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 Tiennos wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:
The real problem with the Tyranids is how hiveships avoid overheating. A living organism that big in the hard vacuum of space (which is an excellent insulator) should have a core temperature hot enough to melt metal...

Although the flipside of that is if they can recapture and reuse all that heat they can conserve energy overall.

You can't just "use" heat like it's fuel. Not without breaking the laws of thermodynamics anyways. The way tyranids seem to eat everything and not leave waste behind is equally impossible, for the same reasons. It's like their digestive system is capable of breaking down matter into pure energy. Tyranid stomachs somehow use anti-matter instead of acid, I guess?

40k isn't hard sci-fi and tyranids are one of the least scientific things in the setting. Better to look at it as fantasy and have fun with the space locusts instead of wondering how that race actually works.

Your gut converts matter into energy. Some power plants use heat to make electricity. Your refrigerator uses energy to cool things down.

You poop. Plants grow using your poop as fertilizer. Then you eat the plants and poop again. Energy is lost, but replenished by the sun. All Tyranids need to keep their ecosystem going is an energy source. Could be starlight, could be planet-burgers, could be that some hive ships have biological fusion reactors. Probably it's all of the above.

"Biological fusion reactors" might be one of the best explanation for how they produce enough energy to function and it's already ridiculously far-fetched. How do they use all that energy anyways? You can only go so far with chemical reactions. Do they manipulate energy on a fundamental level to create what matter they need, one subatomic particle at a time?

If their control of matter and energy was that advanced, they could just eat stars. Those contain all of the elements you'd get from biomass and then some. They could even use their ships' "gravity muscles" to drink them from a distance instead of bothering with the piddly energy contained on inhabited worlds.

You seem to be asking "How do they produce so much energy?" And "How do they use so much energy?" At the same time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Earth floats through space, and supports life.

Tyranids float through space, and support life.

Life on earth thrives using solar energy, that's the only external input.

Tyranids then only require an energy source to do the same. That source can be solar, or food, or some reaction that produces more energy than is put in (like nuclear).

I think that's basically it.

Nids can eat anything. Realistically though with the shadow in the warp there mere presence should banish daemons back into the warp.

Tyranids don't just "float" in space, they travel through it. That takes insane amounts of energy. But Tyranids can manipulate gravity somehow, so I guess there's that...
Sucking matter out of a planet's gravitational pull is also incredibly hard to do. Look at how much fuel it takes just to put a small satellite into orbit, but tyranids can just drink their planet smoothie through a straw, somehow. Not counting all the energy it took to conquer and digest that planet...

Now we're back to this: with all the energy they're expending, tyranids should be producing massive amounts of heat and waste. How do they cool down in the vacuum of space? Why aren't the worlds they leave covered in whatever their digestion leaves? If they can somehow recycle everything at will, that means they have almost perfect control of energy and matter, which means focusing on biomass is dumb.

Anyway, the lore is vague enough that you can't really say "the numbers are wrong" or "this is scientifically impossible" on anything, but Tyranids do stuff that would be hard to believe even with crazy high tech and all of it only through biological processes? This is hard to swallow. I'm not saying I don't like the lore, just that it's best no to look into it with a scientific approach.

 Tiennos wrote:
Why aren't the worlds they leave covered in whatever their digestion leaves?

That question has already been answered.

And if we argue that they can harvest solar energy, then there wont be any point in leaving behind anything but the towers, since any "waste" can be reused for "free".

 Tiennos wrote:
Tyranids don't just "float" in space, they travel through it. That takes insane amounts of energy. But Tyranids can manipulate gravity somehow, so I guess there's that...
Sucking matter out of a planet's gravitational pull is also incredibly hard to do. Look at how much fuel it takes just to put a small satellite into orbit, but tyranids can just drink their planet smoothie through a straw, somehow. Not counting all the energy it took to conquer and digest that planet...

How many calories is the entire biosphere of a planet?

 Tiennos wrote:

Now we're back to this: with all the energy they're expending, tyranids should be producing massive amounts of heat and waste. How do they cool down in the vacuum of space? Why aren't the worlds they leave covered in whatever their digestion leaves? If they can somehow recycle everything at will, that means they have almost perfect control of energy and matter, which means focusing on biomass is dumb.

Once you accept Tyranids as being an entire ecosystem, they don't necessarily have to leave behind any physical waste. Our own biosphere recycles our s***, so that's not really a problem.

They might leave heat behind, or even trace gasses, but that heat will just radiate into space and maybe all that's left on the surface of a planet is a very thin atmosphere of methane or whatever makes up a million Tyranid farts.

Leaving behind "super-magic" potential in-universe solutions like using psychic powers to levitate themselves out of a planets gravity well, they can leverage a potential ability to manipulate gravity along with some way to generate thrust (which is just gas and heat). Making rocket fuel is just chemistry, which living things do all the time. Making fusion thrusters might be harder for a biological entity to do, but using radioactive materials to make a nuclear reactor isn't that difficult, and can generate craploads of energy if you need it.

As for why they might limit themselves to biotechnology. . . I think a potential Hive Mind reasoning process would be "Why make something that is not my body, when I can just use my body?"

 John Prins wrote:
The Nids have energy sources well beyond what biomass can provide. You don't travel between solar systems on the calorie content of fat and muscle. They need biomass to grow more Nids.

Excellent point.

 Tiennos wrote:
Now we're back to this: with all the energy they're expending, tyranids should be producing massive amounts of heat and waste. How do they cool down in the vacuum of space? Why aren't the worlds they leave covered in whatever their digestion leaves? If they can somehow recycle everything at will, that means they have almost perfect control of energy and matter, which means focusing on biomass is dumb.

Focusing on biomatter might not be dumb if you consider that the Tyranids are looking to thrive and it seems that their species will not tolerate other organic creatures that might compete for resources and perhaps threaten their long term existence. Seems smart to me to kill/absorb the competition in that kind of race.

 agurus1 wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
Now we're back to this: with all the energy they're expending, tyranids should be producing massive amounts of heat and waste. How do they cool down in the vacuum of space? Why aren't the worlds they leave covered in whatever their digestion leaves? If they can somehow recycle everything at will, that means they have almost perfect control of energy and matter, which means focusing on biomass is dumb.

Focusing on biomatter might not be dumb if you consider that the Tyranids are looking to thrive and it seems that their species will not tolerate other organic creatures that might compete for resources and perhaps threaten their long term existence. Seems smart to me to kill/absorb the competition in that kind of race.

What I meant is if they have a self-sufficient ecosystem, then they can work with bare chemical elements and don't really need the kind of complex molecules that biomass provides. In that case, eating from a gas giant for example, provides a thousand times more material to work with. Getting rid of the competition is still useful, but it shouldn't be the only source of food.

Also, if tyranids can bring their own ecosystem with them, it would make sense to colonize any planet they come across. If they can be somewhat self-sufficient in space, then it would be even easier on any random rock they find. Send in some basic organisms to get things started, let those tyranid-terraform (tyraform?) the planet and then you can start producing all sorts of bioforms from whatever that planet is made of.

I mean I don’t know of any lore that states they don’t consume useful materials from planets or celestial objects. I mean I would imagine if they came across a comet or a hydrogen gas cloud they would stop to harvest those materials you know? As for colonizing, why bother? You have killed the competition, can move on to new pastures and the sedentary life doesn’t seem to work for a “locust” like species. Besides time spent colonizing might give other competitive species time to grow and become harder in the long term to compete with.

 Tiennos wrote:

What I meant is if they have a self-sufficient ecosystem, then they can work with bare chemical elements and don't really need the kind of complex molecules that biomass provides. In that case, eating from a gas giant for example, provides a thousand times more material to work with. Getting rid of the competition is still useful, but it shouldn't be the only source of food.

Also, if tyranids can bring their own ecosystem with them, it would make sense to colonize any planet they come across.

I guess you could argue that it is simply not in their nature as "predatory locusts". GW have gone the "force of nature" route with the tyranids, and I really like that.

Remember that the hive mind is just the gestalt of every living tyranid. I might be intelligent beyond comprehension, but still very basic in its goals as a result of that.

You could draw some interesting parallels to the chaos gods here..

 Andersp90 wrote:

Remember that the hive mind is just the gestalt of every living tyranid. I might be intelligent beyond comprehension, but still very basic in its goals as a result of that.

Wait... Oh crap guys, the Hive Mind has a Dakka account and lives in Denmark!

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Andersp90 wrote:

Remember that the hive mind is just the gestalt of every living tyranid. I might be intelligent beyond comprehension, but still very basic in its goals as a result of that.

Wait... Oh crap guys, the Hive Mind has a Dakka account and lives in Denmark!

A tyrannocyte has been sent to your location.

 Andersp90 wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

What I meant is if they have a self-sufficient ecosystem, then they can work with bare chemical elements and don't really need the kind of complex molecules that biomass provides. In that case, eating from a gas giant for example, provides a thousand times more material to work with. Getting rid of the competition is still useful, but it shouldn't be the only source of food.

Also, if tyranids can bring their own ecosystem with them, it would make sense to colonize any planet they come across.

I guess you could argue that it is simply not in their nature as "predatory locusts". GW have gone the "force of nature" route with the tyranids, and I really like that.

Remember that the hive mind is just the gestalt of every living tyranid. I might be intelligent beyond comprehension, but still very basic in its goals as a result of that.

You could draw some interesting parallels to the chaos gods here..

I get the parallel with the locust swarm that comes, eats everything, then leaves (and I agree it's pretty cool to imagine that on a galactic scale).

It's just a bit hard for me to reconcile that the tyranids are pretty much the ultimate lifeform, capable of consciously selecting bits and pieces of dna to evolve a bioform to do whatever they need at any given time (including stuff that takes the other races super advanced technology to do), but are still just dumb locusts at the same time.

 Tiennos wrote:


It's just a bit hard for me to reconcile that the tyranids are pretty much the ultimate lifeform, capable of consciously selecting bits and pieces of dna to evolve a bioform to do whatever they need at any given time (including stuff that takes the other races super advanced technology to do), but are still just dumb locusts at the same time.

Mabye that ability was possesed by the "base" species that gave rise to the tyranids. A bit like the kroots ability to absorb DNA from their pray and reshape themselves that way.

We also have to remember that the DNA editing/creature creation is done by the norn queens. So the hive mind might not be directly involved in that part of the operation.

A long the lines of this quote from "the devastation of baal"

That is why I personally don’t like the Hive Mind being portrayed as bearing grudges towards individual humans or Eldar. The actions of individuals should be as far beneath the Hive Mind’s notice as the actions of individual bacteria are beneath the notice of people.

Part of the horror of the Tyranids is meant to be they don’t care about you enough to even hate you.

Now about Tyranid operations...Tyranids have the dual objectives of genetic material and biomass. One may ask why attack living worlds as opposed to synthesizing organic material themselves. One could ask why herbivores eat plants instead of photosynthesizing and making their own food, or why carnivores eat herbivores. The answer is time. Eating existing organic material is a faster way to get the same amount of material compared to making it yourself. Herbivores have to be eating or digesting nearly their entire waking time. A carnivore actually has time in between kills/meals.

The issue of heat radiation in space is an issue with all 40k ships. Imperial ships spew hot plasma out their rear to propel themselves. Similarly Tyranid ships are described in BFG sources as using thrusters so they too expel reaction mass. This reaction mass could also serve the additional purpose of waste disposal and heat dissipation, with the reaction mass serving as a heat sink. We also know from BFG sources, one of the upgrades possible for Tyranid ships are vanes that gather solar energy. On planets, Tyranid flora also uses the sun and the Tyranids have also been described using geothermal sources. Thus both space and planetary Tyranid ecosystems have outside energy inputs.

You can't synthesize the entire ecosystem in your belly, because it would take enormous amounts of energy and time. Also, Tyranids would need to hug suns or gas giants quite closely and then they would have to deal with its immense gravity wells to get away from the system. They would get pseudo-stuck there.


Another thing which everybody forgets is that Tyranids are hungry boys. They had traveled through intergalactic medium which is largely devoid of matter and starlight at that distance does nothing. I think it might be a simple case of Tyranid race being starved for biomass after such long and exhaustive travel and they need to get more food desperately at this point. This would explain why scorched earth policy is so effective even if it would be illogical otherwise. Tyranids at this point are starving and they are dying off. The point that our galaxy turned out to be extremely militarized, organized and sufficiently advanced also terrifies tyranids to no end, because now they have to expend this new biomass in producing new tendrils which these pesky factions of W40k millenium has a nasty habit of destroying.

Tyranids can eat souls and digest planets for minerals. So....yeah. They eat everything.

The funny thing about metals is that they are underground and requires a lot of work to be extracted. Bioforms need to dig to those mineral nodes. Capillary towers need to extract those metals into the surface and then to orbit in solid form. That is a lot of energy and Tyranids do not have enough time to do all of this due to how fast they leave the planet. I do believe that Tyranids prefer not to use metals in vast quantities, only as secondary substance in their bioforms. Funnily enough, we never heard of tyranids mining asteroids which would make the most sense for getting easy metal into their bellies.

Why dig when you can wait for somebody else to dig, eat them and what they dug up?

pm713 wrote:
Why dig when you can wait for somebody else to dig, eat them and what they dug up?

Indeed. We have for example a story in the 3rd edition Tyranid Codex that shows Tyranid flora working on breaking down an Imperial base and Leman Russ tank. The technological constructs of other races provide all sorts of elements in nice concentrated packages.

Well, I guess this is why we must recycle our trash or inter-galactic locust will recycle it for us!