lots of this...

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Thatguyhsagun wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Option 1: Exterminatus
Option 2: Have a huge fleet and army and outlast the Tyranids.
Option 3: While your huge fleet and armies keep the Tyranids distracted, send in special forces to all Tyranid capital ships to assassinate all the Norn Queens (the creatures which give birth to new Tyranids) simultaneously (that part is important). With the Norn Queens gone, the Tyranid fleet won't be able to generate new creatures anymore, thus allowing the planetside troops to finish them of.

I feel like the norn queen is more a giant hive tyrant, its a link to the hive mind more than an actual queen. They birth new bugs planetside while queens are confined to space fleets, so that would be impossible to do if the queen was the one birthing them. Killing them would be like killing a tyrant, it would result in a frenzy among the smaller bugs as they lose their connection the the Hive, but tyrants may be able to force control over them again. The hive fleets would be screwed though, they dont have a backup connection to the Hive Mind (afaik) and would rip into everything blindly.

The giant hive tyrant would be the Dominatrix, not the Norn Queen. What little fluff there is on the Norn Queens makes it clear that their only function is to give birth and lead the swarm and decide the evolutionary paths of the Tyranid subspecies. All the biomatter that the Tyranids harvest from a planet is pumped up to the Norn Queen so that they can birth more creatures.
The Tyranids do not birth planetside afaik. They are birthed aboard the Hive Ships and then sent down by way of spores.
Also, what may be of importance is that during space travel, Tyranids are in a dormant state. Only Tervigons stay awake as guards.

I could be wrong but i thought a dominatrix was the biofrom that houses the norn queen when she is not on the hive ship. there was BL story about them.

Short of Exterminatus, you have to kill all of the Nids, and that is basically impossible,

You can drive the Hive fleet away, but some biomorphs are capable of living without the hive mind. They become basically animals and will begin subverting the native lifeforms till the hive fleet builds again.

Deploy several chapters of Astartes, Imperial Guard and other troops. Then proceed to kill every single organism with fire and other weapons

Nid ships are living organism, some unable to even land on a planet. Some are kinda like space krakens and will just latch onto an end ship and tear it to shreds with claws, tentacles, and their beak.

Eldrad gives candy to young races.
And that candy will contain a slow-spreading gingivitis virus that will fester in the new race and slowly spread amongst their entire species. The gum pain will be considered a normal part of everyday life, and they will regularly take painkillers.

When the ’Nids invade them in 3000 years, they too will be infected by the gingivitis disease – but they are mindless beasts, who know not of painkillers. Surviving in constant pain, only made worse by eating, this entire massive hive of ’Nids will simply become extinct, a result of their own adaptation abilities.

And of course, Eldrad’s craftworld would have been the next one in line from that particular hive. Just. As. Planned.

Lure a bunch of Orks into the conflict. Tyranids won't give up fighting, Orks will attract more Orks. If you establish the cycle proppa, the two matched forces will engage in eternal battle.

Proven ways:

- Completely destroy the tendril.
- infest planet with orks
- infest planet with deamons

1. Fly Strike Cruiser into heart of Hive Fleet.
2. Detonate Warp Drive, tearing open a massive hole in Reality, which sucks the Nids into the Warp, never to be seen again.
3. Be honored in legends for thousands of years... but you're certainly not surviving the event.

 Psienesis wrote:
1. Fly Strike Cruiser into heart of Hive Fleet.
2. Detonate Warp Drive, tearing open a massive hole in Reality, which sucks the Nids into the Warp, never to be seen again.
3. Be honored in legends for thousands of years... but you're certainly not surviving the event.

Why is that every marines solution to everything "lets crash our irreplaceable Cruiser into that seemingly indestructible thing" lol thats what he smurfs did.

Mainly because there isn't really any other option. There is no poison or chemical weapon that works against the Tyranids more than once. There are no Imperial weapons that can wipe out fleets that are billions of vessels in size, with the possible exception of a Nova Cannon, but the platform required to deliver such a weapon is exceedingly rare, and the Cannon itself cannot fire fast enough to survive the counter-attack, assuming it can pull off the first shot.

Fighting them on the ground is a complete waste of time, since the Tyranids begin terraforming the planet before the first bug hits the ground, converting the atmosphere into something more bug-friendly... and if the Fleet is close enough to make planet-fall, then you've basically already lost without seriously drastic measures.

About the only feasible idea I can think of is some sort of installation on the planet, such as a Chaos Relic or perhaps a device of Necron, Eldar, or some other advanced Xenos culture (perhaps even one that is now extinct) that creates some sort of wave-effect that extends across a system, which disrupts the Shadow in the Warp, fries the Synapse Creatures, or otherwise produces some little-understood effect that causes the Hive Fleet to either flee or devour itself.

A Blackstone Fortress could probably hold its own too, I've just remembered those bad boys. But do the Imperium hold any of then, or are all the remaining ones property of Abaddon?

I don't see why toxins and biological warfare can't work.

If you kill them quick enough, their individual bodies won't have time to adapt - therefore you can keep re-using them.

Prolonged contact with them leads to resistance. Rapidly kill them and they won't have time to adapt.

Tyranids share their genetic information (and traits for resistance) when they 'digest' their bodies in those biopools - they can't do this in battle so the trait cannot be shared immediately.

Also, NEW Tyranids can have the trait put into their cells, but existing ones will NOT have the trait in their cells and so will be susceptible. Its the next wave that will be immune/resistant once they hatch

I believe most people are under the mistaken assumption that Tyranids adapt immediately like the Borg in Star Trek do to phase weapons Cells don't work that way.