...There Is Only Awesomeness - General

January 16

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Specialist290 <specialist290@hughes.net> on 2017-01-27 12:31:04 wrote:

I do have to wonder how a showdown between the Tyranids and the Empire of the Star would go down – especially given the Tyranids’ whole schtick relies heavily on their uncanny adaptability to new threats and their near-perfect ability to harvest and reprocess every useful gram of biosphere on a planet to replenish and reinforce their hive fleets.

Jade Nekotenshi <nekotenshi0@gmail.com> on 2017-01-27 13:44:37 wrote:

I actually wouldn’t rate the Tyranids’ chances very highly: a big chunk of why they do so well is that they hit relatively undefended worlds and they jam up the main method of bringing in reinforcements, neither of which are terribly likely against the Empire. Also, it seems to me that the Empire is more adept at bioengineering than pretty much anyone in the 40k-verse with the possible exception of the Dark Eldar and their Haemonculi (who we’ve never really seen face off against the Tyranids, though tabletop-wise, Dark Eldar are a big threat to the bigger bugs). I would expect the Empire to be able to whip up several particularly nasty forms of either engineered virus, fungus, poison or nanoburn that would at least severely slow down the 'nids.

The couple of times in the fluff that we’ve seen Tyranids hit fully prepared, well-defended worlds, they’ve been fought off by either Tau engineering, a few thousand Astartes or a few hundred thousand Eldar. Their numbers might account for quite a bit less against an army numbering in the millions at least, all equipped with at least the equivalent of a Tau Crisis Suit armed with a pair of Eldar shuriken cannons. (And that’s just the light infantry - heavy infantry are more like Ghostkeels.)

Jade Nekotenshi <nekotenshi0@gmail.com> on 2017-01-29 13:44:52 wrote:

And I ought to have stipulated there, “assuming they make landfall”. In 40k, that’s a safe assumption - space defenses are porous, blind and ludicrously short-range. In the Eldraeverse, not so much. And I don’t doubt thar the Empire could handle the Tyranids in space: in 40k fluff they’re vulnerable to high energy lasers, mass drivers, fusion explosive devices, particle beams and similar.

Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-01-27 23:44:18 wrote:

That sort of scenario at its hottest extent - a Tyranid Hive Fleet turning up in the neighborhood, and suchlike - is pretty much what CASE ADHAÏC CALYPSE (previously mentioned here) is for.

I mean, there’s never a good time to unleash a swarm fleet of self-replicating autonomous war mechanicals with fast-burn capability and self-improving mesh-networked warminds, but that would almost certainly qualify as a less bad time.

(And while the short term is nasty all around, in the long run, I favor the ROU/von Neumann machine crossbreeds, 'cause while the Tyranids will chow down on all the biosphere of a planet, ADHAÏC CALYPSE can treat the entire planet as swarm raws, not to mention the rest of the system. The more so once it starts evolving.

(Let’s just hope it’s never necessary to stuff that genie back into its bottle…)

morgrimmoon <morgrimmoon@gmail.com> on 2017-01-28 01:01:50 wrote:

Tyrannids are nearly impossible to beat on the ground, and even very well equipped Forgeworlds have failed in the end. The way you fight off tyrannids is that you distract them with a ferocious ground defense, then hit their space fleet; since they lack warp capacity, they’re comparatively slow and unmanuverable. They’re TOUGH and not particularly weak to a lot of ‘conventional’ anti-spaceship weapons - you pretty much have to chop them into bits - but they’re not all that great at doing more than overwhelming you with numbers either.

I don’t think the Empire of the Star would be very happy at having to come up with an entirely new strategy that requires more knife-fighting than drunk-walking, but they could do it if pressed. I suspect they’d end up using similar hit and run and kiting tactics as the eldar do against 'nids while refining effective weapons.

(And possibly trying to figure out if the tyrannid hivemind is one that can be reasoned with. Hey, maybe they don’t actually realise that these little things scurrying about are independent sophants and think that any planet that isn’t talking back is non-sapient food.

…and now my brain is trying to figure out how a fusion of that base size would fit into Imperial culture. It’d be interesting, if nothing else.)

Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-01-29 12:05:13 wrote:

Ah, now there is where the First Rule of Weapon Selection comes into play:

Antimatter. Kills. Everything.

(Or at least everything made of baryonic matter, and even most things made out of exotic matter aren’t entirely made out of exotic matter, and exotic matter usually requires stabilization systems that are both baryonic and get unhappy when sufficient high-energy photons come to call.)

So if splattering them with the standard k-slugs doesn’t work, it’s time to fall back on The Old Standby Which Always Works.

((It’s not the standard weapons system because it’s a pita to handle, and leaves battlespaces messily contaminated in a way that’s an even bigger pita to clean up afterwards, which doesn’t recommend it when KEWs will do the job just fine. But it’s there if it’s needed.))