Barring any super psychic weapon that can disrupt the hive mind synapse, the best weapon to be used against Tyranids is phosphex. Phosphex is like white phosphorus that hates, it burns almost everything and cannot be put out other than by vacuum, and the best part is that the hive mind would have to expend untold numbers of biomass to counter it. But the problem is that the phosphex STCs have all been destroyed, Cawl needs to focus more on reverse engineering phosphex like he did with volkite.
It's not acid. Thirstwater is either a bioweapon from the Dark Age of Technology or simply the most insane organism that ever evolved in the Baal system.
It's a micro-organism that fully and completely desiccates anything that makes contact with it. The moat that the Blood Angels and FriendsTM created with it was a highlight of the book for me, personally
The thirstwater segment took the hard-to-comprehend TURBO OVER THE TOP DAKKA that characterized the siege and brought it all down to one single focal point. Took an entire 40k scaled siege and put it on the level of a (large) tabletop game. It was up there in the top few moments for sure.
Best explanation of how that moment felt I've red
Seems a dangerous game to play, using a bio weapon against the tyranids.
It worked super well. The moat destroyed more tyranids than anything else. Thirstwater don't mess around
They (meaning the BA and presumably the Imperium in general) don’t know what it is. They don’t know if it’s biological or mechanical or chemical. So they probably appreciated the risk but decided to go for it (I don’t remember if this is actually discussed in the book)
Thirstwater is just the most fucked thing ever.
Impressed you spelled desiccate right, most people do double s, single c
Loved the acid. I think phosphex basically is alive though, is attracted to movement, melts through metal and is very difficult to stop. I honestly can't remember if it's that it beads to be completely exposed to the void (I think this is the case) to extinguish or whether it burns even then.
I think any weapon that that essentially removes the nid and can't be overwhelmed by numbers or other shenanigans is the go. Unfortunately they are very limited or lost to tech decay.
For example there are plenty of historical weapons in setting that can put something into stasis to be killed later, completely disintegrate it at an atomic level, remove it from existence or transport it directly into the warp. They would have varied success and ultimately there's not enough to go around.
I think realistically speaking combined Necron intervention is the next best bet.
Imperium will NEVER run out of Hans'es und Flammenwerfen!
To be fair that only worked because the thirstwater got bored and left, before it realized it could climb the corpses out of the pit and leave it was still sucking up most of the nids trying to cross the bone bridge.
They say the Tyranids tripped Baals on the super acid that day and gave up the fight in favor of a drum circle.
Note that the Blood Angels primarily used the moat not to directly kill the Tyranids, but to lure out synapse beasts to stop lesser creatures from trying to cross the moat.
Yeah the moat drew the synapse creatures up to where they could be eliminated by the heavy weapons on the wall. Meanwhile the otherwise ineffective weapons from the conscripts could plink gribblies
Necron Guass weapons. No defence against being stripped to atoms.
And no biomass to harvest from the shiny skelebois. Necrons should be the hard counter to Tyranids.
It’s a strangely common misconception that the biomass of the tyranids’ enemies is particularly important to them. It’s not. There is VASTLY more biomass to be found in the planet’s environment than in their enemies’ corpses and the tyranids consume it all down to the bedrock.
Even Necron gauss weapons aren’t some amazing counter against tyranids any more than fire, plasma and melta weapons are.
The true “hard counter” is to reside on a planet with no biomass. Some Necron tomb worlds are like that, but not all of them.
So somehow, you just have to get the Tyranids to fight Necrons on an airless rock.
...not sure how you'd do that.
Advertise a bingo night
"Inquisitor Kryptman, why do we have these voxcasters broadcasting an ancient song about a farmer and his dog?"
"My lord, the Hive Fleet has suddenly made a u-turn towards the trap-planet."
Fuck me, I actually laughed out loud in real life at that.
You can engage the Tyranids in space. Nothing to harvest there.
3rd edition necron codex was fairly explicit about that and even referenced in a tyranid codex in 4th. These two factions were never meant to fight one another by canon. 3rd ed necrons wanted souls, which the nids had none of. Nids wanted biomass, which necrons did not have and most their planets were bare rocks. Necron weaponry vaporises targets and nids can't reclaim mass from losses so even for metal it'd be immensely wasteful and void battles would be completely catastrophic for nids. There's no armor against vaporisation, that's the whole point of necron guns, they're unstoppable
Necrons are the hard counter to everyone, once they wake up
That practically describes every faction. Necrons shit is all broken, they are never getting their I win buttons, because it doesn't work. They lost their empire too.
Orks are killing everyone once they unite.
Tyranids are killing everyone when they get here.
Chaos are killing everyone when they inevitably win.
Tau aren't being stopped by anyone from expanding.
Killing the Eldar just makes them stronger.
Even the Imperium just gets its dead primarchs back for free so they never really lose.
Genestealers are screwed I guess. I know jack shit about the Votann maybe them too.
I think of all those factions though the Necrons and the Tyranids are the only two that are genuine existential threats to the entire universe if they were to achieve their full power.
40k is permanently in an anticipatory "the end is almost upon us" mood so it's not like it'll ever actually happen, but those two factions in particular need a lot of explaining around how they're not quite at full strength so that's why there's even a contest when you fight them.
IMO the 40k End State is Necrons fighting Tyranids as the only things left in the Galaxy, with the Necrons coming out on top. Nothing really beats their technology, they already won the War in Heaven once.
Tyranids harvest everything, including metals and minerals. A tomb world is a big shiny crunchy sweet to them. Top tier grade exoskeleton materials.
Nurgle is their real hard counter. Nurgle worlds are full of life, but everything is chaos disease tainted and not only unassimilable, but deadly to nids.
See the Death Guard vs Nids snippet ; at the end of the conflict the planet they were fighting for was a giant bubbling mass of toxic waste and the one bioship that tried to consume some of it got immediately corrupted and killed by its peers.
To be fair, Nurgle's ilk were unable to survive there as well. I'd call that a draw.
Somewhat yes, but it was pure biomass loss for the 'nids...
Fair point.
I don't think long term however, Nurgle's forces have any more significant of an advantage than the rest of Chaos does.
The Nids learned their lesson as soon as that Hive Ship's Proboscis touched Hesp. The galaxy is chock a block full of biomass, there's only some many plague Fleets. I wouldn't be surprised at Hive Fleet Kronos 2.0
Nurgle have the whole "warp fueled diseases and bio-weapons" that can be more a pain in the ass for the nids than what Khorne propose for example . Altering the living is his whole shtick, and tyranids are 100% biological.
Ps : I love the concept of "plague fleets" :)
Ok, enough Nurgle fanboyism from me today ...
I'm just saying Hive Fleet Kronos fights Nurgle Daemons all the time.
The singular fleet operates at a net loss per battle against Chaos but strategically regains its reserves by having other fleets feed it partially consumed worlds.
At the Doom of hesp again the Nidd didn't technically gain anything and lost biomass after the fight but they did win the actual battle by a significant margin.
Like I said the first ship to touch the planet after that did become infected by Nurgle's plagues, but the rest of the hive fleet atomized it immediately.
And generally a Nurgle plague can be treated like a normal disease when you can remove the warps influences. This was actually a major plot point in one of the Cain books. Jurgen couldn't be affected, so then they had priests bless all the vaccines.
The shadow in the warp would probably protect the tyranids in the same way from the more mystical aspects of the diseases and generally they're mostly immune to them because of that but they would turn on anything that did actually get infected so there wouldn't be any way to spread it within the ranks.
Hive Fleet Kronos is actually so effective at hunting Daemons that it has managed to slow down the widenning of the Cicatrix Maledictum
Allrighty, good lore sharing
Ablative armor layers, sacrifice layers and layers of dense bone armor to close the gap and kill.
It's still a net loss for the tyranids even if they destroy the necrons. Nids gain nothing from fighting necrons, they only lose biomass.
Not true. Theres an entire hive fleet dedicated to consuming necron tomb worlds called hive fleet Arachnae.
Tyranids have been known to consume minerals and precious metals. Hell, doing so is the biovores whole shtick.
Yup they are adapting to this galaxies challenges. They are even adapting to take on warp daemons. They have direct control over their evolutionary potential and it's constantly being updated as they fight new types of organisms. There is nothing that can stop this juggernaut. Unless the necrons use their time machine to wipe them out before they become too out of control, or a direct analogue to the tyranids is introduced both are unlikely.
Tyranids are essentially unlimited and so batshit broken that I wouldn't be surprised if they can counter time travel somehow, they haven't actually arrived in force yet. Silent King sure took them seriously.
Think about it they ate a thousand galaxies, they could've gone up against any number of threats and won. Any Necron engagement is a loss for them, they can only adapt to an extent whereas Tyranids will eventually counter them perfectly.
The only number we've ever been given for how many galaxies the tyranids have consumed is "a dozen" according to the 5th edition rulebook. It's still terrifying in my opinion though, especially given that the milky way has been stated to be "unremarkable"
I mean, they gain Victory Points. /s
If we're going into the math of entropy here, the nids win in the endgame. There can never be new Necrons, and there's a 0.000001% (I forget how many zeroes) chance when a Necron "dies" that it will be unrecoverable, even with their advanced recovery technology. The Necrons are a dying race, they're just also waking up, so to the other races of the galaxy it looks like their numbers are increasing. On the other hand, the Tyranid can convert practically any biomass into new warriors. Even if a fight with the Necrons is a drain on their resources, those resources can be replenished from other very plentiful sources, like humans and orks. A specific invasion might lose because they run out of biomass to throw at the Necrons, but galaxy wide the Tyranids will win via attrition. The concept of ablative armor adapted to ablative organisms, wearing down the tide of Necron bodies until none remain.
If the planet they are fighting on has significant enough amount of biomass to give the Tyranids cause to invade it in the first place, then they will gain far more than they have lost after consuming said planet.
Depends on what they're fighting over. If it's a world with plenty of biomass otherwise, it could be a win.
Or just keep throwing bodies at it until they're out of ammo and overwhelm them, like how they'll slam gargoyles into anti-air and anti-space guns to clog them up with just thousands of dead bodies.
Necrons dont really have ammo. ESPECIALLY for Gauss weapons. They are basically power themselves when they shoot, that Beam is basically sucking everything and change it in to energy. They found infinite ammo glitch.
I've never heard of Necrons having ammo, and even if the nids destroy the Necrons, they've lost biomass permanently and gained nothing.
I think necrons have just as much to lose, if not more, than the nids because they generally speaking cannot be replaced. For as expendable as each nid is, each necron is proportionally precious, no?
Not really, they usually teleport out and can be repaired.
The issue is, the tech isn't perfect. It's just really really really good. But when you have no way of making more, even a 0.1% failure rate means you're steadily losing irreplaceable resources, whereas Tyranids can use just about anything to make more tyranids.
Usually, but I wouldn’t say neither teleporting out when they become damaged or, however occasionally, dying at a great loss to their race makes them a hard counter to nids
95% of the Necrons are still asleep, what we've seen so far is only the vanguard of their army and the Necron codex says there are countless billions of them waiting to wake up...
But they can’t reproduce regardless, even if it’s 100 billion, it’s still a finite number and nothing compared to nids or their reproduction rate.
Which works fine until the enemy has breached your defences and you have nowhere to teleport to.
Yeah it seems like it just comes down to ratios. Biomass lost per necron killed isn't something we really know, if it's 10 quintillion biomass per necron or something silly that favors necrons, if it's 7 biomass per necron it favors the nids. I personally think that thematically necrons vs nids comes down to how fast the necrons wake up vs how fast the nids gain biomass from killing other factions and we can't really know either of those things
A big vacuum that sucks up all the atoms?
Sounds like a blackhole
Biomass is more than just carcasses, it's plants, dirt, basically everything short of bedrock and magma.
They take that too, depending on what it's made of. They leave behind nothing but airless balls of dust, as they take EVERYTHING.
The recombination of atoms into complex chemical compounds? It’s really a silly argument that boils down to energy expenditure. Can you trade energy at a favorable rate vs the tyranids. If you can you win.
If you destroy faster than they build you win.
the one technology that can destroy the tyranids is ramming actions with gloriana-class battleships. they should reverse engineer those instead
Lion teleports in with a nuke. Sets the timer. Ports out.
Over and over and over.
I'd love a short story where he decimates a fleet one by one doing this.
You had me at ramming actions
What specifically about phosphex would prevent Tyranids from just adapting to it. Either through biological means or the often overlooked psychic means. Is it mentioned in an excerpt specifically that Tyranids are just hard countered by it? Or is it just another inference by the community?
Genuinely asking and not trying to be snarky or asshole. Because being honest, I just don’t see what the big fux is about it.
It’s cool, it’s just fan speculation by me and a couple others. The thing is, phosphex was one of the hardest weapons ever created: ( https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Phosphex_Weapon ). The hive mind absolutely could adapt to it, but it would cost lots of biomass to create units that could be immune to it, think of it like the swarm lord who can only exist one at a time. It would force the hive mind to spend resources to protect a few of its units.
One reasonable adaptation is just to have more troops with longer ranged weapons and fewer who attack in melee so that it is easier to avoid the phosphex clouds. More flying species might help too. The tyranids aren’t like the Borg who just become immune to everything after all.
It’s alright and definitely not impossible. Depends on how much credit you wanna give to the Hivemind strategict brilliance. Often times the Hiveminds prefers to send in wave after wave of enemies just to get over an obstacle as quickly as possible. In that case similar to Thirst-Water I could see phosphex being incredibly effective against them, punishing the Hivemind for underestimating its enemy. However, something I’d caution people when analyzing the Tyranids ability to adapt. Is that adaptation doesn’t necessarily make a bioform more expensive. New adaptations might unlock more efficient methods of doing something, actually saving energy. Or the Hivemind might decide to cut back on things that are simply not useful anymore for the specific battle.
Even if Hivemind would not become immune or atleast party resistant... imagine if they just learn to mąkę their own version of that....its basically insta GG for not just imperium but most of Galaxy in just one mistake.
But surely, even if the per unit replacement rate was 1:1 for biomass cost after adaptation, a ferocious weapon like this or similar would create a massive expenditure of mass simply to replace lost units, no? How quickly does adaptation take versus the kill rate of such a weapon, i.e. how many losses would they be forced to immediately have to replace once they’ve adapted? I think that’s the true biomass cost, assuming the adaptation doesn’t use more biomass than the predecessor unit.
That totally depends on whether the Tyranid win or not. If they win and are rewarded with a bountiful planet. The cost will be basically zero. Since not only does a planet resource vastly out number the mass of ground forces in a Tyranid invasion, but they can as well recycle their dead. Minimizing their losses even further. If they loose then yeah the loosses will be considerable, but that’s always the case.
I’m assuming that, at least in initial battles pre-adaptation, that they’ve lost, hence the need for the adaptation, and their dead have been burned of their biomass
In that case the calculation goes like this. Is it more efficient to either:
A. Cut your losses. B. Continue to attrition out your enemy C. Evolve an adaptation to counter an enemy weapon
Any of these options could be viable for dealing with phospodex. Its moreso depedant on the Hiveminds goals and circumstances. Is their an enemy leader that if defeated would cripple the enemy team. If so option B and C are favorable.
Good way of looking at it
Not necessarily. First, we have to establish Tyranids can just reabsorb any "less effective" bioforms, not losing too much biomass in the process. With that said, there have been instances of Tyranids evolving biological adaptations during the middle of combat. In Warriors of Ultramar by Graham McNeil, some Tyranids organisms evolve some appendages to climb the walls of the Imperium's fortifications:
Electrical fires and gouts of poisonous flame, chittering devourer creatures and bony shrapnel bombs pounded the walls relentlessly and as casualties spiralled into the tens of thousands, the decision was made to abandon the first wall.
Barely anything remained of its parapet and the smaller creatures had entered another evolutionary iteration, spontaneously developing fleshy tendons equipped with jagged hooks that enabled them to scale the sheer surfaces of the walls. The many guns mounted on the sides of the valley were keeping the majority of the aerial creatures at bay, and after the ambush at the city wall, no one was dismissing the possibility of the tyranids attacking from avenues previously considered impossible.
Interesting, I wonder if there’s any functional difference for them with regard to overcoming a physical barrier like this versus a termal/chemical barrier. For instance on earth, even though the process obviously takes much longer, man organisms have adapted to overcome physical barriers but almost nothing has adapted to overcome something like fire that destroys at a celular level. I’m sure tyranids can with time, but I’m curious as to whether it takes longer.
Well, it's not exactly the same, but from the same novel I want to point out this example of what Tyranid adaptation/strategy is capable of producing.
From Warriors of Ultramar by Graham McNeil:
‘Well?’ asked Admiral de Corte, impatiently.
‘It would seem Admiral Tiberius is correct,’ replied Jex Viert, his voice betraying his anxiety. ‘The refinery does appears to be closing with us now.’
Hot fear dumped into Bregant de Corte’s system as he realised the ramifications of this new information. He nodded to his flag lieutenant.
‘Order the nova cannon to fire!’ shouted Jex Viert. ‘Signal all ships to open fire. Now, for the Emperor’s sake, now!’
No, thought Admiral de Corte, not for the Emperor’s, for ours.
Colossal energies hurled the explosive shell from the breech of the nova cannon on the prow of the Argus and sent it streaking on a blazing plume towards the tyranid fleet. Travelling at close to five thousand kilometres per second, the shell closed the gap between the foes in a little under twenty-five seconds. As it closed to within fifteen thousand kilometres, blazing arcs of blue lightning surged outwards from the rippling plates of the creatures that surrounded the muscle beasts dragging the refinery, enveloping the missile’s shell. Instantly, the shell exploded in an expanding cloud of burning plasma, its shattered remnants spinning off into space.
The crackling, lightning spitters and the beasts with giant sail-like appendages took up station before the refinery as a flurry of shells and energy blasts slashed towards it. A thick morass of spores and tyranid creatures swarmed forward, exploding and spilling their lifeblood as they absorbed the mass of firepower directed at the refinery. Lance beams cut through spores and burned alien flesh before finally striking the reflective sails of the winged beasts that escorted the lightning spitters. The sails’ honeycombed structure dissipated much of the lance beams’ strength, rendering them harmless as they scored the structure of the refinery, but failed to penetrate its metal hide.
In this one excerpt we have Tyranid bioships not only having evolved some sort of reflective coating that nullified lance strikes, but a form of defensive adaptation that allowed them to destroy incoming shells fired by a novacannon (which move at relativistic speeds)
Welp, glad I have bug spray
Fun fact! The Deathguard and the Tyranids fought over a planet once. They kept one upping each other with various diseases. The Tyranids won, but they wouldn't eat the toxic sludge that the planet became.
Imagine the hive mind developing chitin that was immune to phosphex. As if the Tyranids needed an excuse to become even more terrifying.
Everything burns/oxidizes; organic material more easily. I could be wrong, but I don't think there is a material in the setting that's proof against phosphex, hence it's ban restriction by the Imperium.
Not saying the Hive Mind won't whip something up like biological force fields for the 'nids or finally moving beyond the stupid limitation of a purely biological baryonic substrate (seriously why did GW gimp the all consuming swarm with this restriction), but chitin just ain't gonna cut it, no matter what you dope it with.
You're really overlooking GW ability to handwave your logic away and say, "Well this iteration of chitin armor IS immune."
No, i agree with the other guy that it's unrealistic for chitin to stop the checks note sentient chemical that catches water on fire.
I mean tbf, the Tyranids do cast a shadow on the warp. They communicate to the hivemind via the warp. It's not too out of field that the hivemind could just conjure up a thin psychic field that repels phosphex.
If magic doesn't solve it, then idk what else would.
If it serves to create more grim dark and bloody fun plot, they would absolutely find a way to make it work. The rule of cool cones before the rule of science.
It wasn’t banned , it’s use was restricted to the mechanicum and the legions who both had specialist units with access to it - the Leviathan being an exception because it was implicitly developed to counter similar mechanicum dreadnought type classes and infantry.
After the Heresy the knowledge of its creation is lost.
As an anti Tyranid weapon its no good - they simply fly over it , burrow under it, go around it . Even during the heresy it was not used in anything offer than a vehicle based mortar shell. Its use just leaves an uninhabitable speeding mass of phosphex.
Phosphex sounds like a combination of white phosphorus, thermite and this material/chemical called Lox(I think)
How do you know how costly it would be for the Hive mind?
Hasn't Tiamat quite easily adapted to be highly resistant to energy weapons while still maintaining their general numbers? There's no reason to think they couldn't adapt to high temperatures or some other way of fighting.
They could just create Tyranids that have a extremely heat resistant carapace and covered with a flammable oil and when set on fire, the Tyranids just run into your ranks, setting all your soldiers on fire, then exploding.
Doesn't need to be heat immune, just able to tolerate it until they get a good biomass gained/biomass lost ratio.
I mean, the same thing that stops them from adapting to flamers, bolters, and chainswords?
Nothing is stopping the Tyranids from adapting to those things.
But they still die to them in droves, often relying on trying to run them out of ammunition before the Hive Mind runs out of bodies.
The point I was making is that Nid adaptation is neither foolproof nor flawless. They can only evolve so much of a resistance. Phosphex is basically a hyper flamer. If a flamer works, phospex will work exponentially better.
Yes the Hivemind can choose to adapt or not.
While sure they can create heat resistant strains of tyranid that would be at the expense of some other useful adaptations such as mobility. It's difficult to get every genetic advantage in one creature.
There’s different strains of Tyranids for this reason alone. Each one can have differing strategies and mutations to get over phospodex. Or just have 1 strain of tyranids adapt to counter phosphodex and the other ones can retain their normal traits. Hell maybe even create an entirely new strain of nid just to deal with phosphodex, simalar to how the Parasite of Mortrex was created .
I feel like everyone's looking for a single 'silver bullet' to answer the threat of the bugs, but it would never ever be that simple to eliminate a species that has lived and evolved for as long as the bugs have.
If, however, I were forced to choose a way, it would ultimately be Necron Naval combat that would be the greatest threat to the bugs.
Catching the bugs in space, either on route to some world, or in the middle of one of their world-consuming efforts would be disastrous for the bugs.
In space, there is no mass to consume to replenish themselves. Every dead bug is eliminated forever. So, waves of attritional fire would eventually whittle down even the largest of fleets.
And, since Necron FTL isn't Warp-based, their Shadow in the Warp would be pointless.
The only thing that remains in doubt, there, is if there's enough Necrons to actually defeat the Hive itself.
Of course, a combined fleet of Imperium forces armed with Necron weapons and using Necron FTL would be the ideal force to end the bugs, but that's not ever happening, so...
In space, there is no mass to consume to replenish themselves. Every dead bug is eliminated forever. So, waves of attritional fire would eventually whittle down even the largest of fleets.
Tyranid bioships have been noted to devour the remains of their own destroyed fleets, so this isn't exactly true.
And, since Necron FTL isn't Warp-based, their Shadow in the Warp would be pointless.
The Shadow in the Warp isn't just a Immaterium focused phenomenon. It has a notable disruptive effect on technology, and the Necrons aren't excluded from that.
Pariah Nexus. The Necron have tech that acts like a pillow over the face for psychic beings.
This is sort of up in the air. As much as the Pariah Nexus seems to nullify any warp-based shenanigans, there are many examples of psykers such as Astropaths and Navigators being alive and well from within the borders of it. Very limited powers mind you, but they aren't just dropping dead. This ultimately culminated in some psykers pooling their powers together to send a message through the warp from within the Pariah Nexus, which is what alerted Guilliman to it.
And as we know, an incoming Tyranid fleet produces an overwhelming amount of psychic energy that is likely far in excess of what a handful of psykers can produce. It might very well work, but it could also not.
Honestly, Tyranid adaption is a load of BS because there usually comes a cost with evolution.
Immunity from Acids probably makes your weaker to Bases, immunity from a strain of toxin probably makes you more susceptible to another chemical chain. Resistance to high temperatures usually makes you weaker to cooler temperatures etc.
Biology is give and take, its why viruses with a high infection rate usually have a low death rate. Investing in 1 skill tree makes other skill trees hard or impossible.
Yes! This is actually touch upon, 5th Ed Codex [Tyranid]:
"When the third invasion came, the Hormagaunts had altered yet further. Though no differences could be visually discerned, there were subtle alterations to the musculature and poise of this latest generation. These changes had but one goal to increase the efficacy with which the Hormagaunts could pierce and tear Kroothide. As could be expected, this third wave of Hormagaunts made short work of Sha'draig's Kroot defenders. However, the changes to the Hormagaunt bioform had weakened the beasts' own resistance to injury. Once the Hormagaunts emerged from Sha'draig's forests, the Tau defences, prepared with time bought by Kroot blood, had little difficulty blowing them apart. So did the cycle of adaptation begin again. Once more did the Tyranids' hides thicken to face this new challenge, reaugmenting the swarm's resilience to better weather the firepower of the defenders' pulse rifles.`
In the end, Hive Fleet Gorgon's super-adaptable capacity also proved to be its chief weakness. Though the Tyranids' advance had been swift and savage enough to keep the Hive Fleet supplied with sufficient biomass to replace its losses, the rapid cycle of adaptation and replenishment had forced the Tyranids to rely on smaller, less complex organisms that could be bred swiftly. What larger creatures Gorgon had at its disposal were few, and far harder to replace. Once the Tau learned of this and set the elimination of such creatures as a priority, the course of the war shifted in their favour."
Although it seem if the Hiveminds allowed to experiment for long enough it can get around these issues:
- Devastation of Baal:
"More adaptations heaped on top of more. Unlike a natural organism, which loses certain gifts in favour of others as evolution pushes it down a particular path, the lictor’s advantages were retained, new gifts stacked atop the others. Its genetic structure was incredibly complex. Within every cell was billions of years’ worth of adaptation, culled from every lictor, coiled up one over the other. Anything useful to its role, no matter how inconsequential seeming, it retained forever. Every machine and psychic ability the Imperium had geared towards detection, the lictor could evade. The hive mind had consumed far more advanced races than mankind. Infiltrating Baal was child’s play. There was no need for it to employ a fraction of its considerable talents."
- 8th Ed Codex [Tyranid]:
"CONVERGENT EVOLUTION
Recent reports of the splinter fleets of the known hive fleets turning on each other in a full-scale cannibalistic war have been greeted with elation only by the short sighted. When one considers the end result of any usual conflict involving Tyranids it becomes apparent that when one hive fleet fights another no resources are expended whatsoever. Infighting of this kind, usually taking place upon the surface of a planet, is the perfect way to determine which of the two hive fleets has the stronger component parts. Eventually, the weaker of the two forces is driven back and finally slaughtered. Then, as with all victims of the Tyranids, their bodies are rendered down and absorbed by the bio-ships of the victor. In this manner, none of the biological matter seemingly destroyed in this internecine conflict is wasted at all. Furthermore, any strengths that the losing hive fleet may have assimilated or evolved over the course of its conquest thus far are absorbed at a cellular level and mingled with those of the victorious hive fleet in a new hybrid generation of warriors more effective than the sum of its parts."
Although it seem if the Hiveminds allowed to experiment for long enough it can get around these issues
Eh...
Again, its a bit cheap that quote, nothing can hide itself perfectly like that, you need masses of inorganic chemistry they you simply can't 'evolve' on a small scale like that.
Yes, let us strive for realism in 40k.
I prefer the GrimDark with a sense of humour. For things to be truly GrimDark it needs to be believably horrific.
Horror isn't horror if its unfeasible. Horror is horror when it could be plausable. That's the stuff that should keep you up at night.
I beg to differ. IT was not now or ever realistic and to this day will still give me the occasional nightmare 30 years later.
Realistic is not remotely needed if it's well crafted. Nids being a hyper advanced super organism that doesn't play by our exact rules because it's from outside our galaxy is believable enough to most people.
I disagree, but each to their own.
Chaos does the eldritch horror side, the Nids needs to be something else.
Except that Chaos in the lore almost never actually achieves that genre buzzword. Chaos is not incomprehensible and alien -- the Chaos gods are just Big Mean Guys. They think and behave with essentially human characteristics. ie. not actually competently-realized "eldritch horror" to anyone who actually understands what that phrase means.
I guess enemies relying on the energy released by souls when they’re tortured to keep theirs from being devoured by a god made from the leftovers of their million year orgy is a lot more plausible than the endless expression of evolution getting around some energy gradients.
Chaos does eldritch horror already, Nids need to be something else.
Tyranids don’t work on Darwinian principles of natural selection. Their evolution is a form of Lamarckian “guided evolution” directed by the Hive Mind. And ultimately they don’t obey the laws of physics anymore than Chaos does.
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
I like this last one from the codex, I'd never really considered that they'd need at least some kind of justification for 'nids vs 'nids matchups!
The thing is the tyranids tend to just reabsorb all the biomass of their armies when they're done anyway.
Those tyranids with the special acid resistance the hivemind made for conquering that acidic ocean planet ain't being stored and used in the next conquest of the alkaline snow planet. They're being consumed to recycle their biomass and it's gonna print up warriors adapted to the next planet.
Which is fine, but that means its actually not that hard to develop weapons that world on each specific instance of Tyranids. For each world you just need to mass produce the local weakness.
Yes the weapons are less transferable but you can collectively group common ecosphere worlds and have weapons for each ecosphere which are effective.
Also you can't really evolve solutions for large enough kinetic or explosive force.
Nukes are easy and cheap to produce, especially on the Imperium's scale.
Also Nukes cause cancers through radiation, a species designed to evolve as quickly as the Nids should be highly weak to radiation and cancers. Drop a few Nukes around their Hive Ships at weak points and suddenly they're rotting from the inside out.
This 'ability to evolve' is quite overstated in a lot of media.
Yeah you're right on the the first points but I kind of disagree with you on the "cancer counters tyranids" one.
Tyranids to my knowledge don't really adapt as organisms but as a whole. It's not like the tyranids encounter some unexpected acid and the individual organisms all start evolving counter measures immediately. They just probably get burnt to a crisp and the hivemind because it has perfect knowledge of what killed its troops through the hivemind itself, makes sure the next wave doesn't die to that specific thing.
So I don't think the individual organisms are any more or less susceptible to cancer than none tyranids.
And if they where invading a high radiation world there are counter measures to cancer we know must exist in nature even if we are still debating what they are.
The blue whale cancer paradox debate gets brought up a lot. The idea being that animals that massive biomass wise should be absolutely riddled with cancers purely on a statistical basis and yet they're not constantly dying of cancer. So this means there must be some biological defence of some kind against cancer. Some argue they have genetic adaptions towards being cancer resistant, others argue that it just takes a lot more cancer to kill something that massive, and others argue that there are actually parasitic cancers that grow within the cancers themselves in something that big and those parasite cancers keep the initial cancers in check.
But my point is I don't think cancer is particularly going to be more effective against tyranids
So this means there must be some biological defence of some kind against cancer.
This is actually really silly, of course they do. We do as well, it's just apparently not as efficient. If you didn't have biological resistance from cancer, every cell you made would be cancerous. Every brain cell every skin cell every blood cell, they'd be cancer if they didn't have a biological kill switch. That's how cancer generally forms, the killswitch malfunctions. Usually due to damage to the DNA. But that's talking about SURVIVORS, the Hive doesn't need survivors of course. It has the hivemind knowledge of what happens and doesn't need to EVOLVE, it can simply ADAPT.
That feels more like a debate on semantics than an actual disagreement.
With "evolving"? evolving is a very specific process. Adapting can literally be done right now, by you and me. They're so vastly different in effect that it's super important for the species that can shit out new organisms on the fly by having biological clone factories.
My point with the first part is more that cancer resistance in organisms is so normal that there are literally species in real life that feed on radiation as an energy source without corruption to their dna. It's not like a fantastical concept that's hard to understand, of course the species literally built on assimilating Biomass across entire galaxies would have something so SIMPLE(We, as RL humans, aren't even technically spacefaring).
Also Nukes cause cancers through radiation, a species designed to evolve as quickly as the Nids should be highly weak to radiation and cancers. Drop a few Nukes around their Hive Ships at weak points and suddenly they're rotting from the inside out.
The biology of something (Hive Ships) made to survive in interstellar space is naturally going to be pretty radiation-resistant, and it'd be fairly trivial for a Hive Fleet splinter facing radioactive environments to evolve a high-density carapace with boron or lead shielding, for example. There'll be a tradeoff there of course, radiation-resistant bioforms would be slower because of the extra weight, and leaded exoskeletons would probably be weak to thermal weapons.
Or if your local Hive Mind is feeling particularly mean, they might adapt to be radiotrophic like the fungus growing inside the Chernobyl No. 4 reactor. In that case you get Bug Godzilla, where irradiating them is basically feeding them energy.
Or if your local Hive Mind is feeling particularly mean, they might adapt to be radiotrophic like the fungus growing inside the Chernobyl No. 4 reactor. In that case you get Bug Godzilla, where irradiating them is basically feeding them energy.
Yes but energy isn't making mass so whilst they can absorb it they can't necessarily do much with it except make exchange more efficient.
Also the Hive Ship has to open up to let its minions out so its innards aren't going to be radiation proof, and the material that absorbs radiation isn't going to be very resistant to other types of weaponry such as lasers, especially at given wavelengths.
You get Radiation Shielding OR protection from Energy.Kinetic/Explosive protection, but not all of them simultaneously.
aren't going to be radiation proof
Citation needed: Why?
Material Science. Its like the difference between toughness and hardness.
You still haven't answered their question. Radioresistance was at one point thought to be biologically impossible, but more modern research has shown plenty of examples of organisms on our very own planet that develop incredibly high levels of radioresistance. It has also been linked to hyperthermophiles, as the cell damage caused by the extreme heat found in their natural environments is very similar to the cell damage caused by exposure to radiation. Essentially, adaptation to extreme temperatures can lead to adaptation against extreme doses of radiation.
How many of those Radioresistant cells are also capable of stopping a block of TNT, a bullet, hell even a knife.
My argument is the more you can't combine materials and expect the sort of strength required to protect from radiation AND kinetics.
How many of those Radioresistant cells are also capable of stopping a block of TNT, a bullet, hell even a knife.
Shellfish have notably high radioresistance among non-microbial organisms and have pretty tough exoskeletons aka their, well, their shells.
My argument is the more you can't combine materials and expect the sort of strength required to protect from radiation AND kinetics.
You are right to assume material science does limit how things can be resistant to different forms of potential damage, it's just your application of it is based on same rather flawed understanding of what kinds of materials already exist and how they can be layered together. There is nothing preventing an adequate layering of materials or an otherwise sufficiently advanced material from provide a well rounded defense against multiple different kinds of damage. We even have our own sort of real world equivalent to 40k's Ceramite - Chobham armor. Chobham armor, a kind of NERA (Non-Energetic Reactive Armor), is used on tanks and is noted to be a ceramic material highly resistant to kinetic, explosive, and thermal weapons.
That's semantics. WHY can't the hive fleet do these things you claim are impossible when they literally have before? Why can't they stack important defenses on weakpoints? They don't "evolve", they intelligently adapt.
Material Science is fixed though, you can layer things but you can't change the conductive nature of wood vs iron.
Also if you layer that means you make things weaker than a concentrated blocks of an element. Its gives strength to something that isn't stronger, but it doesn't make it stronger than a pure element.
This, remember Buenos Aires, kill them ALL😒😏
I'm doing my part!
I 100% agree and upvoted but becareful with trying to insert logic into this setting. Its literly a universe where space cathedrals are the ultimate weapon and techno knights run around smacking cockney dock workers with chainsaws.
Eh, you can split the difference. Its like the difference between Old Trek and New Trek.
Old Trek tried to have moderately realistic explainations even if it was splice with technobabble. New Trek doesn't even try anymore, it just happens.
Man I thought I hated "technobabble" where they just make shit up, but this "wink wink nudge nudge" at the camera is WAY WORSE
I 100% agree and upvoted but becareful with trying to insert logic into this setting
The problem with their post is a very flawed understanding of both how Tyranids "evolve" and basic material/biological science.
Tyranids don't evolve in the way we commonly talk about evolution. There is no gradual change over generations, slight mutations leading to offspring better adapted to their environment, and the proliferation of said mutations throughout the population of the species. Tyranids are built from raw components inside pools of goo and then broken back down at the end of every planetary invasion. There is no evolution taking place, but rather adaptation to their environment and foes via planned adjustments during the building process.
Preventing cancers, as seen in real world Naked Mole Rats, is all about having a complex and efficient microenvironment. The right combination of biological chemicals can vastly reduce or eliminate the proliferation of cancer cells. There is also a strong correlation between giant animals like elephants, whales, sharks, etc. and notably reduced rates of cancers. Sharks in particular are practically immune to all forms of known disease.
And regarding radiation, there is nothing preventing organisms from developing naturally high resistance to ionizing radiation. Many insects have substantial radioresistance, being able to survive unharmed and unchanged after being bombarded with levels of radiation far beyond the lethal dose for humans. Additionally, the chitin found in exoskeletons of insects like ants, cockroaches, flys, etc. has been documented to have particularly noteworthy radiation shielding properties. And you know what planet consuming space monsters incorporate some form of chitin into their forms? That's right, the Tyranids.
Also Nukes cause cancers through radiation, a species designed to evolve as quickly as the Nids should be highly weak to radiation and cancers
You are equating Tyranid biology as a form of natural evolution when it might be closer to call it bioengineering. This isn't a form of biological adaptation over generations happening when they evolve counters to their enemies and the environment. What is happening instead is the Hive Mind is specifically adjusting the very composition of these creatures to be better suited against whatever threats they are facing. They are building machines for all intents and purposes, but they are made of muscle and bone rather than metal.
You mention cancers and such as being a particularly noteworthy weakness, but why? We have organisms on our own planet that are all highly resistant to cancer. Elephants have a gene identified in helping prevent cancers, and it is 20x more common in them than it is in us humans. Naked Mole Rats are seemingly immune to cancer even when scientists try to artificially induce it. Sharks are practically immune to not just cancer, but all known diseases.
The Tyranids have an absurdly advanced understanding of biology and how to manipulate it to their benefit. In many ways, they are one of the most advanced races in the entire setting regardless of point in the timeline.
You mention cancers and such as being a particularly noteworthy weakness, but why? We have organisms on our own planet that are all highly resistant to cancer. Elephants have a gene identified in helping prevent cancers, and it is 20x more common in them than it is in us humans. Naked Mole Rats are seemingly immune to cancer even when scientists try to artificially induce it. Sharks are practically immune to not just cancer, but all known diseases.
Yes but these aren't changing their genetic structure rapidly. Fast evolution comes at a cost.
The faster you edit the code the more likely you are to produce errors.
Sure its less important in your average Hormagaunt, but when you get to Hive Ship level, a single Cancer cell could mean the difference between a stable internal atmosphere or the void of space.
Yes but these aren't changing their genetic structure rapidly. Fast evolution comes at a cost.
The faster you edit the code the more likely you are to produce errors.
As far as we understand it, yes. We also don't have the scientific understanding of how to completely terraform a planet and strip it of trillions of tons of mass in the span of 2-3 months. The Tyranids clearly do, so I am hesitant to believe they haven't found a solution for cancer when natural evolution on our own planet has done exactly that.
And to reiterate, the Tyranids aren't using natural evolution. Natural evolution strives over many generations to create organisms that adapt to their environment as best as they can. The Tyranids build organisms that are adapted to their environment.
Sure its less important in your average Hormagaunt, but when you get to Hive Ship level, a single Cancer cell could mean the difference between a stable internal atmosphere or the void of space.
If you are assuming they haven't developed the biological structures to prevent cancer in the first place that is. And considering their advanced understanding of biology along with our own modern day research pointing to a trend of larger organisms having better cancer fighting defenses... Well, this argument doesn't have much to stand on.
The Tyranids build organisms that are adapted to their environment.
You realise cellular division is the cause of evolution and the propagation of errors right?
You don't need to physically change but the create of cells, again and again over and over increases the risk of damage.
If you are assuming they haven't developed the biological structures to prevent cancer in the first place that is.
You're never going to prevent cancer anymore that a computer is going to be perfectly free of errors.
When things are that complex mistakes will happen. Given the level of cellular reprogramming and copying on the scale Nids have, any interference from outside IE radiation will have an overly dramatic effect.
You realise cellular division is the cause of evolution and the propagation of errors right?
You don't need to physically change but the create of cells, again and again over and over increases the risk of damage.
You realize that, in most cases, Tyranids are not actually evolving over generations like normal organisms, if they are evolving at all? That they are instead spat out of from a pool of fluids, having been constructed from building blocks of raw material?
They evolve in the sense that they adapt to their foes and the environment. They don't evolve in the way that natural organisms in an environment do. Cells aren't multiplying for generation after generation outside of the Hive Ships. They are broken back down to basic compounds and elements with the end of every planetary invasion. And regarding Hive Ships, as I already stated earlier, modern day research has pointed to a large correlation between the size of organisms and their ability to reduce or eliminate the risks of cancers.
You're never going to prevent cancer anymore that a computer is going to be perfectly free of errors.
There are organisms on our planet right now that literally can, and they are naturally evolved rather than super sci-fi space monsters capable of unbelievable feats of biological engineering.
When things are that complex mistakes will happen. Given the level of cellular reprogramming and copying on the scale Nids have, any interference from outside IE radiation will have an overly dramatic effect.
Only if they have not built in biologically based systems to prevent that, like the many examples of organisms I have already mentioned to you. Unplanned mutation of cells and their subsequent proliferation is what leads to cancers. Do you think the Tyranids, a race that has seemingly mastered bioengineering, is unable to reduce or eliminate any unplanned mutation within the cells of their creatures?
Tyranids are more like a biological 3d printer then an actual evolution and growth. Most have incredibly short lifespans and if grew cancers would probably just ride it out until it killed them or step back into the acid pools.
Larger nids getting cancers could either have them removed or isolated. The hivemind works in such a high scale of body awareness and has incredible control of each individual cell
You have it exactly backwards this is how the tyranids fight, they adapt to your local conditions.
"You can't evolve.."
You can and they have. They aren't some primordial creature. They have likely consumed more than one entire galaxy. They have a massive psychic presence in the warp, the culmination of consuming the souls of a trillion trillion trillion mortals.
How are you going to adapt faster than them? When the Imperium of Man thinks guns work by magic spirits?
They travel across the stars, being bombarded with insane levels of radiation - they are adapted against it.
This is why the Silent King returned, he understands the scope of the threat the Tyranids pose.
When the Imperium of Man thinks guns work by magic spirits?
For one: They somewhat actually do. Collective Faith literally has magical effects on reality. Caused by ghosts from superhell.
As the quotes from U/negative_sock4219 below show, GW has been pretty careful and aware of how the adaptation comes with costs. Hivefleet Gorgon is the most famous example of this. The fandom however tends to think of their adaptation working like DC Doomsday which is not supported in the codecies or other lore
Yeah, that's the main issue.
💯
If this was StarGate universe, every time Hive Fleet arrives in a system, people would blow up the star.
Good luck trying to become immune to supernova.
Funnily enough, humans in WH40k used to know how to do that, but have long lost that technology and these days can just send thoughts and prayers (to the Emperor).
Indeed.
How do you blow up a star?
DEET
Lets say you do what you said, you may as well just do exterminatus, because mass deployment of Phospex will deny area for thousands of years. Whats really different between doing it and using any sort of high yeld weapon, really?
100% based on chlorine trifloride
Unless the hive mind would have to create an organism that can withstand plunging into the corona of a star. It could happen I suppose, but it would be rather difficult.
Phosphex is a weapon that is described as intelligent and full of malice and wants to kill you. I've never read it as having a warp signature, so I don't know where it gets its pseudo-intelligence from. It could be some sort of nano AI within the weapon itself, but I don't know.
I do like the idea and would love to see phosphex used enmass to see how it turns out.
What exactly prevents the Hive Mind from simply isolating all burning creatures and letting them freeze until Phosphex runs out of fuel, or burrowing until the Phosphex around them has burned up all the oxygen? What's to stop the Hive Mind from running its burning creatures straight into the nearest Imperial fortification? And nothing prevents the Hive Mind from analysing Phosphex and then using it itself.
At the same time, Tyranid invasions are so powerful that you can burn the planet right away.
In short, Phosphex has its uses, but it's not the strongest weapon against the Tyranids.
"Phosphex has the capacity to burn without oxygen and with next to no fuel source. It's capable of burning underwater (being also able to set water alight) and can burn through solid rock, adamantium, and ceramite. Known as the 'living fire', 'crawling death', and 'ice-fire' due to its attraction to movement and sub-zero burning temperature, once unleashed the green cloud of Phosphex expands exponentially, ..."
Except that it makes no sense, because something can only burn if the fire also gets material.
And so it sounds even more stupid to use it, because you can't put it out and it burns the planet including the atmosphere. So it's an exterminatus weapon...
Yeah, it was definitely used to deploy exterminatus grade destruction on the battlefield but it does not have this potential in all the weapons it is used ore rather could be used in.
Types of Phosphex Weapons
- Phosphex Grenade
- Phosphex Bomb
- Phosphex Shell — Artillery round\2])
- Phosphex Incinerator Cannon\3])
- Modalis Atmospheric Missile — Exterminatus-grade weapon fired by orbiting warships which can burn an entire world.
And cannot be put out other than by vacuum
You do realize Tyranids live in hive fleets in space right.
You use phosphex, the nids just put up screens of fast-burning spores and dump affected sections of hive ships.
Veriliad is a disgraced Tech-Priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He is most infamous for destroying the Imperium's ability to produce Phosphex Weaponry. Having seen the horror of what the weapons could inflict, Veriliad destroyed the STC for the substance's creation. He was subsequently decried as a Heretek, tied to a stake, and shot with one of the last remaining Phosphex weapons, the Phosphoenix.[1]
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Veriliad
To explain their increasing rarity and infrequent use, each one is an irreplaceable relic of another time, each one forever weakening the armory of the Imperium for the next fight.
Life eater virus. If it worked on Isstvan, it would work on the tyranids
I was looking for this. Load some up in torpedos then you just need one per "ship" in space, or bomb them from orbit if they are planetside.
Use that in concert with the neutered men of iron the dark angels still have in storage(maybe) and tyranids are officially a former threat
Isn’t this the story of Dawn of War II?
I haven't played it, but it sounds like I should apparently.
A fatal error, ‘twas, listening to that damned old fool. We were carrying virus bombs for the planet below, but Hergol told us since we were in a jam, we might launch a few at the things in space, only it didn’t do a thing to ‘em. Well, so we thought until the damned things rammed us a week later and got hold of the ship. They spat this acid, this burning spittle everywhere, and within an hour, those that didn’t die from the burns were sick as hell with the same virus we’d hurled at the beast to begin with.
Good luck. And even if you kill a few ships or planets with it, do you really want to teach the Tyranids how to make their own planet-eating viruses so they don't even need to bother with invasion?
While you have a point. I doubt the tyranids would change their modus operandi for it.
Has the Empathic Obliterator ever been used against a Tyranid swarm? If its stated ability is what it really does, then it could potentially wipe out pretty much an entire army of Tyranids given how closely they pack together and are connected via Hive Mind, unless the kill radius is limited by physical distance even if the enemies are dense and very like of mind.
We already have the technology. What lacks is the faith in God-Emperor to persevere.
Put Erebus in their fleet and watch them kill themselves really quick. Only way to be sure.
Space Greek fire
Phosphorous compounds should be excellent, and the Imperium likely used tons on a single planet just as an industrial cleaner for example.
Some phosphorous compounds are so dangerous, that they can set fire to something (or explode, or conflagrate, or chemical burn it) and the byproducts made from this reaction are still explosive/flammable/acidic.
Frankly gas weapons should be one of the favorites of the Imperium. The Imperium already has so much toxic industrial waste that dissolves biological tissue that it should be easy to destroy a Tyranid attack. “Oh they started getting immune to it? Throw toxic industrial waste #4 at them and watch the explosions”. Because for example becoming immune to Phosphor means the bodies of these Tyranids need to have already reacted to Phosphor. And if you find one material that wants to react more to phosphor than whatever the phosphor in the Tyranids is bonded with you can still watch some fireworks as the chemical reactions, flames and explosions start.
You might be on to something. Reminds of TTS emperors advice about spraying with a giant can of Raid.
And you are... completely wrong.
There are so many ways to effectively combat Tyranids, and Phosphex is among the least of them. For one, detonating the Warp drives of a single Battleship can swallow a whole Hive Fleet Tendril into the Warp. This is staggering and should definitely be used more.
Photon weapons, conversion weapons, eradication weapons, and more are all pretty much impossible to adapt against, barring psychic shielding (for the nids, anyways.) For Phosphex, they could simply evolve chemical counters to it, cover themselves in gel, send sacrificial organisms to attract the flames to them, or evolve to have a greater resistance to it, lowering its effectiveness against them.
And these are just things the Imperium has. Other races have even better shit.
As TTS Man Emperor would say, " THOSE SHIPS DONT GROW ON TREES"
Are there any Halo type weapons in 40k that when set off just destroy all biomass in its range?
Necron have plenty of tech that can destroy Tyranid, and the Hivemind itself is terrified of the C'tan.
The technology of traps.
The hivemind is susceptible to traps like an animal. Just rob it from some meals and it will in blind fury plunge a tendrill into just about anything .
Also the octarious plan was flawed, but it could be tweaked and used to direct the Hivefleet into ambushes.
This one WEIRD technology that can DESTROY Tyranids! Mars hates this!
Tyranids hate this one simple trick
There’s one incident during the original Behemoth invasion where some Admechs literally set fire to an atmosphere to destroy the nids and their spores. Worked wonders, but then they forgot about notifying anyone else about it.
Cawl did a shit job with Volkite. During the Heresy, there were thousands of vehicles and mechs with Volkite cannons, thousands of marines with volkite rifles, and now, a Captain's lucky to get his hands on a Volkite pistol. And now you want him to reverse-enginseer arguably the second-most dangerous material in existence so maybe it can stop the Tyranids? What if they develop a counter? What if the new template falls into the hands of traitors? What if Cawl's experiments go wrong and he burns himself alive, along with the rest of an entire planet? It's unsafe, unreliable, and unlikely.
The single best way to employ phosphex against a Tyrranid fleet is to burn a whole swath of planets in their path of advance with a deep salient “sack”. The point being to deny them biomass and metabolic energy sources. The swath has to be wide enough to force the fleet caught within to hibernate and/or consume a large portion of its own forces to clear the dead zone. Then meet them with the biggest fleet you can amass right as they’re about to get out.
I was thinking just dump out a box of figit spinners
White phosphorus that hates Vs Flesh that hates.. Hmm interesting
Call some Haemonculi or Archon with Eldar Empire tech.
Portable Blackholes
Portals into suns
Neurodisruprors
Superviruses aga3organic matter.
List could be long.
It's probably chlorine tri flouride you can't adapt to something that can ignite concrete.
Big can of Raid.
And maybe an industrial sized bug zapper.
A bioweapon called "Da Orks!!!"
When he did reverse engineered volkite?
Actually farsight has a pretty potent biological weapon that absolutely wrecks tyranids. It spreads and destroys biomass quicker than the tyranids can adapt
Phosphex but sadly, the way to make it was destroyed
I'm afraid any one answer to the Tyranids will be answered by them with their greatest and most reliable tactic:
More Tyranids
That's the problem, really. Now I'm sure phosphex would be a great additional asset. Would probably make a massive difference in the war. But.
There are always more Tyranids. The Great Devourer simply keeps coming.
We need to find something that stops that from happening.
Wasn't in the men of iron that could consume information itself or something like that? The Nid DNA is information.
I wonder if they'll ever pull out the Men of Iron again as a sort of machine version of the Nids.
Glass Plague.
Eldar wraithguard.
Theyre fearless spirits in wraithbone robots, armed with D weapons that yeet the victim through a pinhole or papercut into the warp.
Tireless. Dedicated. Dont eat or sleep. Cant be poisoned or diseased. Just not available in large numbers for most craft worlds
🤔Gloriana and other battleship broadside torpedoes filled with phosphex into all the large hive fleet ships. Core them out from the inside out. Nuke all the smaller ones....its the only way to be sure😏
You still need to make ammo, the hive can still metamorphose to make that ammo less effective. More chitin or thicker and it just burns on there instead of on vital areas, etc.
In Devastation of Baal, the blood angels have this super acid and fill a moat with it. The tyranids just keep sending bodies at it until it’s bridged. You will run out of your new wunderwaffe way before they run out of bodies