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 Andersp90 wrote:

Roberts84 wrote:
Lamest species in the Lore.

Naah, that honour goes to the blood angels and their nipplearmor-fetish. Lamest faction in the setting for sure.

How on earth did you misspell newcron that badly?

Whilst I get the dislike for the evolution of the Necron lore I think that its actually not a bad direction. If anything they've brought more interesting ways to use the Necrons by making them more than just mindless terminator robots. Sure there's a level of fear in a mindless machine that hunts to kill and nothing more; however we still have that. Most of the warriors, Immortals and lower ranks are all very much the mindless machine with a will to kill life.

It's the upper ranks that have the more diverse personality. They provide a driving force that gives direction and story to the underlings beyond a repeat pattern of mindless war and random awakening of tomb worlds. It gives structure.

 Andersp90 wrote:
Not cannon.

I thought so too, but GW is incredibly protective of their IP. Like really, really, reaaaaaallly protective of their IP. They blew up their deal with Blizzard because of lore issues. So it's safe to say GW fully controls the lore of WH40k video games. Even if it's not canon, if it's not true it doesn't make it into video games. And Gladius and BFGA2 both say Tyranids can't digest beyond bedrock. At least with what they have in the galaxy right now.

Still hoping for planet and star eater tyranids.

 Andersp90 wrote:
No. The tyranids are constantly improving existing designs, and coming up with entirely new ones. One could take the maleceptor as an example.

From 8th edition:

"The Maleceptor is the purest embodiment of the Hive Mind’s psychic power, a living vessel for the gestalt consciousness that rules the Tyranid race. As it advances ominously into battle, warp energy spears from its eyeless cranium, vapourising all in its path. Those fortunate enough to survive the monster’s keening psychic screams are spitted upon colossal talons, their torn bodies hurled aside. Bullets and energy bolts fired at the Maleceptor are consumed by a formidable psychic barrier, or deflect harmlessly from its thickly armoured hide. In response, ethereal pseudopods reach forth from the creature’s glistening brain-arrays. The merest brush from one of these psychic tendrils overloads the victim’s consciousness with a fraction of the Hive Mind’s unimaginable energies, detonating their skull in an eruption of blood and cerebral matter.
Maleceptors are the response of the Hive Mind to some of the more psychically gifted races that populate the galaxy"

That's engineering not science. Discovery of integrated circuits in silicon is science. Using that to create every electronic thing in the modern world is engineering. In other words the Tyrant Guard and Maleceptor is the Hive Mind using their tech in a different way to make different units. They didn't invent anything new.

They're a millions year old race that consumed multiple galaxies. If they haven't consumed all the planets in those multiple galaxies then it's safe to say their tech path can't do that. But we don't know that yet. Planet Eater Tyranids are still a possibility.

 Andersp90 wrote:
Yet, if the necrons are to have a chance of beating the tyranids, their enitre race will have to reunite.. So, does that mean that the necrons are pathetic?

No. Pathetic means helpless. Tau aren't helpless because they're making technological leaps that could one day let them surpass tyranids despite their inferior number. Necrons surpass Tau in both tech and numbers. In fact they're as numerous as IoM. Necrons are probably the strongest faction in the setting right now.

If Tyranids cannot consume anything below bedrock, then they're "pathetic" because if push comes to shove, they can't improve and suddenly start eating bedrock. If they can't that is. Still though, Gas giants are 75% of non-darkmatter matter.

That's great. In order for a species to be 'not pathetic' it has to eat rocks.

 Insectum7 wrote:
That's great. In order for a species to be 'not pathetic' it has to eat rocks.

More like how much of the periodic table of elements and percentage of mass on a planet or galaxy they can utilize at the end of their tech path.

roboemperor wrote:


I thought so too, but GW is incredibly protective of their IP. Like really, really, reaaaaaallly protective of their IP.

They used to be, yes. Now they are selling to anyone willing to buy their IP.. https://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/04/03/warhammer-40k-in-app-store/

Tyranids being unable to leave a planet in gladius, and tyranid shipyards in BFG2, are just two examples of stuff that are at odds with the codex lore..

No. Pathetic means helpless.

So the tyranids are helpless. Gotcha.

roboemperor wrote:
Necrons surpass Tau in both tech and numbers. In fact they're as numerous as IoM.

Where is that stated?

 Insectum7 wrote:
That's great. In order for a species to be 'not pathetic' it has to eat rocks.

Yea, this was a waste of time..

Do explain how Nids being unable to leave a planet and having a shipyard is a problem.

pm713 wrote:
Do explain how Nids

Because its stated that they can in their codex.

and having a shipyard is a problem

Because the codexes state that hive ships are born. Not build in a shipyard.

Yeah that's reeeeeaaaaally flimsy. They can easily be stuck on a planet like anyone else and it's very reasonable that someone refers to a place dedicated to the growth of new hive ships as a shipyard.

pm713 wrote:
They can easily be stuck on a planet like anyone else

In the codex lore they create new ships an leave..

and it's very reasonable that someone refers to a place dedicated to the growth of new hive ships as a shipyard

.

In BFG2 you build structures on planets to create new ships. In the codex lore, hive ships literally give birth to new ships..

Okay and do these new ships appear fully formed and ready to go?

So it doesn't contradict anything then. It's an alternative not a replacement.

 Andersp90 wrote:
They used to be, yes. Now they are selling to anyone willing to buy their IP.. https://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/04/03/warhammer-40k-in-app-store/

Tyranids being unable to leave a planet in gladius, and tyranid shipyards in BFG2, are just two examples of stuff that are at odds with the codex lore..

They can't leave gladius because gladius is a sentient planet thing with a warp storm that keeps the tyranids trapped. It's pretty clear that the warp storm is preventing the tyranids from leaving and that if it weren't for the warp storm the Tyranids would leave. Which means they can make hive ships on the ground.

 Andersp90 wrote:
Where is that stated?

One of the codices. Too lazy to look it up again. exact quote was "as numerous as they are".

 Andersp90 wrote:
Yea, this was a waste of time..

Right, so if people don't agree with each other the whole thing was a waste of time. So I wasted my time talking to you. Gotcha.

I'd remind people that Tyranids built space elevators - capillary towers - to move resources into space. They don't have to be able to build ships on the ground; just infest the ground itself and grow the towers. Once the towers are grown the resources can be moved up into space where a ship can grow fat on the end with the delivery of resources from below.

 Overread wrote:
I'd remind people

I think it's one person not people.

I agree. Capillary towers and Anphelion project is enough to say that Tyranids can adapt to anything and can build whatever they want from a ripper or a gaunt as long as there's biomass available.

pm713 wrote:
Okay and do these new ships appear fully formed and ready to go?

So it doesn't contradict anything then. It's an alternative not a replacement.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense though. You have to build "shipyards" in the systems you have already conquered, meaning that your new ships then have to travel to wherever the fleet has moved to. It would also mean that the fleet would then have to travel back to a system with a shipyard with new biomass to create new ships. It makes no sense for a nomadic species to do any of this. But it saved the devs of BFG2 some money to not create a new mechanic just for the nids.

roboemperor wrote:


They can't leave gladius because gladius is a sentient planet thing with a warp storm that keeps the tyranids trapped. It's pretty clear that the warp storm is preventing the tyranids from leaving and that if it weren't for the warp storm the Tyranids would leave. Which means they can make hive ships on the ground.

Fair enough.

roboemperor wrote:


One of the codices. Too lazy to look it up again. exact quote was "as numerous as they are".

When you read the 8th edition codex, you get the sense that time has been rough on the necrons, and I would guess that there are about as many necrons left, as there are humans on a small hive world.

roboemperor wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
That's great. In order for a species to be 'not pathetic' it has to eat rocks.

More like how much of the periodic table of elements and percentage of mass on a planet or galaxy they can utilize at the end of their tech path.

Oh I get that, it's just extremely arbitrary.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh I get that, it's just extremely arbitrary.

I don't think it's arbitrary. But then this is fiction so maybe using real-life stuff is arbitrary.

If Imperium of Man and Tyranids are both given a planet, IoM will have a fleet of starships almost equal to the planet's mass, Tyranids will have a fleet of hiveships equal to about 0.5% of the planet's mass.

~100% v.s. 0.5%. How can you think that's not pathetic?

But, there still exists the possibility of planet eater tyranids.

roboemperor wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh I get that, it's just extremely arbitrary.

I don't think it's arbitrary. But then this is fiction so maybe using real-life stuff is arbitrary.

If Imperium of Man and Tyranids are both given a planet, IoM will have a fleet of starships almost equal to the planet's mass, Tyranids will have a fleet of hiveships equal to about 0.5% of the planet's mass.

~100% v.s. 0.5%. How can you think that's not pathetic?

But, there still exists the possibility of planet eater tyranids.

Your logic isn't supported by the lore to begin with though..

roboemperor wrote:
"They're a millions year old race that consumed multiple galaxies. If they haven't consumed all the planets in those multiple galaxies then it's safe to say their tech path can't do that. But we don't know that yet. Planet Eater Tyranids are still a possibility."

We dont know if the tyranid race is millions of years old, nor do we know if they have consumed multiple galaxies - or if they have even consumed A galaxy.
You also assume that the tyranids have reached a technological "peak", again, based on "facts" not supported by the lore.

Not making sense isn't a great argument in 40k. The existence of necrons doesn't make sense, the Horus Heresy doesn't make sense, the Custodes don't make sense and...well have you seen what Orks do?

Nid shipyards are well within possibility and actually make sense in some situations.

roboemperor wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh I get that, it's just extremely arbitrary.

I don't think it's arbitrary. But then this is fiction so maybe using real-life stuff is arbitrary.

If Imperium of Man and Tyranids are both given a planet, IoM will have a fleet of starships almost equal to the planet's mass, Tyranids will have a fleet of hiveships equal to about 0.5% of the planet's mass.

~100% v.s. 0.5%. How can you think that's not pathetic?

The IOM doesn't convert a planet to materiel at anywhere near 100% efficiency.

Or look at it another way, no other faction converts all organic molecules to ITSELF. 100% of organic molecules become 100% owned by the hive mind. People still grow food from plants. Heck, people aren't even the same conscious entity, but lots of different entities that grow old and die. The Hive Mind is functionally immortal, simply seeking out more of the components it can use to grow itself. The Tyranid endgame is: The universe is some dead rocks, and everything else is itself. Perhaps from it's perspective it is the finite-lived, puny other races that are pathetic. Who cares if they can make a big dead spaceships, their spaceships aren't part of a higher, pan-galactic being.

pm713 wrote:

Nid shipyards are well within possibility and actually make sense in some situations.

Yes, if all hive ships have been lost, and the tyranid force is left stranded (which is excatly what happened in the octarius war). In all other situations? No.

 Andersp90 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Nid shipyards are well within possibility and actually make sense in some situations.

Yes, if all hive ships have been lost, and the tyranid force is left stranded (which is excatly what happent in the octarius war). In all other situations? No.

Fleet is far away from other fleets and needs more ships and there are forces coming in to where they are. Grow a shipyard by sending lots of biomass etc to an isolated nearby system with a star for some energy production. Bam long term Tyranid problem with a shipyard.

pm713 wrote:

 Andersp90 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Nid shipyards are well within possibility and actually make sense in some situations.

Yes, if all hive ships have been lost, and the tyranid force is left stranded (which is excatly what happent in the octarius war). In all other situations? No.

Fleet is far away from other fleets and needs more ships and there are forces coming in to where they are. Grow a shipyard by sending lots of biomass etc to an isolated nearby system with a star for some energy production. Bam long term Tyranid problem with a shipyard.

Why waste time and biomass building a shipyard when the hive ships can just give birth to new ships on the spot? Also, tyranid interstellar travel is slow compared to warp travel, so going back an forth between systems dosent make a whole lot of sense.

 Andersp90 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Andersp90 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Nid shipyards are well within possibility and actually make sense in some situations.

Yes, if all hive ships have been lost, and the tyranid force is left stranded (which is excatly what happent in the octarius war). In all other situations? No.

Fleet is far away from other fleets and needs more ships and there are forces coming in to where they are. Grow a shipyard by sending lots of biomass etc to an isolated nearby system with a star for some energy production. Bam long term Tyranid problem with a shipyard.

Why waste time and biomass building a shipyard when the hive ships can just give birth to new ships on the spot? Also, tyranid interstellar travel is slow compared to warp travel, so going back an forth between systems dosent make a whole lot of sense.

Because they'll die the second someone else gets there and shoots them? It would be much safer to grow baby ships far away from the nasty ships that kill them.

Again much of 40k doesn't make sense. Besides they're going back once and sending a stream of new tyranids in that scenario. Hardly back and forth.

pm713 wrote:
Okay and do these new ships appear fully formed and ready to go?

So it doesn't contradict anything then. It's an alternative not a replacement.

Per BFG rules, immature hive ships are hypothesized to be first Drone then Cruiser size, and only reach Hive ship size once their Hive Mind nodes mature.

Of course that is AdMech hypothesis so they may be wrong. It also doesn't say how long it takes to mature or whether the Hive Mind can accelerate the process.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The IOM doesn't convert a planet to materiel at anywhere near 100% efficiency.

Aren't Forge Worlds doing stuff like that? Endlessly mining to the planet's core to utilize 100% of the planet?

Even 50% or 25% efficiency is higher than 0.5%

Whatever, lets switch to Necrons who have anti-matter and matter transmutation abilities. Anti-matter to power their stuff, their stuff turns matter into necrodermis, repeat repeat repeat.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Or look at it another way, no other faction converts all organic molecules to ITSELF. 100% of organic molecules become 100% owned by the hive mind. People still grow food from plants. Heck, people aren't even the same conscious entity, but lots of different entities that grow old and die. The Hive Mind is functionally immortal, simply seeking out more of the components it can use to grow itself. The Tyranid endgame is: The universe is some dead rocks, and everything else is itself. Perhaps from it's perspective it is the finite-lived, puny other races that are pathetic. Who cares if they can make a big dead spaceships, their spaceships aren't part of a higher, pan-galactic being.

I guess I'm just disappointed that it's not 100% of matter and only organic molecules.

Why can't Tyranids use anti-matter? If they could then they can use 100% of matter. Necrons use it.
Why can't Tyranids conduct Nuclear Transmutation? Just split the atoms into smaller atoms (gases) and they can use all of that. High radiation applied to atoms makes them split. So just apply energy and atoms split.
It seems any big celestial object is pure gas, like gas giants and stars. So why can't Tyranids shove planets into each other to create a gas giant for consumption.
Or better yet push the planet into a sun and form a bio-dyson-sphere around it with hive ships.

side tangent:
I love Tyranids. In an earlier thread I chose Tau to be my race for wh40k but here I am after months coming back to Tyranids again as I always have. So Tyranids are my true love. No matter what I don't like about it, I keep coming back to it.
A large part of my issues with them has been resolved over time.
This gas giant quote from Devastation of Baal jumped their confirmed usable-matter from 0% to 75%.
I love Warriors, Carnifexes, and Hive Tyrants, and neutral to Tyrannofexes. I hate Hierophant. I hate how they look. And I also hate the hive ships. But I absolutely love Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2's Hive Ships. I asked over there if those designs are canon, and the posters there replied that Hive Ships can look however they want, and GW doesn't release "incorrect lore" in their video games so those Hive Ship designs are canon. And since Hive Ships are the "ultimate Tyranid lifeform" because they're the biggest and the strongest Tyranid unit in the game, I'm fine with not liking Hierophant because Hierophants aren't the ultimate Tyranid Unit, Hive Ships are.

But this being able to only use 0.5% of matter of a terrestrial planet is gonna forever haunt/bother me until GW finds a way to overcome that. Either with planet eating Tyranids, or that lack of consumption is because of a goal/expediency thing and not an incapability thing, or they intentionally keep these planets as Narwhal target points.

^My response would be that we really don't know how 'deep' Tyranid tech goes. We see organisms that are all war-based, and they may be optimized to be simple and expendable. But it's possible that the digestion vessels or the interstellar travel vessels are extremely technologically sophisticated. We really don't know. We DO know that they can do a bunch of things that other races can't though. They can travel intergalactically, and that in and of itself is no joke. They seem to have ftl travel that possibly doesn't use the warp (otherwise their invastion of our galaxy would take hundreds of thousands to millions of years), and they can drown out Chaos in the warp just by their massed presence. Tyranids are incredibly powerful as a faction, arguably the most powerful.

My favorite part about them? Tyranid Warriors are far superior to Space Marines/Primaris. There's roughly a million Space Marines, and probably billions-trillions of Tyranid Warriors, and the Hive Mind can probably regrow a Warrior in a week.

If you take the notion that much of the drive for technology comes from competition, consider that Tyranids may not consider anything they've come up against as 'competition'.

 Andersp90 wrote:

pm713 wrote:
They can easily be stuck on a planet like anyone else

In the codex lore they create new ships an leave..

and it's very reasonable that someone refers to a place dedicated to the growth of new hive ships as a shipyard

.

In BFG2 you build structures on planets to create new ships. In the codex lore, hive ships literally give birth to new ships..

I imagine the Hive Mind does both based on whatever is best in a given context.

 Insectum7 wrote:
^My response would be that we really don't know how 'deep' Tyranid tech goes. We see organisms that are all war-based, and they may be optimized to be simple and expendable. But it's possible that the digestion vessels or the interstellar travel vessels are extremely technologically sophisticated. We really don't know. We DO know that they can do a bunch of things that other races can't though. They can travel intergalactically, and that in and of itself is no joke. They seem to have ftl travel that possibly doesn't use the warp (otherwise their invastion of our galaxy would take hundreds of thousands to millions of years), and they can drown out Chaos in the warp just by their massed presence. Tyranids are incredibly powerful as a faction, arguably the most powerful.

My favorite part about them? Tyranid Warriors are far superior to Space Marines/Primaris. There's roughly a million Space Marines, and probably billions-trillions of Tyranid Warriors, and the Hive Mind can probably regrow a Warrior in a week.

If you take the notion that much of the drive for technology comes from competition, consider that Tyranids may not consider anything they've come up against as 'competition'.

the retcon to their FTL is probably the part I dislike most about current nids, aside from Swarmlord characterification.

They were always warp-based ships that hibernated through their travels and the original tyraind attack box was about marines performing special boarding missions to kill the ships before they awoke from hibernation.

Their ability to cross the intergalactic void shouldn't be impossible through the warp, nor for anyone else when you think about it. The concept that the void is still and calm should make it easier to traverse as ships use their own propulsion, they don't catch waves of warp energy. so the stillness should make it a simple matter to dive in and push yourself forward towards the yummy golden beacon you can see in the distance. There'd be less daemonic incursion too...

The idea that a single nid organism can lock onto the gravity field of a star millions of light years away when gravity operates under the inverse cube law making its field virtually nonexistent at that distance, and use that field to pull itself towards the star, just seems like someone trying to add their own unique stamp to the army rather than a well thought out development of their capabilities.

on the flip side I'm annoyed that they gave necrons their own webway and took away their superscience inertialess drives, as if anyone can muck with fundamental laws it's c'tan and inertialess means 'massless' effectively as it's a function of the object's resistance to change in velocity which is proportional to their mass. This gave them great capacity to move around and change direction instantly.


Tyranid 'tech' is definitely built around increasing their survival efficiency. i'll have to see if I can find the quote, but the consumption of atmosphere resulted in their hulls being sheathed in in the resulting frozen gases. They kind of piled on everything they can consume.

They also produce bioplasma which is just a fancy way of saying they've got some kind of biological system that ionises gases and expels them. This would be used for their propulsion as well as being a weapon.

They don't really need to worry about going fast in realspace when they can jump around with abandon - the hive mind being capable of drowning out chaos means they're far less likely to be assaulted by daemons in transit than other species. Jumping into the gravity well of a star is dangerous to everyone else, but nids don't care. they can just appear right over their chosen planet.


If they never knew how to photosynthesise, eating the orks of charadon has certainly given it to them as they've always had that ability in their skin. so consuming gas sources is just a way to feed their photosynthesis factories which are attached to their norn queens feeding them energy continually as they reassemble the new genomes they've consumed and grow new breeds.

pm713 wrote:
Not making sense isn't a great argument in 40k. The existence of necrons doesn't make sense, the Horus Heresy doesn't make sense, the Custodes don't make sense and...well have you seen what Orks do?

Nid shipyards are well within possibility and actually make sense in some situations.

Agreed. It's best to take most of it on face value and not to think about it too hard.

Gellar fields are perhaps the most slowed concept I've encountered in any scifi. Absolute nonsense.

Personally I'm just in it mostly for the power armor and ultra violence.