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I've been reading some of the 'nid fluff recently for no apparent reason, and well, for any non 'nids it makes for depressing reading. They can eat a planet in a week. There's an ungodly amount of them, with tons being grown each day. They can mutate to overcome any obstacle. Heck, they've even got humans (albeit mostly mutant humans)working for them on the inside.

So my question to Dakka is this; Does any race have a feasable chance of stopping the Hive mind, or is the galaxy basically screwed?

/discuss.

EDIT: Rank up, yay.

Eventually there is supposedly no chance- but who knows?

If all races unite(which is impossible),Necrons fully awake and if Necrons separate materium from immaterium.

Wiki human vs locus , if you think humans have any chance against nids ( which are like 10000 times larger ) you are mistaken.

I wonder how long would the Imperium last against the full strength of the 'nids if they direct all of their war machine to 'nids.Every guardsmen,marine,skiitari,battlefleet,civilian craft etc....

what about if all space marine chapters attempts to send out specialized groups to destroy the hive mind (like in DOW2)?

Hm... maybe all the Craftworlds make babies like rabbits... then kill them... then put them in Wraithguard suits... Then go Iyanden on those Nids Wraithcannon FTW

Plus killing them all would also stregthen their God of Death and take out Slaneesh at the same time

Honestly I think Necrons and Nids will just cancel each other out, leaving the Imperium to clean up the sorry mess left behind.

That'd work out very well actually. The 'Nids can't get biomass or genetic adaptations from the Necrons.

I heard that the necrons can convert biological material into the components they need. so wouldnt the necrons just absorb the tyranids then everyone gets screwed over by necrons?

Yay for Necrons !

yeah I rather be shot by a necron than torn apart by a nid so +1 for Necrons!

Yeah, getting shot sounds alot more tempting than being eaten alive...GO TEAM NECRON!

Tyranids vs Imperium-They can eat them.
Tyranids vs Eldar- They can eat them.
Tyranids vs Necrons- If the Nids eat all other sentient races, the necrons would be free to complete their great work cutting off the Warp, at which point the Hive Mind dies, and the Necrons harvest the aimless 'Nids.
Tyranids vs Chaos- The Chaos Gods would just mutate/take over/misdirect anything that entered the Eye of Terror. So whilst they might eat everything outside of it, the Chaos Gods would stop them from eating all the Chaos Marines.
Tyranids vs Tau-Tau get eaten
Tyranids vs Dark Eldar-They live in the Webway where the Nid's can't get at them, so they're safe.
Tyrnaids vs Orks-They get eaten.

Don't Necrons turn humans into Pariahs or something? Hmm I Wouldn't mind that if that's possible.....

If I remember the fluff correctly the tyranid hive fleets originate outside the galaxy, and so even if they did kill all the tyranids in this galaxy there is always more waiting outside on the doormat.

I recall a bit from the writers talking bout nids in a WD, and eventually nids will eat everything, but it will take a while and the imperium is just fighting a losing battle. Kind of adds more grim and dark to the already grimdark setting in that we are all screwed anyway, but we can slow things down a bit if we kill off some of the hive fleets.

Would be a crappy game if they played out the fluff as is in 6th edition, I mean you would have a choice of two armies, soulless killing machines made of flesh or soulless killing machines made out of metal......

oh and space marines for some reason...

Well, I would correct about Chaos:

'Nids v. Chaos : Chaos Gods fight amongst themselves while Tyranids eat them.

and orks doesnt get eaten. they still sends out spores then they die before they get eaten. so the orks would still be there

Well, the Tyranids would eat everything organic on the planet, including the dirt. So there would be nothing left for the orks to breed from. So whatever of them survives, would quickly die, what with the lack of an atmosphere and all.

Orks and Nids on the same planet would be nuts.

Orks generally grow larger to meet there challengers, and release spores upon death to multiply.

Nids eat to generate more biomass to create more, and stronger bugs.

so the cycle would go thusly...
Nids eat most orks, not all of them, and they wouldnt be able to clear out ALL the spores.
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger.
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger

Give it a couple hundred(thousand) years and there will be 100 foot tall orks and genestealers beating the crap out of each other godzilla style.

Meh I prefer the 2nd Ed fluff, when they were a new terrible menace, but that the Nids were up against humanity, the most powerful force in the history of the galaxy. Royal rumble!!!! Not the current fluff where they are a terrible menace and the galaxy has no chance.

As the Great One said: "I don't believe in the no win scenario."

There's also the Grim Dark Psychology factor. GW is probably just saying "the way things look, the worst case scenario if nothing changes is that Tyranids will eat everything." So far the Hive Fleets have been getting their noses beaten in, two out of the three have been defeated and one is sort of "there" but it's activities are stagnated by 40k's frozen time line.

Ketara wrote:
Tyranids vs Necrons- If the Nids eat all other sentient races, the necrons would be free to complete their great work cutting off the Warp, at which point the Hive Mind dies, and the Necrons harvest the aimless 'Nids.

No, the Hive Mind is not stated as being a denizen of the Warp. It's just an extremely powerful psychic presence made from the collective conciousness of billions of Tyranids in one gestalt organism. It's from another Galaxy, so it's fully possible that it gains its pcychic power from some extragalactic force other than the Warp, and therefore would not be at all affected if the Warp was cut of from the material world. And after they eat all the biomass, they won't be aimless, they'll simply pack their things and move onto the next galaxy, leaving the Necrons to sit there all alone with nothing to do but maybe take the Nids' hint and go to another galaxy.

Demogerg wrote:Orks and Nids on the same planet would be nuts.

Orks generally grow larger to meet there challengers, and release spores upon death to multiply.

Nids eat to generate more biomass to create more, and stronger bugs.

so the cycle would go thusly...
Nids eat most orks, not all of them, and they wouldnt be able to clear out ALL the spores.
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger.
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger
Orks grow stronger+larger to survive against the stronger+larger Nids, Nids eat them anyways, Nids get stronger+larger

Give it a couple hundred(thousand) years and there will be 100 foot tall orks and genestealers beating the crap out of each other godzilla style.

That's an interesting theory, but I'm afraid its been disproven. Read up on the Ghorala swarm. Some Orks shot down a Hive Ship which crash landed on a planet, the Orks proceeded to follow them to kill them in a massive Waaagh!. They outnumbered the injured Tyranids 2:1. The Nids later used their supreme abilities of adaption through trial and error to bolster their numbers and find a way to slaughter every last Ork on the planet, eat all the biomass on the planet, make a new Hive Ship, and go throughout Ork space wreaking havoc as they went.

P.S. That's the one where Kryptman thought he could stall Leviathan by sending them after the Orks.

from wh40k lexicanum
Kryptman's Gamble and Octavius

Kryptman observed the war between Tyranids and Orks on the world of Tesla Prime, where these two enemies of the Imperium locked each other in a long and bloody conflict. Seeing this as a way to slow or halt Leviathan without further loss of human life, Kryptman and a team of Deathwatch loyal to him embarked on a dangerous mission on the planet of Carpathia to capture a brood of live genestealers. At the cost of many Deathwatch lives, the genestealers were placed in a stasis field and then unleashed in the space hulk Peredition's Flame. The Deathwatch and Kryptman then detonated a nearby moon, sending the hulk hurtling into the Ork empire of Octavius. The genestealers quickly infected the Orks that attempted to raid the space hulk, causing the infection to flourish and quickly reach all corners of Octavius. Soon the psychic signature of the genestealers was strong enough to attract the second tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan, causing it to veer away from Imperial space. Leviathan is engaged in a protracted war with the Orks. However, whichever side remains victorious, will surely be far more powerful than they were before*3.

So the Ork/Tyranid evolution war is already underway.

2 things to think about with fighting the Tyranid
1) It might be possible to control their evolution to lead them to deadends or to promote a particular weakness that is later taken advantage of. This would be a massive undertaking requiring huge amounts of coordination, planning and intelligence regarding the Tyranid. However that is the kind of thing that Inquisitiors do.

2) What about taking the fight to the bugs prior to their arrival in the galaxy. I would assume that the Tyranid are operating in some kind of hibernation state to preserve energy in the incredibly long journey to our galaxy so its possible that they are at their weakest in this state. A sufficently large fleet might be able to strike while their pants are down (so to speak) and devistate them. At a minimum it should force them to use more resources to protect themselves, thus putting a drain on what they have access to when the fight comes.

minigun762 wrote:from wh40k lexicanum
Kryptman's Gamble and Octavius

Kryptman observed the war between Tyranids and Orks on the world of Tesla Prime, where these two enemies of the Imperium locked each other in a long and bloody conflict. Seeing this as a way to slow or halt Leviathan without further loss of human life, Kryptman and a team of Deathwatch loyal to him embarked on a dangerous mission on the planet of Carpathia to capture a brood of live genestealers. At the cost of many Deathwatch lives, the genestealers were placed in a stasis field and then unleashed in the space hulk Peredition's Flame. The Deathwatch and Kryptman then detonated a nearby moon, sending the hulk hurtling into the Ork empire of Octavius. The genestealers quickly infected the Orks that attempted to raid the space hulk, causing the infection to flourish and quickly reach all corners of Octavius. Soon the psychic signature of the genestealers was strong enough to attract the second tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan, causing it to veer away from Imperial space. Leviathan is engaged in a protracted war with the Orks. However, whichever side remains victorious, will surely be far more powerful than they were before*3.

So the Ork/Tyranid evolution war is already underway.

2 things to think about with fighting the Tyranid
1) It might be possible to control their evolution to lead them to deadends or to promote a particular weakness that is later taken advantage of. This would be a massive undertaking requiring huge amounts of coordination, planning and intelligence regarding the Tyranid. However that is the kind of thing that Inquisitiors do.

2) What about taking the fight to the bugs prior to their arrival in the galaxy. I would assume that the Tyranid are operating in some kind of hibernation state to preserve energy in the incredibly long journey to our galaxy so its possible that they are at their weakest in this state. A sufficently large fleet might be able to strike while their pants are down (so to speak) and devistate them. At a minimum it should force them to use more resources to protect themselves, thus putting a drain on what they have access to when the fight comes.

1) Yes, I agree, but it would require brilliant tactician with unbelieveable thinking processes to counter the Nids. It's possible, but not very probable.

2) They can't do that because we don't know where it is all the Tyranids are coming from. If we knew that I'm sure they would have been trying that years ago. Most come from dotted places on the Eastern fringe, but Leviathan sure as hell didn't. Not to mention, even the Tyranid Hive Ships are monsters in themselves. They'll rip apart anything that tries to mess with their deadly package, including firing missiles that inject hundreds of Stealers into the hulls of enemy ships.

The only path to victory would be to absolutely eliminate all biomass in the Hive fleet's path while simultaneously launching a campaign of harassment against it. Eventually, losses and the effort of defending itself would use up its reserves. I'm not sure even Exterminatus destroys every living thing on a planet, so someone would need to borrow the Planet Killer from Abbaddon. Depending on how long it takes to wear out the Hive Fleet, the Imperium may be left stranded in colonies of ships, not unlike Battlestar Galactica or the Squ- Demiurg.

Combine that with the need to harass the hive fleet with inorganic vessels and you end up with the construction and redeployment of combat robots and a borrowed Chaos Superweapon. Whatever was left over at the end of the war wouldn't be the Imperium of Man, but there wouldn't be an active Tyranid Fleet in the sector either.

I would disagree, it would only take one man to defeat the Tyranid threat: Chuck Norris

Inquisition takes out hive mind. Done and done.

Why doesn't the whole Imperium move, or at least the important bits of it. I'm sure that the Imperium have enough ships to literally drag Terra to another Galaxy. They planets that they ditched (and the poor, defenceless human left on them) would keep the Nids busy for long enough.