For the "Should we have a Titan sized bug" I don't think the intent (lore wise) is to have Titan vs Titan fight, and more as the conventional siege breaker. Even in the First Tyranid War, the bugs were already able to kill a Titan simply by swarming it and literally drag the Titan to the ground. So no, they don't need a Titan bug to kill other Titans. It's more likely that these big boys exist to destroy specific fortifications that are too entrenched for the swarm to break without taking a net loss on biomass. Hence they need something tanky and powerful enough to punch through the defenses without being kill getting there. And since the Tyranids can recycle biomass, it isn't a loss to birth something so large, once they win, the Bio Titan can be broken down and absorb back to the Hivefleet. Tyranids don't upgrade all it units to be super powerful because it is a waste of resources. The Gaunts for example are simple meat shields with the purpose of overwhelming the enemy with number, they take up less biomatter and processing power of the Hivemind. But a stronger, more specialized Nid require more biomass to build, take longer to build, and need more processing power from the Hivemind to maintain.
I think something else would need to shut down the void shields before that could happen. And I don’t recall an Imperator there, so there’s that. Honestly it’s just dumb that the tyranids don’t always win everything with a build up of destructive enzyme green goo. Like unless imperium nanotech is far better than we’ve been generally told there’s like absolutely no way to fight thatz
Gene Seed is common to ONE LEGION, or among loyalists, one Chapter and its successor chapters. Like Imperial Fists, which is also shared by the Crimson Fists and the Black Templars as well as all other successor chapters.
And it's more a standardization of our DNA to allow us to accept the extra organs with less likelihood of failure, and contains some of the mutations that would otherwise require the removal of our entire nervous system and musculature.
Gene Seeds vary alot, best example of that is ,, purity,, level ( how common mutation is ) and they miss some organs examples: Ultramarines and Dark Angels with purest geneseeds have 10 % for mutation and they don't miss any organs ( that's why most succesor chapters origin from them ), Imperial Fists also have very pure geneseed but they miss some organs while Salamanders have very mutable geneseed ( around 90 % ) with all organs, and Raven Guard miss alot of organs with 20 % mutation rate. Kinda funny that only chapters that have very simmlar geneseeds ( Ultra and DA hate eachother and thier primarchs were rivals from start on top of them having alot of simmlar character traits).
You are dead on with the Starcraft comment. Originally Starcraft was supposed to be a Warhammer 40k game but for some reason Blizzard and GamesWorkshop couldn't/wouldn't come to a deal, so Starcraft spun off to its own IP. Edit: Warhammer 40k predates Starcraft by a good 10 years. Edit 2: To answer the question of why not push adaptions like the Space Marine toughness to all creatures, I see it as a matter of cost/benefit. The Hive Mind sees smaller creatures like gaunts as expendable, known to throw them by the thousands just to expend defenders' ammo supplies before committing a full assault with more complex lifeforms. The Tyrant Guard would be a high cost to produce and are there only protect the Tyrants from targeted fire. In the tabletop game, Tyrants and other larger creatures have an ability called "Shoot the big ones", which allows the enemy player to ignore closer targets and instead focus fire your Tyrants, Carnifex and other big creatures. If you can break the Tyranids' synapse control, then all the little bugs go feral and start killing each other, becoming a minimal threat. But in the tabletop, if your Tyrants have a Tyrant Guard retinue, they must take the hits before the Tyrant can be hurt, which protects synapse control. But overall yes, a lot of details are rather silly and illogical but are somewhat necessary for the tabletop wargame balance.
In addition to the Starcraft stealing from tyranids, 40k stole from the xenomorphs from Alien. The rippers are like the smaller ones/face huggers that become other variations.
Nids are about eating over fighting. To make a Swarm Lord or something big and complex go take out that kill team is waste when they can redirect the already eating swarm that way. But yeah it's balance since I think somebody dropping a bunch of rippers at a table would basically win versus a lot of encounters and take up a lot of time.
the fight between orks and tyranids is INSANE. for instance orks fight tyranids on a cellular level so the Nid microbes that break down matter actually have to FIGHT ork microbes . meaning any ork to actually reach maturity during a tyranid invasion will be insanely strong . and this "fighting " will actually make the orks mature quicker so a tyranid VS ork fight might best represent an immovable object vs an unstoppable force.
@@CombatVeteranReacts It is. It is so far uncertain which might win as Hivefleet Leviathan (Might be wrong, will have to check again) is currently fighting an Ork waaagh after the Imperium guided them towards it. The two are getting absurdly powerful during this, and whichever can manage to even come out on top and win. Then everyone else is screwed. They will either be facing super orks that have likely even become Krorks once more or a Hivefleet with so much biomatter that only the Necrons could hope to stop them with their weaponry being the only other hard counter besides exterminatus (To my knowledge). So far the two fighting is just staying the same, other than just getting larger overtime as more and more orks show up while more and more tyranid bioforms are spawned and sent out as they consume more biomass from the fighting. It has basically been Aliens versus Predators but with orks and tyranids
The shadow in the warp isn't blocking the warp. Its more like the jamming as each tyranid has a pyskic link to the hive mind it just overwhelmed everything else. Imagine having a conversation with someone a few feet away. Now Imagine a hundred other people suddenly appearing and having a loud conversation among themselves it would be hard to continue your conversation right this is the best analogy I could think of
It'd be more like the difference between having that conversation, and then trying to have that same conversation within the roar of a rocket engine that never stops. Some psykers go absolutely mad with their sense cut off; they grew to rely on it so hard. Others actually find it a relief to have it so drowned out that it doesn't work anymore, because they stop 'hearing' everyone and everything around them, possibly for light years in every direction. The few times they've tried to counter the effect of the Shadow by 'white noise' jamming it psychically, or some technological means, it only lasts a short time before either the machinery burns out...or the poor damned psykers who are attempting it do. One of the Ciaphas Cain novels has that, where they used the synaptic signal of a chunk of Bioship, run through the local Astropath's mind, as a jammer to disrupt the Hivemind so they could at least push back long enough to get things under control on the ground and in space. Sadly... the Astropath didn't survive the experience. It's a minor footnote in history, and a Magos Biologis report somewhere on potential avenues against Tyranid fleets...but it didn't last long.
@@CombatVeteranReacts It's like a radio that is overwhelmed by the billions of the enemy's chattering voices, except that it's in your head, and you cannot turn it off.
It's get's you to think just how huge the Tyranid swarm was before leaving their last galactic meal, since their swarms are still huge even after travelling for thousands of years without other source of food
Tyranids don't canibalize themselfs, more return more complex organisms to the biomas. It is stated that tyrannid fleets rapidly grow only when hive mind knows that there is need for that - combat or harvesting. I imagine that when they Travel huge distances in space they minmalize thier fleet size and complexity of it to bare minimum to lower energy output they grasp from biomas magiznes.
As far as I'm aware they'll cannibalize the more common less valuable bioforms for ease of transport. Complex bioforms are not broken down and reconstructed since it would be too inefficient.
@@GrugSmesh You think of System conquering ,,tatic,, nids deploy when they are constantly engaged in combat, and we pretty much only see them in that stage becuse pretty much all their apperaneces are from perspective of humans.
@@jakubgauszczynski7790 i recall there being a hive fleet in the lore thats all about cannibalism i looked it up hive fleet hydra is seeking out old hive fleets and cannibalising them for reasons unknown to the imperium, most likely the hivemind uses hydra to update fleets comprising of older bioforms by recycling them into more up to date organisms but similar behaviour is probably also how they sustain themslefs through inter galactic travel, particularly when they run short of stored biomatter even if not, the tyranids still practice cannibalism, pretty much on the regular
So why don't you give every gaunt two hearts and three lungs? Because gaunts are expendable. They are made with as little biomass as tyranids can get away with. They don't even have digestive tracts, as they're expected to die in their first engagement or failing that live on the fat reserves that are barely enough to last to the next engagement.
@@CombatVeteranReacts - Not to mention that Tyranids are very big on recycling... as in they eat their own dead, as well as the enemy dead, to recover some of the lost resources. Even if someone takes down a Bio-Titan, if they won the battle they'll just eat the corpse and get most of what they spent back.
@@LexYeen thing you need to remember for the tyranids is that for them its a plus/minus scenario where they have to spend biomass to gain biomass. If they burn up more than what they consume then even if they succeed in wiping it out then you can only call it a phyrric victory at best. The imperium aren't blind to this and their main strategy is to bleed a hive fleet white before initiating a final battle usually in the void.
@@scotibot7450 a wise move as well, because the void is their main weakpoint. Nids need their bioships to cross the void. Oh FRICK... what if they discover the webway!?
It is possible that while traveling between galaxys the tyranids hive fleet will mostly cease living with only the most critical parts going into hibernation and then just coasting until approaching a galactic plane and waking the hibernating units who then consume the frozen carcasses of the dead hive fleet using this bio matter to make a new hive fleet.
Still very unefficient for the hive fleets, since they don't even use FTL. (no they don't stir the air with their tentacles... since there's no air) they bend gravity in front of their vessels through psychic powers to accelerate, and that should cost energy... especially if we count all the fleets they have. And it's not the hive mind that is generating that psychic field, they do that on their own. Because lesser bio-ships (let's say Drones or even Devourers) return to primal instinct after breaking their synaptic link (with their relaying Hive Ship) and move on their own. So they must be veeeery self efficient. Or actually explode like bacterias dying when they can't go on, and eventually get recycled by other vessels passing by, but that doesn't sound very efficient for travels between galaxies, so they must have another way. If they come from far that is, because another theory is that nids are species created by the Old Ones long ago... We never know!
@@ipatchymakouli415 The heliosphere around our solar system caused by the sun protects us from being bombarded by cosmic background radiation from expolded super nova, black hole hawking radiation pulsar burst, othere distant stars radiation, etc. There could be plenty of energy from that tyranids can live off of as well as the debri floating in space far away from any stars gravitational pull. What thing is that the tyranids have hive forms that can absorbed this cosmic energies as they move along, find and consume the minerals and potentially some live that lives on these planet /astreiods that float around and chart a course to where they can do this while slowly getting closer and closer to our galaxy.
@@ipatchymakouli415 Newton's First Law states that an object in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force, and no such forces exist in intergalactic space.
As for eldar, because they're so emotional and emotions attract demons, their military uses special techniques to suppress their emotions. Professional eldar warriors engineer split personality incapable of any higher emotion, known as "war mask" that takes over in battle. While Eldar reservists are lead to battle by Warlocks - battle psykers who are trained to project emotion-dampening fields.
As far as I know, the Warmasks were actually a feature of their helmets which basically "blends out" the emotional reactions to the horrors of war... Some Warlocks and Farseer's have managed to keep their emotions in check enough so that they don't need a warmask, but they still have the option of one. And then there are the Aeldari Corsairs who fled from their Craftworld, because they just could not take the regimented, restricted and restrained existence that is the way of life of the Craftworld Aeldari. These guys have no warmasks at all, and neither do they have soulstones... yet they do raid, fight or help out their original Craftworld when it's in real danger like (Corsair) Prince Yriel(I think that was his, could be wrong). Is all of this wrong? Or do we have a case of GW not being able to keep their canon straight again?
@@sd501st5 war mask is certainly part of their training, not equipement. Tau once took some aspect warriors peisonners and when they tried interrogating them Water Caste diagnosed them with split personality disorder because they stayed in war masks as they were trined to in case they're taken prisoner. Furthermore, exarch are what happens when eldar get too deep into the path of aspect warrior and can no longer switch back to his or her original personality, permanently stuck in the war mask.
@@DoctorM42 Okay, thanks for correcting my misinterpretation. The Craftworld Aeldari begin to remind me more and more of Star Trek's own knife ears, the Vulcans. Sure, they don't focus on logic as a way of life, but the general principle of "very emotional(and prone to violent outbursts) species controlling their emotions with the help of..." seems the same. The part about the Exarchs I already knew... I always wondered if becoming one isn't just accepting the "other" part of themselves, accepting that they get "emotional high's" from killing the enemy, and re-uniting the two personalities again. What you said about the Tau diagnosing Aeldari prisoners with split personality disorder leads me to believe that this actually what happens.
So here's the thing. Tyranid Hive Fleets spend decades, centuries, or even millennia drifting through space. Why? Because the Tyranids' form of FTL travel is essentially creating a massive gravity well that distorts space and slingshots them around at relativistic speeds. The problem is, they can't do this within the gravity well of a star or planet, meaning the Tyranids have to spend months or years drifting out of the system if they want to make a jump, or simply keep drifting at speed to the next system, relying on limited thruster bio-tech and good old-fashioned momentum to carry them along. This means that the Tyranids are already well-equipped to handle centuries or millennia in hibernation, doubly so when the actual Hive Fleets didn't start entering the Milky Way for about 10,000 years after the Astronomicon was lit and the Pharos was overloaded. And if the Tyranids were farther away but there were already Genestealers, Lictors, and various feral Tyranid creatures in the Milky Way, then it shows that this hibernation cycle can be maintained even on the micro-level of a single spore pod, let alone the condensed multi-planetary level ecosystems contained by a Hive Fleet. And this is not outrageous because it is a deliberate form of genetic engineering on the part of the Hive Mind to achieve this level of hyper efficiency, and not just some random evolution.
@@looseycanon eh I mean it’s not really out of the realm of 40k I mean it’s been said that they probably devoured the other galaxies. At least that what we are assume the did before, If they did consume or devour the life forms from the other galaxies: not only would they have god knows amount of biomass. But their intelligence must be at least so astronomically large that it has figured out a way to go FTL with only its Biology.
A civilization-scale ecosystem. I like the parallel, the Norn Queen is the brain, Synapse critters being CNS/PNS, etc… Genestealers would be cancerous tissue?
@@paulpolito2001 I don't think a mammalian metaphor suits Genestealers. They seem more akin to seeds dispersed over a wide area to ensure a better spread of the Tyranid ecosystem.
@@Aaron-is8yt I was refering to our gut bacteria and other microbe colonies around our bodies. They assist with digestion and studies have linked their imbalance to allergies and even depression, meaning that they may have functions we are still unaware of. (The field is still young so nothing is really set in stone so far.) If nothing else our skin and hair are covered in bacteria etc. to the point that our living areas microflora is changed by our habitation. Who knows how far the symbiosis goes or if they are just beneficial parasites.
@Combat Veteran Reacts When they say they took the dna of an astartes, they really mean that they extracted the genseed of the space marine meaning they have that marine primarch's dna and hence a sliver of the emperors own dna strand. Now take into account how many marines have been consumed by tyranids since their first encounter. Nids are a constantly evolving force, they can quite litterally evolve on the fly. As for bio titans being unessary, you have to understand that the hivemind only deploys them if there is significant resistance above a certain threshold. War hounds dont elicit an response, but when reavers warlords and bigger titans are there? Then the hive mind brings the biotitans out. The hive mind is ultra conservative with its biomass expenditures. To it, it is a numbers game. It wants to gain as much as possible with losing as little as possible. Once enemy titans are gone they do have practical uses. Like drawing the heaviest artillery and cannon fire from your squishy infanty. Its also a good fear factor making their enemies lose sanity mid battle.
The "void" between galaxies is not quite empty. The nids could very well have some organism that can absorb the cosmic background radiation, cosmic rays or just intergalactic light like some form of cosmic plankton. It wont be much energy, but if everything else is frozen, and your velocity is set, you just need enough to keep a wakeup creature alive.
It's funny that you keep bringing up the nutritional requirements of these creatures, because that's precisely why Tyranid organisms don't all have these crazy organs and abilities; having an entire army of Carnifexes, Tyrant Guards, or even Tyranid Warriors would consolidate too many resources in too few organisms. Every battle is a calculated risk for the Tyranids because they must either break even with their expended resources, or achieve a net gain when all is said and done, otherwise they've wasted time on a technical loss with little gain besides intelligence that may not even be applicable in future engagements. This is why every bio-form planetside, living or dead, is recycled after the battle is over; they can't afford to waste anything.
Nids are playing hard mode in a way they have to "hit and run" they have to be on way the planet after next before anybody reacts to the first one. They're kinda the opposite of the Orks. Nids want to eat not fight. Orks are all about brawling
This is also the reason why the Tyrannids as a whole actively avoid the Necrons and their Tomb Worlds. No biomass to gain, not from the enemy nor from the planet, no new useful DNA strands to aquire. In fact, the Necrons are essentially the perfect counter to the Tyrannids. Sure, the Necrons might lose a battle or two or even more, but they'll just respawn. The Tyrannids however expend more and more biomass gaining *nothing.*
@@sd501st5 Actually it's implied that the Tyranids might attack Necron Tomb Worlds to gather exotic minerals, so while there is no biomass, there is an abundance of other resources they can use.
The hive minds presence in the warp is more akin to a giant private server. They for the most part are the only psychic presence active in those situations.
As for rippers evolving into larger things and making their own hive mind, it seems that all evolution of tyrannids only occurs at the directive of the hive mind. Isolated tyrannids revert to animalistic behavior and lose all semblance of intelligence and the capability to produce more complex life forms.
@@CombatVeteranReacts its more that the smaller 'nids are just predisposed to acting like rabid animals, and the influence of the hivemind is the only thing keeping them in line. Once that overhead falls away they go back to chewing on everything they see, even things that you as a human think of as their allies
@@CombatVeteranReacts there is a semi confirmed theory that The Hive minds strongest being (The swarmlord) actually is intelligent enough and self-reliant enough that it actually is a risk to bring out. There is a reason that the swarm is reluctant to spawn it 1: it is incredibly expensive bio-mass wise... and 2: It is intelligent enough that if left alive for too long, it is theorized it could potentially become... independent. However that is not 100% confirmed.
Hormagaunts and termagants are an example of this. Hormagaunts will immediately lay eggs when they land, so probably do so periodically before or after battle, and when not under synapse, they are hyper aggressive, charging and killing until dying. Termagants do the opposite, finding bolt holes, caves, cellers, loft, maintenance spaces, sewers, anywhere to hide and defend until the synapse returns. Tactically, it's bad, but strategically, is genius. Hormagaunts will slow/stop the enemy advance long enough for the termagants to disappear, the enemy is now forced to slowly comb through everything to find termagants, slowing their advance, wasting their victory, and any termagants not found, when back under synapse control will come back out, amongst or behind enemy lines, seeing chaos amongst them, making them much easier to beat this time.
And you are absolutely right about Titans. Titans were a response to Ork Garguants back in the 4th Millenium when Orks were first encountered by Humanity. An Ork Garguant is an absolute insane construct where they just pile more and more weapons onto a platform until they feel it's enough, and then they add one more. Garguants were a response to Necron Weapons. Necron weapons simply melt everything it touches, so Orks piled steel on top of each other to allow them to get close enough to the Necrons to fight in close combat. The massive amount of weapons allowed them to destroy the Necrons and force them back to their tomb worlds, instead of them getting back up. So in this case, there were strategic reasons for Garguants and thus Titan's
Is there a reason for why they didnt give the rights? I mean, with their abundance of material, they could get rich and be more exposed in the video game industry...
@@CommissarChaotic GW had a very different policy for giving out their licenses back then than they do these days, they were much more critical when considering who would get licensing. Nowadays they give licensing rights to basically everyone who wants to make a game, but my guess is they didn’t think Blizzard or their pitch was up to their standards at that point.
The things Tyranid scare are that either they either “eat” everything (other galaxies) and now we are their last “meal”, they are running away from something that is even more terrifying that it’s scare the Tyranid or is that the Tyranid (Tyrant Guard) possessed some genetic material of the Emperor
Tyranid Bio-Titans are actually noted for being extremely fast and agile, and their preferred method of Titan killing is generally to just jump on the enemy Titan and either take it out immediately, or knock it to the ground where it will be more vulnerable to smaller Tyranids.
@@CombatVeteranReacts It is. Titans are primarily used against heavy static emplacements or other Titans, which is why melee Titan variants are so common; the quickest way to take down a Titan is to just hit it really hard with another Titan's melee weapon, because its void shields can generally soak up a lot of ranged firepower. Orks get around this by loading their Titans down with armor to compensate for their crude shield generators, the Eldar Titans have the benefit of the Eldar's precognition and and heightened awareness while also being way more agile and dexterous than other Titans, and the Tyranid Bio-Titans are living creatures that can be produced mid-conflict and are hyper mobile. Tyranid Bio-Titans are also extremely difficult to kill because they can regenerate limbs and organs within minutes; I recall a UA-camr by the handle of Fiaura The Tank Girl doing a scientific analysis of how the biology of a Tyranid Hierophant Bio-Titan is described in lore and coming to the conclusion that they can recover so long as their heart, brain, or liver and at least 30% of their body remains intact, and they can make a full recovery within days or hours.
As for the questions of where the biomass and energy comes from in the Octarius conflict, well you have to remember that the Warhammer 40k universe isn’t a closed system like our own. They have the warp, and it’s fairly likely the Orks prodigious growth comes from that. So basically the mass and energy is literally being created ex nihilo. Because the Old ones are bullshit like that.
things from the warp return to the warp upon death, and i don't think that the orks can draw from the warp the same way that human psykers or chaos cultists can. the key thing to remember is that the orks are green for a reason, they do use photosynthesis, as well as having their own digestive track, and as they grow from fungus, they begin life with a headstart, taking calories from whatever the fungus was feeding on
About nids and energy. Their anabiosis is likely supernatural, added with psychic powers, to the point sleeping nids can sleep for thousands of years without withering or running out of fat reserves. Also every surface of every nid and every bioship is photosynthetic just to lower energy consumption.
It's like turning on the mosquito lamp for the night, then waking up to find that the mosquitos have entered the house, and sucked your family dry during your sleep. And you only woke up because they were halfway through sucking all your blood out and your dog (named Kryptman) spent the last of its blood nudging you awake.
Yes even if a hive fleet gets effectively destroyed..the spores and surviving bugs will at first revert to instinct and seek each other out.. eventually when enough congregate a synapse creature will spawn to further direct the swarms and reestablish contact with the hive mind
there is actually stuff between galaxy's, actually in space in general, we know it's there but we don't know what it is so we just call it Dark Matter, and our knowledge of life is still small so we can't make that assumption that all life needs energy.
Just like the orks don't use the warp because they have there own waagh energy, tyranids use synaptic link for instant communication, bypassing the warp, i don't know if lore has a specific explanation for this link, but it's sounds like quantum entanglement to me.
Tyranids probably use the warp but due to the way they work it just creates a sector where all thought is smothered under the tyranid hive mind the hive mind is like the internet and each tyranid is a router trying to connect yourself to the tyranids or use the warp in their presence would be very difficult as you would have to have enough power to push though the tyranid spam mail and notifications or it the case of connecting to them read and understand all the mailed nonsense
My pet theory for the nids once was that they were created by some surviving old ones that fled the galaxy to starve of the c'tan so they´d destroy themselfs. Doesn´t make that much sense nowadays with the reworked necron lore, although you could still make it work by saying the old ones that fled the galaxy weren´t aware that the necrons had remaining consciousness and would overthrow the c`tan.
the geeneseed rewrites the dna of your neophyte, thats how he i able to recieve the 19 different organ for implantation. and there are 20( now 18 variations of the geeneed in account of their resctive primarch. with two glands producing geeneseed itself for implantation on future astartes.
Technically there's 36 variations of the gene seed due to the Primaris because apparently sleeping with a toaster gives one the ability to out perform The Emperor of Man in the science department.
Regarding your comment on the efficiency of massive bioforms, I bring up four "counter-arguments": 1.) Threat division: these things come with armies and are themselves an army. So that begs the question: what do you focus on? If you focus solely on the titan, the escort has outmaneuvered you. If you focus on the escort, then the titan is fully ready to deal with you If you divide your resources, you won't have enough to finish off both 2.) Resources: there's a common theme in facing these sorts of things and it goes along the lines of "We don't have enough _______ to deal with that thing". Think about it: unless it has a very specific/usually-plot-driven weakness then where exactly do you start shooting?. Besides, even if you did find it do you have enough resources to get there and alone exploit it? The costs start mounting up for any defense or retaliation and it's only a question of how well can you trade in calue which then relies on strategy. 3.) Redundancy: things grow and we build. The larger we get and build the more it's reinforced just to even stand let alone move. This means a redundant design which means it's tough which means not so easily crippled. Think about it: a carrier is carrying TONS of weight which means its structure HAS to be thick and reinforced to even carry it which coincidently leads it to be heavily armored and not so easily crippled which means more resources needed to take it down unless you have Point #2. Maintenance is a different issue since the Tyranids dissolve everything in the battle and resue them anyway 4.) Positioning: it effectively controls the position and the area of engagement it is at. That means less of the battlefield you have to work with just by its presence alone. You have to deal with it or GTFO because if it's not bombarding you it's bearing down on you. It may be in only one large place at a time but if it's where it needs to be or can get there then you've already lost. Concluscion: Who said the Nids can only bring one Biotitan per battle? After all, there's never ever just one 'Nid
The idea that all life eventually evolves into Tyranids is my second favorite theory. My favorite is the idea that not all The Old Ones died during the war in heaven. They fled the galaxy and created the Tyranids. They took what worked when creating the Orks, a self contained army that needs no supplies or logistics that brings there own eco-system with them. And just took the concept to it's logical conclusion. And they've turned them loose on the galaxy to purge everything so they can return and just start over with the galaxy as a blank slate.
I just realized that the Tyranids act like army ants. Constantly migrating their entire nest (hive fleet) and devouring anything they come across in massive swarms... Christ Almighty, army ants just became a hundred times more intimidating.
About motivation. Shield of Baal book includes several parts from the perspective of Tyranid Lictor and Tyranid Warrior. Both are near ecstatically happy to fulfill their role and Lictor even feel something akin to pride in his dsign, braggin to himself about being the ultimate predator crafted from the best DNA of a millions other predators, each contributing that one thing it was best at.
that book is a giant spit in the face of every piece of lore written before it it is not a reliable source dont trust space marine writers to do any other faction justice
I honestly refuse to even think that any tyranid bio-form could ever be described using the word 'sentient.' All the way up to the hivemind, tyranids cannot communicate with any other species, because they have no reason to. Them being an unknowable but implacable force of destruction is a big part of their unique flavor, and dumbing them down to being chaos worshippers (but following a hivemind instead of a chaos god) strips all of that away i think
Lore written from tyranid perspective? I dont know about that, Granted lictors are smart and independent creatures capable of making their own desitions when not directed by the hivemind, but feeling something akin to pride? And from Tyranid warrior perspective is eaven stranger shure they are synaptic creatures but how independent are they? If they are just nodes that extend the control of the hive mind emotions and independent thoughts woud be none excistent. Or maybe the hive mind is more like a delegating inteligence that gives general instructions to the synapse creatures and falls to them to find the best way to complete set objective. That sounds like a more eficient use of brain power and with constant synaptic comunication cordination is not an isue. That woud explain why some synapse creatures like the swarm lord are better at comanding the hive on a tactical level than a simple warrior or broodlord. Or option 3 the hive mind is the colective inteligence of all the synapse creatures. That cud allso make sence. And explain why diferent hivefleets compet with echother.
@@drac4932 the word "sentient" does not mean what you think it means. By definition it's just the ability be aware of feelings and sensations. Any animal with anything approaching central nervous system is sentient. But not sapient, which is the ability to think abstractly. Modern AIs are examples sapient, but not sentient mind.
Tyranid titans are smaller than some of the sauropod dinosaurs and exist mostly as platforms for anti-titan weaponry. As for mobility and stability, nids reduce their weight using psychic power, which allows hierotitant to move at blinding speed despite their size.
Yeah, looks as though the Bio-Titans are comparable to the smallest Imperial Titans (averaging about 15 meters), just a little taller than a Warhound Scout Titan (14m). Nowhere near the scale of an Imperator Titan (55m, though this is very inconsistent and sometimes given as over 140m...). Not that 40k has ever given a shit about the Square-Cube Law, but at least the Bio-Titans being on the smaller end of the scale means any violations of it are less egregious.
29:30 Actually the vast majority of necrons lost their free thought during their conversion while the leaders of the species maintained their personality’s and individuality.
If a ripper swarm is cut from the hive mind they devour each other untill one of them have enough biomass to morph into a Tyranid Warrior who can act as relay for the hive mind.
I think you are totally right about titans and biotitans, but still heres just a few thoughts. A hivefleet wouldnt invest so much energy into a biotitan unless there was an immediate need, i.e. a mechanical titan. You're right a biotitan is a massive investment, maybe even more so than a hive tyrant, so a hive fleet isn't just going to make some bio-titans for fun. And also a bio-titan (and really most tyranid forms you see in battle) don't really live for very long. They are created for a battle, either die in battle or survive, and then either way end up back in the reclamation pools. The same individual tyranids arent going planet to planet, they get slurped up
Not gonna lie, I kinda like the idea of the Tyranids creating a sort of tyranid-humanoid entity with a giger-esq carapace armour that is reminiscent of a space marine if one gets consumed.
someone once told me that the Shadow in the Warp is most like White noise or radio static, it'd be like trying to talk to someone across the room while being surrounded by screaming children, the children can communicate with each other, but your message is just drowned out
To be fair I do believe that the nid hive mind does often put redundancy organs in its more important bio forms but it's not going to waste extra hearts on rippers and gaunts.
@@CombatVeteranReacts in fact tyranid carnifexs often have several redundancy organs located all around there bodies making them much harder to put down. Even large amounts of trauma to the head hardly slow them.
Tyranids can create a lifeform that acts like a message in a bottle that will fly towards a hive fleet. But they are psychically active and are immune to their own shadow in the warp. The shadow in the warp is really just that vast psychic conscience of the hive mind.
It's similar to how the chaos gods have influence over spaces in the warp. Their presence is more physical to that point were to actually gain ground through collective thought alone is not enough like how you prepare the space of the material world for daemon summoning, you have to physically remove the specific signature away from the "warp space" and replace it with your own.
13:50 Naked Mole Rats do something similiar although it's a queen who stresses out her competitors so much that they remain infertile until the queen dies or leaves. Crab and Mole People... huh.
Well if the Tyranids REALLY wanted to be super efficient at consuming biomass, all they need is to make a few huge planet eaters and skip the whole invasion part. I know you really dont like super weapons but surely if they took all the resources from what they would use on a massive army on one huge planet nomming ship it would have to be unstoppable.
Planet eaters ? Imagine how much biomas it would require to create itnot to mention how to maintain it, one planet wouldn't be worth for cost of consuming that one planet, even invasions sometimes aren't worth it for Tyrannids when they need to Travel huge amounts of Space ( they cannot Travel thorugh warp or any other quick Travel ways ) and that's why Genestealer cults were created.
i mean the issue is that you need to build that form to begin with and then it has to actually be able to travel through space. Tyranids already travels very slowly (compared to other races). It also will have to defend itself and be able to consume. And who is to say there isnt a form like that in the bulk of the tyranid swarm whose job is to gobble up leftover planets and stars after the galaxy has been conquered. It might just be easier to consume whatever biomass that put ups a fight initially and then slowly eat the reminder.
Tyranids use for travel compressed space-time often used by Narvhal ships "In some unknown manner it then makes use of the origin star system's own gravity and creates a compressed space-time transit corridor through which the Narvhal and other Tyranid bio-ships can traverse interstellar distances."
There is now a group of tyranids that specifically fight warp entities and hangs around the eye of terror and other hive fleets will come and give them bi mass if that particular hive fleet needs it
Generally forces fighting the Tyranids for the first time have most of their soldiers broken down by the spores. If they have fought the bugs before then they have hazmat gear to prevent the spores from killing them.
You are on the right track with the geneseed, but the additional organs are grown from the genetic stock of the primarch. These were in turn made using the Emperor's own genetic material (and some warp fuckery). But in essence the spacemarines have altered DNA, eg. the bloodangels come to their chapter as cancer ridden wrecks from Baal but are interned in a sarcophagus while the geneseed remakes them into the fair complexion chiselled beautiful angels of death. So to think the Tyranids might have some of that DNA in stock to augment their troops with is rather scary.
The Astronomicon had nothing to do with luring the Tyranids. It was the Pharos ( sp) that lured them here to the Milky Way Galaxy. As told in the Horus Heresy novel Pharos.
The shadow of the warp is a kind of warp energy on its own, just so loud and massed that it drowns evverything else out, so yes, the scouts bioforms relay per warp back
There’s actually a lot of stuff in the intergalactic void. Particularly in these intergalactic filaments which make up like 50% of all the matter in the universe; add a little bit of space magic and I think it’s entirely reasonable for them to travel from one galaxy to the next
So on the experimental Tyranid thing, with a bunch of one offs, that’s basically the theory behind “Old One Eye”. And the other Carnifexs with enhanced regeneration that started popping up across the galaxy. As to why not all the tyranids get the improvements, pretty much the same reason they don’t use the Titan size ones all the time. It’s not as efficient as having the variety of options out there. They don’t need to just make their foot troops, but recycle them as well. I’m sure that if there is a universally good and efficient upgrade that they would implement it, so the reason they don’t all get space marines upgrades with all the redundancies, is probably that handing them out everywhere make inefficiencies either in the creation or recycling processes.
Tyranids eat galaxies the milky way isn't there first target they were in the middle of looking for there next hunting ground when the light basically said " over here! "
The 40K universe have actual Space Jellyfish and Space Whales, so I wouldn't put it past them to have something capable of living in dark space between universes that the Nids can use for some quick refueling. Also, they don't just eat biomatters but minerals as well, so the chances they can resupply in dark space isn't zero as far as the 40K universe is concerned.
I recommend you react to Templin Institute's own series called Stellaris Invicta, there's currently 2 seasons with the first following the Greater Terran Union which is formed from the remnants of humanity after an alien invasion and the second is the Antares Confederacy which came from an evacuation fleet fleeing from Earth. They're really fucking good.
Titans and bio titans are pretty much just big gun platforms. It’s the only real way to move weapons of that size, as having them on tanks wouldn’t give the long distance line of sight needed for laser weaponry of that scale, you need the height. It doesn’t really matter if they’re vulnerable to attacks by smaller things running around at their feet because they are utilized tens of miles behind the combat zone.
The assertion that it is not happening between the stars, it is more a statement of how the astronomicon casting across real space and the warp announced there was a meal here to the Tyrranids.
Something that Tyranids will do is create and weave DNA on the fly and adaptively iterate onto the battlefield. So if Tyranids are attacking an ice world, they will add more fatty tissue for insulation. But the hive fleets each individually add and add adaptations to the greater hive-minds genetic knowledge. As the hive mind preserves both the original DNA as well as any modifications made.
The huge bioforms would also have problems with heat expulsions. If they get to big the heat produced by biolocigal processes will not be able to be transferred to the surroundings faster than it builds up. Basically they would probably cook themselves from the inside out.
One of the theories about the Shadow in the Warp is that it's just a byproduct of the sheer volume of Tyranid psychic communications, which drown out everything else.
Except for the evidence of emergent warp consciousness towards the end of the Devastation of Baal that was... broken, simultaneously with the fall of Cadia.
Yes, they feel pleasure to be devoured by the reclamation pools. I believe one book described it as an all-consuming feeling of warmth, happiness and accomplishment. The really messed up part, though, is the infected humans and Genestealers that are also driven to jump into the pools. They feel that same pleasure as they get in and then, when their muscles and nerves are broken down enough by the digestive bio-acids that they cannot escape, the compulsion is no longer needed and they get to spend the last few minutes of their lives fully aware that they had been unwillingly compelled and cognizant of just what they helped bring about.
It wasn't the astronomicon that first attracted the Tyranids to our galaxy, one of the Horus Heresy books features another psychic beacon that first drew them in. Basically the hive fleets consume the biomass in a galaxy and then hibernate for the thousands of years they travel through intergalactic space and live off this biomass. There was a book from Forgeworld that covered the Tyranids. In this some basic Tyranid forms had been deliberately seeded onto a world to be studied and these were able to develop into the full range of bioforms including biotitans. In the games gaunts of different types can be upgraded, representing slightly different evolution and breeding.
I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the video, but the Tyrannid's FTL "drive" is the solution to the "swarm" eating itself in the void between galaxies. It creates a gravity anchor at the destination point(how? -magic- we don't understand this yet) and the speed the hive fleet can maintain is higher the further they are away from their destination. Which basically means that they will arrive in the nearest star system to their origin point just as fast as to a system on the other side of the galaxy... or outside of it.
In Destiny lore. Theres a concept known as “The final shape.” The basic gist is this. Through conflict, struggle and challenge. An individual’s (or species) flaws and imperfections are cut away. Until eventually only the traits most suited to survival and dominance remain. I think you’re on to something with the theory that each hive fleet is a separate species. And I would add that each species separately reached the “final shape.” Which would mean that the ideal form of life in 40k is planet eating omnicidal bug monsters.
I'm not sure what I find more interesting/horrific, the possibility that the gigantic hive fleets are likely just scout ships of the hive fleet, or that the tyranids are fleeing.
I really like your pet theory on Tyranids and Hive Fleets. Good food for thought. It certainly explains the differences between each of the Hive Fleets.
For the rudimentary hivemind question, the answer is most likely yes. In those cases, a Hive Tyrant or Swarmlord may appear to act as the defacto leaders (Though usually their entire directive is just to rejoin the hive fleet).
21:00 The Space-marines actually get modified with the so-called "geneseed" which is part of the DNA of their Primarch. So they actually share a common DNA or at least part of it and the part that they have in common stems from a Primarch which are according to the lore genetically pretty close to the genes of the Emperor. So I guess hypothetically if a Tyranid got its claws on different chapter's genes they could cross-reference that to some extent?
Space Marines still have their gene seeds which can be extracted by Space Marine Apothecaries so it's also easy for Tyranids to take that gene seed, extract the DNA within, and use it for making new bio forms. Also considering if it was a First Founding Chapter Space Marine that got killed, gene seed taken and absorbed, it would mean Tyranids practically have the DNA of the Primarch of that Chapter, which is very heretical thinking.
The gene seed in the process of making a space marine is made with some very funky genetics which is reinforced with warp energy which makes the marines almost immortal
So what I understand, Tyranid scouts are created from a Vangaurd Drone Ship. The Drone ship creates the scout, usually a Genestealer or a Lictor. When the lictor is done observing the world's ecosystems and defenses, it will return to the ship. The genestealer will stay on the world for centuries to weaken it's defenses for the invasion. The only time a Vanguard drone ship will return to the hivefleet is to either relay its findings to the hivemind so it could better prepare for the next harvest or resupply its cargo i.e, more biomass. But that's very rare because of how risky flying to and out of orbit is from a planet with antit-orbital defenses.
So on the topic of trying random sort of one-off mutations, you are completely right. The Tyranids actually do this. Not usually on literally one single gaunt, but maybe one batch of gaunts, or one random tyrant. They can have minor changes applied to them such as venom sacks to produce venom and coat their talons with it. Or extra adrenal glands to allow higher maximum run speed. So they do try different things in isolated batches, and then if said mutations prove effective, they may be reproduced on a larger scale.
Your idea that the Hive Fleets all come from different galaxies where Tyranid-like races rose to dominance is fascinating, but I think it's highly unlikely given that most of these fleets are arriving in the Milky Way galaxy within a relatively short time frame. The fact that most of them are arriving almost all at once rather than being spread out by millennia or longer and that each new fleet seems more perfectly adapted than the last makes it seem more likely that they really are all the same race and really did come from the same location.
20:39 they aren't looking for the human dna from the recruit. the Tyranids are after the GeneSeed which contains the proprietary genetic content written by the Master of Mankind. Essentially the toughened Tyranid has the holy gene seed of the astartes. Why not every gaunt? I like the field trial idea.
One thing to keep in mind is that most stories I've seen of galactic nomads speak of periods of feasting between travels. I. e. the nids might have generation "ships" that store nourishment for energy similar to how ants or bees can store honey for the long journey to the next hunting ground.
The Tyranids are pretty much a HUGE single organism with multiple bodies that lives by consuming everything it can in order to be able to store enough biomass to make the next void jump towards the next meal, consuming itself along the way. The Shadow in the Warp blocks other species from having free access to the Warp, the Tyranids will still be able to comunicate through it.
Tyranis spores mostly mutate plants and fungi, not animals. And in a very simple ways, stimulating growth to the point any vegetation quickly grows into thick jungles, depleting soil of all nutrients. This overgrown jungle is then used as a fuel to feed tryranid hordes.
@@CombatVeteranReacts there's a short story "Death of Malvolion" set in the early stage of Tyranis invasion, where locals literally see mutated jungles growing around them. It also doubles as creating cover for mostly short-ranged or close combat tyranid forces advansing on human forces that rely way more on the firepower.
The thing is, yes the Hive Mind is in control of its own evolution, but remember: Hive Fleet "reproduction", as far as we know, is done entirely through the consumption and reformation of biomass. We know of no mechanism for a Hive Fleet to duplicate genetic material; it only uses what it has assimilated. This means there's only so much of each genetic trait to go around. It makes sense to specialize when you're working with rare and special ingredients.
Tardigrade can spend a long time in a vacuum. Also worth considering that moving from one galaxy to another would only require one big burst of energy, not a continuous burst, and alternating direction a tiny amount.
"Why would you have something so big, easily targeted and easily crippled?" You, as a US Veteran have to question that particular issue, when the US has aircraft carrier's that can literally house a small city and just as big of a target. I don't hear you questioning why an Aircraft Carrier exists because your argument for Titans can in turn by used against an Aircraft carrier. One torpedo from a very lucky submarine or a good hit with a cannon and that carrier is going down. And the DNA Tyranids can gain from Space marines is the geneseed. As for why not giving to all units? Would you give an infantryman multiple lungs and hearts just because you could, even if it improves effectiveness? No, you wouldn't. It's a waste of resources when that infantryman can do the job just as well without them. The tyranid don't have to 'upgrade' their creatures to the max when the cannon fodder can do the job.The dead Tyranid creatures get recycled anyways, so nothing is lost even if they die.
Thats not true at all aircraft carriers even older ones are extraordinarily difficult to sink let alone destroy. To the point when the us tried scrapping one it took an assload of effort and months to actually do it
Also aircraft carriers provide a unique strategic opportunity that no other device allows. Tyranids have only one goal: eat everything. This could be accomplished with either millions of gaunts or one bio titan.
For the "Should we have a Titan sized bug" I don't think the intent (lore wise) is to have Titan vs Titan fight, and more as the conventional siege breaker. Even in the First Tyranid War, the bugs were already able to kill a Titan simply by swarming it and literally drag the Titan to the ground. So no, they don't need a Titan bug to kill other Titans.
It's more likely that these big boys exist to destroy specific fortifications that are too entrenched for the swarm to break without taking a net loss on biomass. Hence they need something tanky and powerful enough to punch through the defenses without being kill getting there.
And since the Tyranids can recycle biomass, it isn't a loss to birth something so large, once they win, the Bio Titan can be broken down and absorb back to the Hivefleet.
Tyranids don't upgrade all it units to be super powerful because it is a waste of resources. The Gaunts for example are simple meat shields with the purpose of overwhelming the enemy with number, they take up less biomatter and processing power of the Hivemind. But a stronger, more specialized Nid require more biomass to build, take longer to build, and need more processing power from the Hivemind to maintain.
Hmmm, I would if we are going to get a Tyranid Seige of Vraks. Lets see if they can make such a mess of it like Lord Commander Zuehlke.
I’d love to see a tyranid siege
Just the idea that something uses pure biology to do a task that requires technology is astounding
@@spacetacos7574 Well, we did have 3 wars of Armageddon... So, we could have a Vraks Seige 2:The Grey Knights are screwed.
That analysis seems dead on. The Heirophants are as physically tough as is physically possible for a tyranid.
I think something else would need to shut down the void shields before that could happen. And I don’t recall an Imperator there, so there’s that.
Honestly it’s just dumb that the tyranids don’t always win everything with a build up of destructive enzyme green goo. Like unless imperium nanotech is far better than we’ve been generally told there’s like absolutely no way to fight thatz
“There is no common DNA of Space Marines”
Gene Seed: *exists*
Yeah but it still varies from primarch to primarch.
Gene Seed is common to ONE LEGION, or among loyalists, one Chapter and its successor chapters.
Like Imperial Fists, which is also shared by the Crimson Fists and the Black Templars as well as all other successor chapters.
And it's more a standardization of our DNA to allow us to accept the extra organs with less likelihood of failure, and contains some of the mutations that would otherwise require the removal of our entire nervous system and musculature.
Facepalm.
Gene Seeds vary alot, best example of that is ,, purity,, level ( how common mutation is ) and they miss some organs examples: Ultramarines and Dark Angels with purest geneseeds have 10 % for mutation and they don't miss any organs ( that's why most succesor chapters origin from them ), Imperial Fists also have very pure geneseed but they miss some organs while Salamanders have very mutable geneseed ( around 90 % ) with all organs, and Raven Guard miss alot of organs with 20 % mutation rate. Kinda funny that only chapters that have very simmlar geneseeds ( Ultra and DA hate eachother and thier primarchs were rivals from start on top of them having alot of simmlar character traits).
You are dead on with the Starcraft comment. Originally Starcraft was supposed to be a Warhammer 40k game but for some reason Blizzard and GamesWorkshop couldn't/wouldn't come to a deal, so Starcraft spun off to its own IP.
Edit: Warhammer 40k predates Starcraft by a good 10 years.
Edit 2: To answer the question of why not push adaptions like the Space Marine toughness to all creatures, I see it as a matter of cost/benefit. The Hive Mind sees smaller creatures like gaunts as expendable, known to throw them by the thousands just to expend defenders' ammo supplies before committing a full assault with more complex lifeforms. The Tyrant Guard would be a high cost to produce and are there only protect the Tyrants from targeted fire.
In the tabletop game, Tyrants and other larger creatures have an ability called "Shoot the big ones", which allows the enemy player to ignore closer targets and instead focus fire your Tyrants, Carnifex and other big creatures. If you can break the Tyranids' synapse control, then all the little bugs go feral and start killing each other, becoming a minimal threat. But in the tabletop, if your Tyrants have a Tyrant Guard retinue, they must take the hits before the Tyrant can be hurt, which protects synapse control.
But overall yes, a lot of details are rather silly and illogical but are somewhat necessary for the tabletop wargame balance.
In addition to the Starcraft stealing from tyranids, 40k stole from the xenomorphs from Alien. The rippers are like the smaller ones/face huggers that become other variations.
Warcraft not Starcraft.
@@dagonofthedepths no it's StarCraft
@@jacthing1 Blizzard and GW flat out sad it was Warcraft.
Nids are about eating over fighting. To make a Swarm Lord or something big and complex go take out that kill team is waste when they can redirect the already eating swarm that way. But yeah it's balance since I think somebody dropping a bunch of rippers at a table would basically win versus a lot of encounters and take up a lot of time.
the fight between orks and tyranids is INSANE. for instance orks fight tyranids on a cellular level so the Nid microbes that break down matter actually have to FIGHT ork microbes . meaning any ork to actually reach maturity during a tyranid invasion will be insanely strong . and this "fighting " will actually make the orks mature quicker so a tyranid VS ork fight might best represent an immovable object vs an unstoppable force.
Sounds like trouble for all the other races
@@CombatVeteranReacts It is. It is so far uncertain which might win as Hivefleet Leviathan (Might be wrong, will have to check again) is currently fighting an Ork waaagh after the Imperium guided them towards it. The two are getting absurdly powerful during this, and whichever can manage to even come out on top and win. Then everyone else is screwed. They will either be facing super orks that have likely even become Krorks once more or a Hivefleet with so much biomatter that only the Necrons could hope to stop them with their weaponry being the only other hard counter besides exterminatus (To my knowledge).
So far the two fighting is just staying the same, other than just getting larger overtime as more and more orks show up while more and more tyranid bioforms are spawned and sent out as they consume more biomass from the fighting. It has basically been Aliens versus Predators but with orks and tyranids
It iz only trubbah if youz NON-Ork!
@@Furydragonstormer exturminatus is still a option
Dis waaaaagh NEEDS MO DAKKA!
The shadow in the warp isn't blocking the warp. Its more like the jamming as each tyranid has a pyskic link to the hive mind it just overwhelmed everything else. Imagine having a conversation with someone a few feet away. Now Imagine a hundred other people suddenly appearing and having a loud conversation among themselves it would be hard to continue your conversation right this is the best analogy I could think of
Ah that makes sense
It'd be more like the difference between having that conversation, and then trying to have that same conversation within the roar of a rocket engine that never stops. Some psykers go absolutely mad with their sense cut off; they grew to rely on it so hard. Others actually find it a relief to have it so drowned out that it doesn't work anymore, because they stop 'hearing' everyone and everything around them, possibly for light years in every direction. The few times they've tried to counter the effect of the Shadow by 'white noise' jamming it psychically, or some technological means, it only lasts a short time before either the machinery burns out...or the poor damned psykers who are attempting it do. One of the Ciaphas Cain novels has that, where they used the synaptic signal of a chunk of Bioship, run through the local Astropath's mind, as a jammer to disrupt the Hivemind so they could at least push back long enough to get things under control on the ground and in space. Sadly... the Astropath didn't survive the experience. It's a minor footnote in history, and a Magos Biologis report somewhere on potential avenues against Tyranid fleets...but it didn't last long.
@@CombatVeteranReacts It's like a radio that is overwhelmed by the billions of the enemy's chattering voices, except that it's in your head, and you cannot turn it off.
I was under the impression that the Tyranids cannibalized themself when they travel large distances like between galaxies
It's get's you to think just how huge the Tyranid swarm was before leaving their last galactic meal, since their swarms are still huge even after travelling for thousands of years without other source of food
Tyranids don't canibalize themselfs, more return more complex organisms to the biomas. It is stated that tyrannid fleets rapidly grow only when hive mind knows that there is need for that - combat or harvesting. I imagine that when they Travel huge distances in space they minmalize thier fleet size and complexity of it to bare minimum to lower energy output they grasp from biomas magiznes.
As far as I'm aware they'll cannibalize the more common less valuable bioforms for ease of transport. Complex bioforms are not broken down and reconstructed since it would be too inefficient.
@@GrugSmesh You think of System conquering ,,tatic,, nids deploy when they are constantly engaged in combat, and we pretty much only see them in that stage becuse pretty much all their apperaneces are from perspective of humans.
@@jakubgauszczynski7790 i recall there being a hive fleet in the lore thats all about cannibalism
i looked it up
hive fleet hydra is seeking out old hive fleets and cannibalising them for reasons unknown to the imperium, most likely the hivemind uses hydra to update fleets comprising of older bioforms by recycling them into more up to date organisms
but similar behaviour is probably also how they sustain themslefs through inter galactic travel, particularly when they run short of stored biomatter
even if not, the tyranids still practice cannibalism, pretty much on the regular
So why don't you give every gaunt two hearts and three lungs? Because gaunts are expendable. They are made with as little biomass as tyranids can get away with. They don't even have digestive tracts, as they're expected to die in their first engagement or failing that live on the fat reserves that are barely enough to last to the next engagement.
That is excellently efficient
@@CombatVeteranReacts - Not to mention that Tyranids are very big on recycling... as in they eat their own dead, as well as the enemy dead, to recover some of the lost resources. Even if someone takes down a Bio-Titan, if they won the battle they'll just eat the corpse and get most of what they spent back.
@@l.d-b3465 So you're saying Tyranids have perfected Reduce->Reuse->Recycle as a way of life.
@@LexYeen thing you need to remember for the tyranids is that for them its a plus/minus scenario where they have to spend biomass to gain biomass. If they burn up more than what they consume then even if they succeed in wiping it out then you can only call it a phyrric victory at best.
The imperium aren't blind to this and their main strategy is to bleed a hive fleet white before initiating a final battle usually in the void.
@@scotibot7450 a wise move as well, because the void is their main weakpoint. Nids need their bioships to cross the void.
Oh FRICK... what if they discover the webway!?
It is possible that while traveling between galaxys the tyranids hive fleet will mostly cease living with only the most critical parts going into hibernation and then just coasting until approaching a galactic plane and waking the hibernating units who then consume the frozen carcasses of the dead hive fleet using this bio matter to make a new hive fleet.
That actually makes perfect sense
Still very unefficient for the hive fleets, since they don't even use FTL. (no they don't stir the air with their tentacles... since there's no air) they bend gravity in front of their vessels through psychic powers to accelerate, and that should cost energy... especially if we count all the fleets they have.
And it's not the hive mind that is generating that psychic field, they do that on their own. Because lesser bio-ships (let's say Drones or even Devourers) return to primal instinct after breaking their synaptic link (with their relaying Hive Ship) and move on their own.
So they must be veeeery self efficient. Or actually explode like bacterias dying when they can't go on, and eventually get recycled by other vessels passing by, but that doesn't sound very efficient for travels between galaxies, so they must have another way.
If they come from far that is, because another theory is that nids are species created by the Old Ones long ago...
We never know!
@@ipatchymakouli415 The heliosphere around our solar system caused by the sun protects us from being bombarded by cosmic background radiation from expolded super nova, black hole hawking radiation pulsar burst, othere distant stars radiation, etc. There could be plenty of energy from that tyranids can live off of as well as the debri floating in space far away from any stars gravitational pull. What thing is that the tyranids have hive forms that can absorbed this cosmic energies as they move along, find and consume the minerals and potentially some live that lives on these planet /astreiods that float around and chart a course to where they can do this while slowly getting closer and closer to our galaxy.
@@ipatchymakouli415 Newton's First Law states that an object in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force, and no such forces exist in intergalactic space.
@@ipatchymakouli415 the do have FTL they make worm holes similar to warp travel but they leave a ton of carnage behind when tyranids enter FTL
As for eldar, because they're so emotional and emotions attract demons, their military uses special techniques to suppress their emotions. Professional eldar warriors engineer split personality incapable of any higher emotion, known as "war mask" that takes over in battle. While Eldar reservists are lead to battle by Warlocks - battle psykers who are trained to project emotion-dampening fields.
Interesting work arounds!
As far as I know, the Warmasks were actually a feature of their helmets which basically "blends out" the emotional reactions to the horrors of war...
Some Warlocks and Farseer's have managed to keep their emotions in check enough so that they don't need a warmask, but they still have the option of one.
And then there are the Aeldari Corsairs who fled from their Craftworld, because they just could not take the regimented, restricted and restrained existence that is the way of life of the Craftworld Aeldari. These guys have no warmasks at all, and neither do they have soulstones... yet they do raid, fight or help out their original Craftworld when it's in real danger like (Corsair) Prince Yriel(I think that was his, could be wrong).
Is all of this wrong? Or do we have a case of GW not being able to keep their canon straight again?
@@sd501st5 war mask is certainly part of their training, not equipement. Tau once took some aspect warriors peisonners and when they tried interrogating them Water Caste diagnosed them with split personality disorder because they stayed in war masks as they were trined to in case they're taken prisoner.
Furthermore, exarch are what happens when eldar get too deep into the path of aspect warrior and can no longer switch back to his or her original personality, permanently stuck in the war mask.
@@DoctorM42 Okay, thanks for correcting my misinterpretation. The Craftworld Aeldari begin to remind me more and more of Star Trek's own knife ears, the Vulcans. Sure, they don't focus on logic as a way of life, but the general principle of "very emotional(and prone to violent outbursts) species controlling their emotions with the help of..." seems the same.
The part about the Exarchs I already knew...
I always wondered if becoming one isn't just accepting the "other" part of themselves, accepting that they get "emotional high's" from killing the enemy, and re-uniting the two personalities again. What you said about the Tau diagnosing Aeldari prisoners with split personality disorder leads me to believe that this actually what happens.
@@DoctorM42 Ah so that's what that means. I always struggled a bit with that concept.
So here's the thing. Tyranid Hive Fleets spend decades, centuries, or even millennia drifting through space. Why? Because the Tyranids' form of FTL travel is essentially creating a massive gravity well that distorts space and slingshots them around at relativistic speeds. The problem is, they can't do this within the gravity well of a star or planet, meaning the Tyranids have to spend months or years drifting out of the system if they want to make a jump, or simply keep drifting at speed to the next system, relying on limited thruster bio-tech and good old-fashioned momentum to carry them along. This means that the Tyranids are already well-equipped to handle centuries or millennia in hibernation, doubly so when the actual Hive Fleets didn't start entering the Milky Way for about 10,000 years after the Astronomicon was lit and the Pharos was overloaded. And if the Tyranids were farther away but there were already Genestealers, Lictors, and various feral Tyranid creatures in the Milky Way, then it shows that this hibernation cycle can be maintained even on the micro-level of a single spore pod, let alone the condensed multi-planetary level ecosystems contained by a Hive Fleet. And this is not outrageous because it is a deliberate form of genetic engineering on the part of the Hive Mind to achieve this level of hyper efficiency, and not just some random evolution.
So... they essentially use Star Trek Warp...
@@looseycanon eh I mean it’s not really out of the realm of 40k I mean it’s been said that they probably devoured the other galaxies. At least that what we are assume the did before, If they did consume or devour the life forms from the other galaxies: not only would they have god knows amount of biomass. But their intelligence must be at least so astronomically large that it has figured out a way to go FTL with only its Biology.
I mean, a human is an ecosystem. Tyranids are just that times a million.
A civilization-scale ecosystem. I like the parallel, the Norn Queen is the brain, Synapse critters being CNS/PNS, etc… Genestealers would be cancerous tissue?
@@paulpolito2001 I don't think a mammalian metaphor suits Genestealers. They seem more akin to seeds dispersed over a wide area to ensure a better spread of the Tyranid ecosystem.
That's being pretty generous. Decaying whales that drift to the bottom of the ocean a few days after their death, now they have an ecosystem.
@@Aaron-is8yt I was refering to our gut bacteria and other microbe colonies around our bodies. They assist with digestion and studies have linked their imbalance to allergies and even depression, meaning that they may have functions we are still unaware of. (The field is still young so nothing is really set in stone so far.) If nothing else our skin and hair are covered in bacteria etc. to the point that our living areas microflora is changed by our habitation. Who knows how far the symbiosis goes or if they are just beneficial parasites.
No one seems to comprehend what he meant.
Ah yes....the 'Nids. Their armies are fun because you have a a lot of options to hook them up with all the latest biotechnology lol.
Now if they ONLY could stop suckin on the board :(
@@tnecniw THEY EAT
They aren't that good unless you can swarm swarm swarm swarm swarm
@@crusader5336 ZERG !
love the tactic
@Combat Veteran Reacts
When they say they took the dna of an astartes, they really mean that they extracted the genseed of the space marine meaning they have that marine primarch's dna and hence a sliver of the emperors own dna strand.
Now take into account how many marines have been consumed by tyranids since their first encounter.
Nids are a constantly evolving force, they can quite litterally evolve on the fly.
As for bio titans being unessary, you have to understand that the hivemind only deploys them if there is significant resistance above a certain threshold.
War hounds dont elicit an response, but when reavers warlords and bigger titans are there?
Then the hive mind brings the biotitans out.
The hive mind is ultra conservative with its biomass expenditures.
To it, it is a numbers game.
It wants to gain as much as possible with losing as little as possible.
Once enemy titans are gone they do have practical uses. Like drawing the heaviest artillery and cannon fire from your squishy infanty.
Its also a good fear factor making their enemies lose sanity mid battle.
The "void" between galaxies is not quite empty. The nids could very well have some organism that can absorb the cosmic background radiation, cosmic rays or just intergalactic light like some form of cosmic plankton. It wont be much energy, but if everything else is frozen, and your velocity is set, you just need enough to keep a wakeup creature alive.
good point.
It's funny that you keep bringing up the nutritional requirements of these creatures, because that's precisely why Tyranid organisms don't all have these crazy organs and abilities; having an entire army of Carnifexes, Tyrant Guards, or even Tyranid Warriors would consolidate too many resources in too few organisms. Every battle is a calculated risk for the Tyranids because they must either break even with their expended resources, or achieve a net gain when all is said and done, otherwise they've wasted time on a technical loss with little gain besides intelligence that may not even be applicable in future engagements. This is why every bio-form planetside, living or dead, is recycled after the battle is over; they can't afford to waste anything.
Nids are playing hard mode in a way they have to "hit and run" they have to be on way the planet after next before anybody reacts to the first one. They're kinda the opposite of the Orks. Nids want to eat not fight. Orks are all about brawling
This is also the reason why the Tyrannids as a whole actively avoid the Necrons and their Tomb Worlds. No biomass to gain, not from the enemy nor from the planet, no new useful DNA strands to aquire. In fact, the Necrons are essentially the perfect counter to the Tyrannids. Sure, the Necrons might lose a battle or two or even more, but they'll just respawn. The Tyrannids however expend more and more biomass gaining *nothing.*
@@sd501st5 Actually it's implied that the Tyranids might attack Necron Tomb Worlds to gather exotic minerals, so while there is no biomass, there is an abundance of other resources they can use.
The hive minds presence in the warp is more akin to a giant private server. They for the most part are the only psychic presence active in those situations.
27:45 Actually there are stories of Orks using actual tactics. Main ones are the Second and Third War of Armageddon.
Enough orks together can do some tactics I think
Mainly because of the relatively Intelligent Warboss.
War of the Beast.
Orks using tactics are considered weird by their fellow Orks, is the thing. "Youz sneaky gitz, stop hidin' an' go krump sumfing!"
As for rippers evolving into larger things and making their own hive mind, it seems that all evolution of tyrannids only occurs at the directive of the hive mind.
Isolated tyrannids revert to animalistic behavior and lose all semblance of intelligence and the capability to produce more complex life forms.
Interesting. Guess the hive mind doesn't want competition
@@CombatVeteranReacts its more that the smaller 'nids are just predisposed to acting like rabid animals, and the influence of the hivemind is the only thing keeping them in line. Once that overhead falls away they go back to chewing on everything they see, even things that you as a human think of as their allies
@@CombatVeteranReacts there is a semi confirmed theory that The Hive minds strongest being (The swarmlord) actually is intelligent enough and self-reliant enough that it actually is a risk to bring out.
There is a reason that the swarm is reluctant to spawn it
1: it is incredibly expensive bio-mass wise...
and 2: It is intelligent enough that if left alive for too long, it is theorized it could potentially become... independent.
However that is not 100% confirmed.
Hormagaunts and termagants are an example of this.
Hormagaunts will immediately lay eggs when they land, so probably do so periodically before or after battle, and when not under synapse, they are hyper aggressive, charging and killing until dying.
Termagants do the opposite, finding bolt holes, caves, cellers, loft, maintenance spaces, sewers, anywhere to hide and defend until the synapse returns.
Tactically, it's bad, but strategically, is genius.
Hormagaunts will slow/stop the enemy advance long enough for the termagants to disappear, the enemy is now forced to slowly comb through everything to find termagants, slowing their advance, wasting their victory, and any termagants not found, when back under synapse control will come back out, amongst or behind enemy lines, seeing chaos amongst them, making them much easier to beat this time.
And you are absolutely right about Titans. Titans were a response to Ork Garguants back in the 4th Millenium when Orks were first encountered by Humanity. An Ork Garguant is an absolute insane construct where they just pile more and more weapons onto a platform until they feel it's enough, and then they add one more. Garguants were a response to Necron Weapons. Necron weapons simply melt everything it touches, so Orks piled steel on top of each other to allow them to get close enough to the Necrons to fight in close combat. The massive amount of weapons allowed them to destroy the Necrons and force them back to their tomb worlds, instead of them getting back up. So in this case, there were strategic reasons for Garguants and thus Titan's
zerg were supposed to be tyranids actually , but blizzard didn't got the rights from gw and they just changged the lore
Is there a reason for why they didnt give the rights? I mean, with their abundance of material, they could get rich and be more exposed in the video game industry...
@@CommissarChaotic dunno.
@@CommissarChaotic GW had a very different policy for giving out their licenses back then than they do these days, they were much more critical when considering who would get licensing. Nowadays they give licensing rights to basically everyone who wants to make a game, but my guess is they didn’t think Blizzard or their pitch was up to their standards at that point.
@@EisenKreutzer GW: show the money, then you can bastardize it as much as you want.
The things Tyranid scare are that either they either “eat” everything (other galaxies) and now we are their last “meal”, they are running away from something that is even more terrifying that it’s scare the Tyranid or is that the Tyranid (Tyrant Guard) possessed some genetic material of the Emperor
Tyranid Bio-Titans are actually noted for being extremely fast and agile, and their preferred method of Titan killing is generally to just jump on the enemy Titan and either take it out immediately, or knock it to the ground where it will be more vulnerable to smaller Tyranids.
That is a viable strategy against Titans I would think
@@CombatVeteranReacts It is. Titans are primarily used against heavy static emplacements or other Titans, which is why melee Titan variants are so common; the quickest way to take down a Titan is to just hit it really hard with another Titan's melee weapon, because its void shields can generally soak up a lot of ranged firepower. Orks get around this by loading their Titans down with armor to compensate for their crude shield generators, the Eldar Titans have the benefit of the Eldar's precognition and and heightened awareness while also being way more agile and dexterous than other Titans, and the Tyranid Bio-Titans are living creatures that can be produced mid-conflict and are hyper mobile. Tyranid Bio-Titans are also extremely difficult to kill because they can regenerate limbs and organs within minutes; I recall a UA-camr by the handle of Fiaura The Tank Girl doing a scientific analysis of how the biology of a Tyranid Hierophant Bio-Titan is described in lore and coming to the conclusion that they can recover so long as their heart, brain, or liver and at least 30% of their body remains intact, and they can make a full recovery within days or hours.
As for the questions of where the biomass and energy comes from in the Octarius conflict, well you have to remember that the Warhammer 40k universe isn’t a closed system like our own. They have the warp, and it’s fairly likely the Orks prodigious growth comes from that. So basically the mass and energy is literally being created ex nihilo. Because the Old ones are bullshit like that.
things from the warp return to the warp upon death, and i don't think that the orks can draw from the warp the same way that human psykers or chaos cultists can.
the key thing to remember is that the orks are green for a reason, they do use photosynthesis, as well as having their own digestive track, and as they grow from fungus, they begin life with a headstart, taking calories from whatever the fungus was feeding on
About nids and energy. Their anabiosis is likely supernatural, added with psychic powers, to the point sleeping nids can sleep for thousands of years without withering or running out of fat reserves. Also every surface of every nid and every bioship is photosynthetic just to lower energy consumption.
To answer your question on combating the spores as a threat, a quote will suffice:
"None who live, can survive the flame."
It's like turning on the mosquito lamp for the night, then waking up to find that the mosquitos have entered the house, and sucked your family dry during your sleep. And you only woke up because they were halfway through sucking all your blood out and your dog (named Kryptman) spent the last of its blood nudging you awake.
could you not?
Yes even if a hive fleet gets effectively destroyed..the spores and surviving bugs will at first revert to instinct and seek each other out.. eventually when enough congregate a synapse creature will spawn to further direct the swarms and reestablish contact with the hive mind
there is actually stuff between galaxy's, actually in space in general, we know it's there but we don't know what it is so we just call it Dark Matter, and our knowledge of life is still small so we can't make that assumption that all life needs energy.
Just like the orks don't use the warp because they have there own waagh energy, tyranids use synaptic link for instant communication, bypassing the warp, i don't know if lore has a specific explanation for this link, but it's sounds like quantum entanglement to me.
Tyranids probably use the warp but due to the way they work it just creates a sector where all thought is smothered under the tyranid hive mind the hive mind is like the internet and each tyranid is a router trying to connect yourself to the tyranids or use the warp in their presence would be very difficult as you would have to have enough power to push though the tyranid spam mail and notifications or it the case of connecting to them read and understand all the mailed nonsense
My pet theory for the nids once was that they were created by some surviving old ones that fled the galaxy to starve of the c'tan so they´d destroy themselfs. Doesn´t make that much sense nowadays with the reworked necron lore, although you could still make it work by saying the old ones that fled the galaxy weren´t aware that the necrons had remaining consciousness and would overthrow the c`tan.
Seems as plausible and anything else
the geeneseed rewrites the dna of your neophyte, thats how he i able to recieve the 19 different organ for implantation. and there are 20( now 18 variations of the geeneed in account of their resctive primarch. with two glands producing geeneseed itself for implantation on future astartes.
Technically there's 36 variations of the gene seed due to the Primaris because apparently sleeping with a toaster gives one the ability to out perform The Emperor of Man in the science department.
Regarding your comment on the efficiency of massive bioforms, I bring up four "counter-arguments":
1.) Threat division: these things come with armies and are themselves an army. So that begs the question: what do you focus on?
If you focus solely on the titan, the escort has outmaneuvered you.
If you focus on the escort, then the titan is fully ready to deal with you
If you divide your resources, you won't have enough to finish off both
2.) Resources: there's a common theme in facing these sorts of things and it goes along the lines of "We don't have enough _______ to deal with that thing". Think about it: unless it has a very specific/usually-plot-driven weakness then where exactly do you start shooting?. Besides, even if you did find it do you have enough resources to get there and alone exploit it? The costs start mounting up for any defense or retaliation and it's only a question of how well can you trade in calue which then relies on strategy.
3.) Redundancy: things grow and we build. The larger we get and build the more it's reinforced just to even stand let alone move. This means a redundant design which means it's tough which means not so easily crippled. Think about it: a carrier is carrying TONS of weight which means its structure HAS to be thick and reinforced to even carry it which coincidently leads it to be heavily armored and not so easily crippled which means more resources needed to take it down unless you have Point #2. Maintenance is a different issue since the Tyranids dissolve everything in the battle and resue them anyway
4.) Positioning: it effectively controls the position and the area of engagement it is at. That means less of the battlefield you have to work with just by its presence alone. You have to deal with it or GTFO because if it's not bombarding you it's bearing down on you. It may be in only one large place at a time but if it's where it needs to be or can get there then you've already lost.
Concluscion: Who said the Nids can only bring one Biotitan per battle? After all, there's never ever just one 'Nid
Good points!
The idea that all life eventually evolves into Tyranids is my second favorite theory. My favorite is the idea that not all The Old Ones died during the war in heaven. They fled the galaxy and created the Tyranids. They took what worked when creating the Orks, a self contained army that needs no supplies or logistics that brings there own eco-system with them. And just took the concept to it's logical conclusion. And they've turned them loose on the galaxy to purge everything so they can return and just start over with the galaxy as a blank slate.
I just realized that the Tyranids act like army ants. Constantly migrating their entire nest (hive fleet) and devouring anything they come across in massive swarms... Christ Almighty, army ants just became a hundred times more intimidating.
We should be glad they are so small
@@CombatVeteranReacts For now...
If you can digest uranium you would have more than enough calories
True. Early space probes were powered by plutonium. Which is scare to think about as make landed in the ocean
About motivation. Shield of Baal book includes several parts from the perspective of Tyranid Lictor and Tyranid Warrior. Both are near ecstatically happy to fulfill their role and Lictor even feel something akin to pride in his dsign, braggin to himself about being the ultimate predator crafted from the best DNA of a millions other predators, each contributing that one thing it was best at.
that book is a giant spit in the face of every piece of lore written before it
it is not a reliable source
dont trust space marine writers to do any other faction justice
I honestly refuse to even think that any tyranid bio-form could ever be described using the word 'sentient.' All the way up to the hivemind, tyranids cannot communicate with any other species, because they have no reason to. Them being an unknowable but implacable force of destruction is a big part of their unique flavor, and dumbing them down to being chaos worshippers (but following a hivemind instead of a chaos god) strips all of that away i think
Lore written from tyranid perspective?
I dont know about that, Granted lictors are smart and independent creatures capable of making their own desitions when not directed by the hivemind, but feeling something akin to pride?
And from Tyranid warrior perspective is eaven stranger shure they are synaptic creatures but how independent are they?
If they are just nodes that extend the control of the hive mind emotions and independent thoughts woud be none excistent.
Or maybe the hive mind is more like a delegating inteligence that gives general instructions to the synapse creatures and falls to them to find the best way to complete set objective.
That sounds like a more eficient use of brain power and with constant synaptic comunication cordination is not an isue.
That woud explain why some synapse creatures like the swarm lord are better at comanding the hive on a tactical level than a simple warrior or broodlord.
Or option 3 the hive mind is the colective inteligence of all the synapse creatures. That cud allso make sence. And explain why diferent hivefleets compet with echother.
@@drac4932 the word "sentient" does not mean what you think it means. By definition it's just the ability be aware of feelings and sensations. Any animal with anything approaching central nervous system is sentient. But not sapient, which is the ability to think abstractly. Modern AIs are examples sapient, but not sentient mind.
@@DoctorM42 thats true, i get the two mixed up probably more than i should
Tyranid titans are smaller than some of the sauropod dinosaurs and exist mostly as platforms for anti-titan weaponry. As for mobility and stability, nids reduce their weight using psychic power, which allows hierotitant to move at blinding speed despite their size.
Yeah, looks as though the Bio-Titans are comparable to the smallest Imperial Titans (averaging about 15 meters), just a little taller than a Warhound Scout Titan (14m). Nowhere near the scale of an Imperator Titan (55m, though this is very inconsistent and sometimes given as over 140m...). Not that 40k has ever given a shit about the Square-Cube Law, but at least the Bio-Titans being on the smaller end of the scale means any violations of it are less egregious.
29:30 Actually the vast majority of necrons lost their free thought during their conversion while the leaders of the species maintained their personality’s and individuality.
If a ripper swarm is cut from the hive mind they devour each other untill one of them have enough biomass to morph into a Tyranid Warrior who can act as relay for the hive mind.
Thing is, during this period, the attacked population of the planet could use it, to strike.
“Stolen from Starcraft”
Starcraft was originally meant to be a 40K game and GW screwed up the licensing, that’s why there’s so many similarities.
I think warcraft was supposed to be a warhammer fantasy game, but not starcraft iirc.
@@jacktobias6513 nope other way around
@@SykeowarriorPK No it was warcraft, not starcraft.
I think you are totally right about titans and biotitans, but still heres just a few thoughts. A hivefleet wouldnt invest so much energy into a biotitan unless there was an immediate need, i.e. a mechanical titan. You're right a biotitan is a massive investment, maybe even more so than a hive tyrant, so a hive fleet isn't just going to make some bio-titans for fun.
And also a bio-titan (and really most tyranid forms you see in battle) don't really live for very long. They are created for a battle, either die in battle or survive, and then either way end up back in the reclamation pools. The same individual tyranids arent going planet to planet, they get slurped up
Not gonna lie, I kinda like the idea of the Tyranids creating a sort of tyranid-humanoid entity with a giger-esq carapace armour that is reminiscent of a space marine if one gets consumed.
4:35 I love the jenga block analogy. you're really good at breaking down concepts and explaining them.
someone once told me that the Shadow in the Warp is most like White noise or radio static, it'd be like trying to talk to someone across the room while being surrounded by screaming children, the children can communicate with each other, but your message is just drowned out
To be fair I do believe that the nid hive mind does often put redundancy organs in its more important bio forms but it's not going to waste extra hearts on rippers and gaunts.
Good point. Just easier to make a fresh gaunt I guess
@@CombatVeteranReacts in fact tyranid carnifexs often have several redundancy organs located all around there bodies making them much harder to put down. Even large amounts of trauma to the head hardly slow them.
Paul might be a genestealers cult because in the early episodes he mentioned them alot and supported the idea of giving them more biomass with Orks
I can't endorse this theory at all.
@@CombatVeteranReacts I will endorse you if you every get a army dude I liked the idea of your more artist Blood Angels.
Tyranids can create a lifeform that acts like a message in a bottle that will fly towards a hive fleet. But they are psychically active and are immune to their own shadow in the warp.
The shadow in the warp is really just that vast psychic conscience of the hive mind.
It's similar to how the chaos gods have influence over spaces in the warp. Their presence is more physical to that point were to actually gain ground through collective thought alone is not enough like how you prepare the space of the material world for daemon summoning, you have to physically remove the specific signature away from the "warp space" and replace it with your own.
13:50 Naked Mole Rats do something similiar although it's a queen who stresses out her competitors so much that they remain infertile until the queen dies or leaves. Crab and Mole People... huh.
Well if the Tyranids REALLY wanted to be super efficient at consuming biomass, all they need is to make a few huge planet eaters and skip the whole invasion part. I know you really dont like super weapons but surely if they took all the resources from what they would use on a massive army on one huge planet nomming ship it would have to be unstoppable.
Planet eaters ? Imagine how much biomas it would require to create itnot to mention how to maintain it, one planet wouldn't be worth for cost of consuming that one planet, even invasions sometimes aren't worth it for Tyrannids when they need to Travel huge amounts of Space ( they cannot Travel thorugh warp or any other quick Travel ways ) and that's why Genestealer cults were created.
Producing large amounts of rippers, pyrovores, or maybe even haruspexen to eat undefended worlds is likely the cheapest option.
i mean the issue is that you need to build that form to begin with and then it has to actually be able to travel through space. Tyranids already travels very slowly (compared to other races). It also will have to defend itself and be able to consume. And who is to say there isnt a form like that in the bulk of the tyranid swarm whose job is to gobble up leftover planets and stars after the galaxy has been conquered. It might just be easier to consume whatever biomass that put ups a fight initially and then slowly eat the reminder.
Tyranids use for travel compressed space-time often used by Narvhal ships
"In some unknown manner it then makes use of the origin star system's own gravity and creates a compressed space-time transit corridor through which the Narvhal and other Tyranid bio-ships can traverse interstellar distances."
There is now a group of tyranids that specifically fight warp entities and hangs around the eye of terror and other hive fleets will come and give them bi mass if that particular hive fleet needs it
Generally forces fighting the Tyranids for the first time have most of their soldiers broken down by the spores. If they have fought the bugs before then they have hazmat gear to prevent the spores from killing them.
You are on the right track with the geneseed, but the additional organs are grown from the genetic stock of the primarch. These were in turn made using the Emperor's own genetic material (and some warp fuckery). But in essence the spacemarines have altered DNA, eg. the bloodangels come to their chapter as cancer ridden wrecks from Baal but are interned in a sarcophagus while the geneseed remakes them into the fair complexion chiselled beautiful angels of death. So to think the Tyranids might have some of that DNA in stock to augment their troops with is rather scary.
The Astronomicon had nothing to do with luring the Tyranids. It was the Pharos ( sp) that lured them here to the Milky Way Galaxy. As told in the Horus Heresy novel Pharos.
Oh! I didn't know that!
The Tyranids don’t Live in the space between galaxies they only enter it when they’ve stripped a galaxy bare and moved to the next one.
Crab theory is interesting, becuse krots behave kinda simmlar to Tyrannids and even look not so far from them.
Kroot seem closer to Orks to me.
They look very different what are you talking about
The shadow of the warp is a kind of warp energy on its own, just so loud and massed that it drowns evverything else out, so yes, the scouts bioforms relay per warp back
Interesting!
That Cadia stands shirt is hilarious.
The Shadow works essentially as a radio signal that disrupts other radio signals, cutting into the signal's ability to travel beyond it
There’s actually a lot of stuff in the intergalactic void. Particularly in these intergalactic filaments which make up like 50% of all the matter in the universe; add a little bit of space magic and I think it’s entirely reasonable for them to travel from one galaxy to the next
So on the experimental Tyranid thing, with a bunch of one offs, that’s basically the theory behind “Old One Eye”.
And the other Carnifexs with enhanced regeneration that started popping up across the galaxy.
As to why not all the tyranids get the improvements, pretty much the same reason they don’t use the Titan size ones all the time. It’s not as efficient as having the variety of options out there.
They don’t need to just make their foot troops, but recycle them as well. I’m sure that if there is a universally good and efficient upgrade that they would implement it, so the reason they don’t all get space marines upgrades with all the redundancies, is probably that handing them out everywhere make inefficiencies either in the creation or recycling processes.
Tyranids eat galaxies the milky way isn't there first target they were in the middle of looking for there next hunting ground when the light basically said " over here! "
The 40K universe have actual Space Jellyfish and Space Whales, so I wouldn't put it past them to have something capable of living in dark space between universes that the Nids can use for some quick refueling. Also, they don't just eat biomatters but minerals as well, so the chances they can resupply in dark space isn't zero as far as the 40K universe is concerned.
Base energy source: dark energy; background radiation?
I recommend you react to Templin Institute's own series called Stellaris Invicta, there's currently 2 seasons with the first following the Greater Terran Union which is formed from the remnants of humanity after an alien invasion and the second is the Antares Confederacy which came from an evacuation fleet fleeing from Earth. They're really fucking good.
Titans and bio titans are pretty much just big gun platforms. It’s the only real way to move weapons of that size, as having them on tanks wouldn’t give the long distance line of sight needed for laser weaponry of that scale, you need the height.
It doesn’t really matter if they’re vulnerable to attacks by smaller things running around at their feet because they are utilized tens of miles behind the combat zone.
Plus they most normally have void shields that are pretty fucking good
Of course there are empty spaces between galaxies. The bugs ate everything else.
Scary if true
Also what's "pretty funny" is ironically something the Inquisition is actually capable of.
The assertion that it is not happening between the stars, it is more a statement of how the astronomicon casting across real space and the warp announced there was a meal here to the Tyrranids.
Something that Tyranids will do is create and weave DNA on the fly and adaptively iterate onto the battlefield.
So if Tyranids are attacking an ice world, they will add more fatty tissue for insulation.
But the hive fleets each individually add and add adaptations to the greater hive-minds genetic knowledge. As the hive mind preserves both the original DNA as well as any modifications made.
The huge bioforms would also have problems with heat expulsions. If they get to big the heat produced by biolocigal processes will not be able to be transferred to the surroundings faster than it builds up. Basically they would probably cook themselves from the inside out.
One of the theories about the Shadow in the Warp is that it's just a byproduct of the sheer volume of Tyranid psychic communications, which drown out everything else.
Psychic radio static effectively.
Except for the evidence of emergent warp consciousness towards the end of the Devastation of Baal that was... broken, simultaneously with the fall of Cadia.
Yes, they feel pleasure to be devoured by the reclamation pools. I believe one book described it as an all-consuming feeling of warmth, happiness and accomplishment. The really messed up part, though, is the infected humans and Genestealers that are also driven to jump into the pools. They feel that same pleasure as they get in and then, when their muscles and nerves are broken down enough by the digestive bio-acids that they cannot escape, the compulsion is no longer needed and they get to spend the last few minutes of their lives fully aware that they had been unwillingly compelled and cognizant of just what they helped bring about.
It wasn't the astronomicon that first attracted the Tyranids to our galaxy, one of the Horus Heresy books features another psychic beacon that first drew them in. Basically the hive fleets consume the biomass in a galaxy and then hibernate for the thousands of years they travel through intergalactic space and live off this biomass.
There was a book from Forgeworld that covered the Tyranids. In this some basic Tyranid forms had been deliberately seeded onto a world to be studied and these were able to develop into the full range of bioforms including biotitans.
In the games gaunts of different types can be upgraded, representing slightly different evolution and breeding.
I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the video, but the Tyrannid's FTL "drive" is the solution to the "swarm" eating itself in the void between galaxies. It creates a gravity anchor at the destination point(how? -magic- we don't understand this yet) and the speed the hive fleet can maintain is higher the further they are away from their destination.
Which basically means that they will arrive in the nearest star system to their origin point just as fast as to a system on the other side of the galaxy... or outside of it.
In Destiny lore. Theres a concept known as “The final shape.” The basic gist is this. Through conflict, struggle and challenge. An individual’s (or species) flaws and imperfections are cut away. Until eventually only the traits most suited to survival and dominance remain.
I think you’re on to something with the theory that each hive fleet is a separate species. And I would add that each species separately reached the “final shape.”
Which would mean that the ideal form of life in 40k is planet eating omnicidal bug monsters.
I'm not sure what I find more interesting/horrific, the possibility that the gigantic hive fleets are likely just scout ships of the hive fleet, or that the tyranids are fleeing.
I really like your pet theory on Tyranids and Hive Fleets. Good food for thought. It certainly explains the differences between each of the Hive Fleets.
Best example of Space Herpes ever. You usually get it by probing old space rocks.
For the rudimentary hivemind question, the answer is most likely yes. In those cases, a Hive Tyrant or Swarmlord may appear to act as the defacto leaders (Though usually their entire directive is just to rejoin the hive fleet).
21:00 The Space-marines actually get modified with the so-called "geneseed" which is part of the DNA of their Primarch. So they actually share a common DNA or at least part of it and the part that they have in common stems from a Primarch which are according to the lore genetically pretty close to the genes of the Emperor. So I guess hypothetically if a Tyranid got its claws on different chapter's genes they could cross-reference that to some extent?
Rumors say that the Tyranids were the last race created by the Old Ones...
Space Marines still have their gene seeds which can be extracted by Space Marine Apothecaries so it's also easy for Tyranids to take that gene seed, extract the DNA within, and use it for making new bio forms. Also considering if it was a First Founding Chapter Space Marine that got killed, gene seed taken and absorbed, it would mean Tyranids practically have the DNA of the Primarch of that Chapter, which is very heretical thinking.
The gene seed in the process of making a space marine is made with some very funky genetics which is reinforced with warp energy which makes the marines almost immortal
So what I understand, Tyranid scouts are created from a Vangaurd Drone Ship. The Drone ship creates the scout, usually a Genestealer or a Lictor. When the lictor is done observing the world's ecosystems and defenses, it will return to the ship. The genestealer will stay on the world for centuries to weaken it's defenses for the invasion. The only time a Vanguard drone ship will return to the hivefleet is to either relay its findings to the hivemind so it could better prepare for the next harvest or resupply its cargo i.e, more biomass. But that's very rare because of how risky flying to and out of orbit is from a planet with antit-orbital defenses.
So on the topic of trying random sort of one-off mutations, you are completely right. The Tyranids actually do this. Not usually on literally one single gaunt, but maybe one batch of gaunts, or one random tyrant. They can have minor changes applied to them such as venom sacks to produce venom and coat their talons with it. Or extra adrenal glands to allow higher maximum run speed. So they do try different things in isolated batches, and then if said mutations prove effective, they may be reproduced on a larger scale.
Your idea that the Hive Fleets all come from different galaxies where Tyranid-like races rose to dominance is fascinating, but I think it's highly unlikely given that most of these fleets are arriving in the Milky Way galaxy within a relatively short time frame. The fact that most of them are arriving almost all at once rather than being spread out by millennia or longer and that each new fleet seems more perfectly adapted than the last makes it seem more likely that they really are all the same race and really did come from the same location.
20:39 they aren't looking for the human dna from the recruit. the Tyranids are after the GeneSeed which contains the proprietary genetic content written by the Master of Mankind. Essentially the toughened Tyranid has the holy gene seed of the astartes. Why not every gaunt? I like the field trial idea.
One thing to keep in mind is that most stories I've seen of galactic nomads speak of periods of feasting between travels.
I. e. the nids might have generation "ships" that store nourishment for energy similar to how ants or bees can store honey for the long journey to the next hunting ground.
The Pharos Beacon exploding during the Heresy is what called the Tyranids.
"They need energy to survive in space, you need calories.."
Me: "All the do is eat and evolve..."
The Nids' energy source to survive between galaxies is the last galaxy they ate.
The Tyranids are pretty much a HUGE single organism with multiple bodies that lives by consuming everything it can in order to be able to store enough biomass to make the next void jump towards the next meal, consuming itself along the way.
The Shadow in the Warp blocks other species from having free access to the Warp, the Tyranids will still be able to comunicate through it.
Ah interesting!
Tyranis spores mostly mutate plants and fungi, not animals. And in a very simple ways, stimulating growth to the point any vegetation quickly grows into thick jungles, depleting soil of all nutrients. This overgrown jungle is then used as a fuel to feed tryranid hordes.
Ah okay
@@CombatVeteranReacts there's a short story "Death of Malvolion" set in the early stage of Tyranis invasion, where locals literally see mutated jungles growing around them. It also doubles as creating cover for mostly short-ranged or close combat tyranid forces advansing on human forces that rely way more on the firepower.
The thing is, yes the Hive Mind is in control of its own evolution, but remember: Hive Fleet "reproduction", as far as we know, is done entirely through the consumption and reformation of biomass. We know of no mechanism for a Hive Fleet to duplicate genetic material; it only uses what it has assimilated. This means there's only so much of each genetic trait to go around. It makes sense to specialize when you're working with rare and special ingredients.
Tardigrade can spend a long time in a vacuum. Also worth considering that moving from one galaxy to another would only require one big burst of energy, not a continuous burst, and alternating direction a tiny amount.
"Why would you have something so big, easily targeted and easily crippled?" You, as a US Veteran have to question that particular issue, when the US has aircraft carrier's that can literally house a small city and just as big of a target.
I don't hear you questioning why an Aircraft Carrier exists because your argument for Titans can in turn by used against an Aircraft carrier. One torpedo from a very lucky submarine or a good hit with a cannon and that carrier is going down.
And the DNA Tyranids can gain from Space marines is the geneseed. As for why not giving to all units? Would you give an infantryman multiple lungs and hearts just because you could, even if it improves effectiveness? No, you wouldn't. It's a waste of resources when that infantryman can do the job just as well without them.
The tyranid don't have to 'upgrade' their creatures to the max when the cannon fodder can do the job.The dead Tyranid creatures get recycled anyways, so nothing is lost even if they die.
Thats not true at all aircraft carriers even older ones are extraordinarily difficult to sink let alone destroy. To the point when the us tried scrapping one it took an assload of effort and months to actually do it
Also aircraft carriers provide a unique strategic opportunity that no other device allows. Tyranids have only one goal: eat everything. This could be accomplished with either millions of gaunts or one bio titan.
Gotta love the Inquisition's appearance
I love your separate species with convergent evolution theory! Kinda like crabs, yea.