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Why in all of 40k has no faction ever thought to find and kill the tyranid hivemind? If they squish the big bad brainbug, the nids would be a complete nonissue.
Yet every time, they waste precious resources grinding their faces against the lesser creatures that the hivemind controls.
>>47669968
> find
There's the important part right there.
Do you know what the word hivemind means
the hivemind isn't the overmind from starcraft
it's all of the tyranids combined
>>47669968
I don't think the Hive Mind is a single thing.
It is the collective consciousness, intelligence, and will of the Tyranids.
To "kill" the Hive Mind you'd need to kill every last Tyranid. Or at least the leader bugs.
>>47669968
That's not what the Hivemind is. It isn't like there's some big brain in a jar controlling all of the Tyranids
this has to be b8
>>47669968
Where exactly in your body's nervous system does your consciousness exist? Which singular cell is the home of your being?
It's not a case of having one giant brain bug in a cave somewhere, but the emergent gestalt consciousness that arises from the psychic linking of thousands upon thousands of synapse creatures. Every hive tyrant and warrior is just one neuron firing. It's only when they link together does the hive mind form.
That's not what "hive mind" means you fucking idiot. These aren't the Buggers.
>>47669968
There is not big bad brain bug. The nids hivemond is a collective consciousness linked by the many millions of synaps creatures within the swarm. To kill the tyranid hivemind you'd have to kill every living tyranid larger than a gaunt
>>47670109
I'm pretty sure carnifexes can be spared as well.
What if we introduced the genestealer of one hive fleet in to the path of another?
>>47670165
>genestealer of one hive fleet
They don't belong to Hive Fleets.
As I understand it, Genestealers are consumed by the Hive Fleets they act as a beacon for.
>>47670165
They make a worse genestealer via promotions
>>47669968
First off most evidence we have points against the Tyranids having some singular individual concioussness controlling them. Second, even if there was some single being whose consciousness controlled all of the Tyranids, what makes you think any of the factions have the ability to strike at it? Tyranids are from outside the galaxy remember? The head bug could just be chilling somewhere in the space between galaxies far out of reach of anyone within the Milky Way.
>>47669968
Even if the Hive Mind is a unique being like the Overmind then it wont bet anywhere near our galaxy, it'd be sitting in whatever galaxy the Tyranids spawned from behind countless Tyranids.
>>47669968
>big bad brainbug
Frankly, I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive!
>>47670189
>>47670183
It was my understanding that each one was 'keyed' to draw a specific arm or fleet of the Tyranids. Is there not a lore preseident of two hive fleets coming in to contact and fighting for the resources of the planet?
Isn't fighting against Tyranids on the ground pretty much a lost cause? You can't win, there's no point in bothering to fight.
Playing against them is kind of fun but feels kind of odd since no matter how many bugs you kill, if you're fighting them on a planet you've already lost.
>>47670352
That's practically sex for them.
>>47670352
Hive Fleets fight each other all the time.
Genestealers just mark delicious biomass for the Hive Fleets. It wouldn't make sense for Genestealers to be keyed to specific fleets because they're so far away from the main force of Tyranids.
>>47670031
I'm on to you
>>47670477
Mmmmmm I dunno. I don't think nids utilize enough tubes for that to make sense.
>>47670046
Scale is a bit off, slightly larger than that, pal.
>>47670378
>Isn't fighting against Tyranids on the ground pretty much a lost cause?
Pretty much. Generally speaking, if a Hive Fleet is able to establish orbital superiority over a world, that world is dead. They can bombard it with wave after wave of warrior organisms until they win through sheer attrition, then hoover up all the spent biomass and carry on having barely lost a thing, plus the resources claimed from the world and its population. There are exceptions to this - sometimes a Hive Fleet will disengage if its rate of losses is so great it judges that it'll starve itself to death grinding against the enemy, and there will always be a need for suicidal rearguard actions to buy time for important personnel and technology to be evacuated off-world.
But for the most part, if you want to defeat the Tyranids, you have to do it in space. In every recorded incident of a Hive Fleet being destroyed, the decisive engagement was a naval battle. The terrestrial combats are just mopping up.
Personally like the idea of a hivemind creatures, each us trying to make their hive the largest and only one.
Fleets that meet will normally engage in combat, killing each other until one is the victor consuming the biomass and genetics of the other.
Only the strong survive, weakness is the trait of prey.
not to sidetrack the topic, but is there an explanation for why in the 40k universe aren't more prominent planet-destroying/ruining weapons or tactics? it seems like the technology should exist, and why let another faction control a planet and harvest their resources if you could eliminate it from the equation?
>>47670651
Because then there would be no planets.
>>47670524
>I don't understand metaphors
>>47670651
Because you only know the memery parts of the lore, and not the small parts that aren't only war.
No group has massed terraforming capability anymore. Destroying a world means that it is entirely gone, with any and all production possible gone for centuries at best, and no one wants to just get rid of the world's they have.
>>47670651
There's a finite number of planets.
Hell, even the Imperium being completely pic related doesn't like using Exterminatus too often. Even if like half of the Exterminatus methods leave the planet inhabitable afterwards.
>>47670651
Exterminatus isn't prominent enough for you? It's done often enough they have a name for it, but in most cases it isn't used if the planet can still be recovered. Meta-wise, if they only bombed things from orbit, you wouldn't have a very good wargame.
>>47670729
Like a retard, I forgot the pic.
>>47670726
>No group has massed terraforming capability anymore.
Mechanicus still has, they're mentioned in Priest of Mars and if Im not mistaken in the 6th ed Farsight supplement.
>>47670726
The Tau can terraform works quickly and efficiently according to their codex. It's how they expand their Empire.
>>47670765
True but it takes time and they have limited hardware to do it.
Destroying a world or its biosphere effectively removes those resources for centuries if it can be rebuilt at all. It is a last resort option when the choice of just getting up and leaving causes an even greater danger. Terraforming takes time and requires immense resource expenditure for something you may not have had to destroy in the first place.
>>47670820
Yes the tau have the tech but lack 2 major things for this discussion:
1) No planet kill capability beyond sustained orbital bombardment
2) The slowest FTL capability of all of the major races
They can terraform a world but it takes years for them to get to the next one.
>>47670196
Given that nids from different fleets attack each other, I suspect multiple hive minds.
But even if each hive fleet has its own head bug, that bug is going to be in the middle of the fleet. There is no way anyone will be reaching it without destroying most of the fleet first.
>>47670543
>The terrestrial combats are just mopping up.
True. But they are still important fights that can be won.
But, once the hive fleet has orbital superiority, all the ground forces can do is slow the nids down. Maybe to evacuate something of value, maybe to keep them there until exterminatus arrives.
The problem is the ultimate incarnation of the Tyranid hivemind is like 40 feet tall with four swords for arms and just respawns when its killed.
Whenever a hive fleet starts stressing about something not going to plan it summons this thing to murder everything in its path
>>47670352
Considering nidslaunch monsters just to eat the invasion army, I'd say that doesn't even mean the fleets were hostile to each other. As long as they get more biomass any conflict is a success.
>>47669968
Tyranids come from another galaxy across the void of space, where no ship can travel and the warp has no presence. So everyone's just kind of shit out of luck.
>>47671256
Well, defeating the Swarmlord shouldn't be that much of a problem, unless you're a Chaptermaster with an ultra-boner for dueling monstrosities like that one. As long as you have sufficient firepower, say, in form of enough artillery, a titan or air superiority, you can bring any tyrant down. The problem ist just, that it won't stay down for long.
>>47672427
Also that if the Swarmlord is there, you'd also have to deal with all the other nids there just to guard it.
>>47672216
Yeah I disagree with the warp isn't in between galaxies. That's just crap.
If anything the lack of thinking beings means the warp that is there would be calm as fuck. No daemons feeding of the latent emotions of humanoids == no daemons chilling in the warp area == easier to navigate, the hard part would be finding your way back as you would lose the astro.
The warp is another dimension; the old ones goofed by thinning the barrier between the two dimensions.
there is no single hivemind, that shit is distributed.
The best you could do is go after all the huge galactic-scale synapse ships in one have fleet and isolate it. I dunno how much of a profit this would be.
>>47670378
If you bring fire to a bug party you have a much better chance of winning, since you are taking away any chance the Nids have of resupplying themselves off their own dead
Or just throw Orks/Necrons at them and sweep the whole subject under the rug
>>47673164
Warp travel has you sliding along in the streams and currents.
Calm it down too much and you're trying to sail without wind.
>>47669968
The Hivemind is the collective consciousness of the entire Tyranid species, as well as its subspecies. You would have to find and kill literally every Tyranid on a microscopic level, and the Norn Queens as well, thin order to effectively kill off the Hivemind.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the norn queens yet.
>>47673458
>>47673288
It's right there. In front of you. By a good 15 minutes.
>>47673015
SIX CARNIFEXES! SIX! That's six time the ass whuppin for the avatar of Khaela Menshe Khaine
>>47670543
Idk if the dawn of war games are Canon but didn't they save a planter by injecting a virus or some shit into a hive tendril
>>47673566
This probably wouldn't work. IIRC there's a story in the Nid codex where they come to clash with Nurgle followers and daemons. At first the Tyranids die in droves, but within a day or so they build up immunities against everything the great unclean ones throw against them in terms of illness and rot.
>>47673273
>Trying to sail without wind
What are paddles?
What are boat engines?
>>47673566
Viruses are a temporary weapon against Tyranids, since they can rapidly adapt to any viral agents and either make it useless, or weaponize it themselves. I think the only viral agent that can still effect Tyranids is the Virus Bomb Exterminatus weapon, since the virus works horrifyingly fast
>>47673607
What would you use to paddle through dimensional soul guck?
>>47673607
>What are paddles?
>What are boat engines?
Stuff that probably doesn't work in the Warp
>>47673623
Dragon dildos? Or just ask the writers for GW, they'll come up with some bullshit answer.
>>47673624
>not understanding metaphors
Fucking hell, why is this so difficult?
>>47673607
Tech no-one has.
>>47673729
>"Magos, we have found an increadible piece of Archotech in the basement of a long forgotten Terran underhive. "
>"Well quickly, pull up the design on the holovid before I oil my robes in anticipation!
>Hologram comes up of a peculiar shaped phallus made of latex and rubber
>The Fabricator general himself calls a council on Mars to discuss what use such a contraption must have had in ancient Terran society. Perhaps it was an object of worship or perhaps as a competent to a greater STC.
>The Adept who found the artifact gets his own star system filled with all the Toasters a Techpreist could ask for.
>>47673729
It's not your metaphor thats the issue friend. Ships regularly get stuck when the warp is becalmed. No currents, no travel. It's like getting stuck with no breeze during the age of sail. Oars won't help you your ships too big. And if you packed enough ours to move you now have no room for anything else.
Not to mentioned you would basically need an engine that shat psychic energy.
>>47670458
If genestealers act as a beacon for tyranid fleets, has anyone ever thought to use captured genestealers as bait to lure tyranids into a trap?
What happens if you plant genestealers on a necron tombworld (sprinkled with ork fungal spores for good measure?)
>>47674009
Genestealers aren't stupid. They don't just land somewhere and go "come here please"
It has to have sizable biomass to be worth it otherwise they will just go dormant until some more shit shows up.
Also the hive mind (and broodmind for that matter) avoids tomb world's like the plague.
>>47674009
That's the cryptman gamble, the resulting tyranid after planting genestealers on orks planets of the oktarius system is escalating so rapidly whoever wins will have massed enough forces to steamroll the imperium shortly after.
>>47674100
>the resulting tyranid war*
>>47674046
No, right, but what I'm saying is
Why not scoop up a shit ton of ork spores and pack into some canisters. You need a lot of ork spores for this to work.
Then bombard a necron tomb world with the ork spores.
Then hurry up set some genestealers down.
The ork spores should ping the the 'sizable biomass' threshold and, if you dropped enough down, maybe that will mask the scent of the sleeping necrons.
All of this has to be timed perfectly, of course. If the orks mature too quickly and kill your genestealers, the plan fails. If the necrons wake up and kill your genestealers, the plan fails. But there should be some kind of Mary Sue in the 40K universe that could pull it off, right?
Why in all of 40k has no faction ever thought to find and destroy the Realm of Chaos? If they blow up the big bad daemon factory, Chaos would be a complete nonissue.
Yet every time, they waste precious resources grinding their faces against the lesser creatures that the Chaos Gods make.
>>47670378
>Macragge
Granted, not everyone can be the Greatest Space Marine Chapter (with perhaps a few PDF and Navy helpers or something).
>>47673244
Tyranids are quite willing to bring fire themselves.
>>47673566Funny thing is that actually was later referred to as "killing the Hive Mind".
>>47673600
The Fall of Shadowbrink:
>With one of their number fallen, the remaining lords of the Abominatum realised the nature of the battle had changed. The Hive Mind was leeching their energies, severing the Daemons from the sustaining powers of the Empyrean. No real blood flowed for Khorne, just worthless alien ichor. As each rancid disease was unleashed by the children of Nurgle, so the next brood of Tyranids had grown resistant to it. Without the fear or devotion of true mortals to sustain them, the Daemons were foundering fast.
>>47674118
Canisters of spores are not enough biomass, we're talking about planets' whole fauna, flora, biofilm and annexed inorganic matter.
Necrons are not avoided for their scent, it's the soulless of their nullfields and lack of warp presence that ticks them.
I don't even think anyone has managed to artificially plant greenskins in the fluff too.
For nids we have the kryptman gamble, not!Jurassic park test and that ork clan that seeds planets with snake-like tyranids for sport; on the other hand I don't remember cases where orks growth has been manipulated.
>>47674413
One thing I can think of is The Slow Death of Graegus, though that was poisoning an existing Ork population via tainted spores rather than creating a new one from scratch. But the latter should still be perfectly possible, in the right environment. Ork infestations spread so vigorously to begin with, and that's just when they're left alone; imagine if someone was actually trying to make it happen on purpose.
>>47673607
>"what are paddles"
>"what are boat engines"
Incredibly fucking slow when we're talking about inter-galactic distances.
>>47670477
GBA Metroid games were the best
>>47670690
Thank you for the (You). I'll treasure it like my first born.
>>47674009
Former Lord Inquisitor Kryptmann did. He started the Octarius war by doing it
>>47670651
An inquisitor actually did this, sterilized multiple worlds just to slow the hivemind down
the rest of the Inquisition put him on trial
>>47669968
You realise that is literally the Imperial stratergy when dealing with Nids?
Shoot the smartest to dumbest and they even have handy booklets they'll give to IG so they can thell them apart.
In space, desctuction of Hive Ships are prioritised as they contain mature and immature Norn Queens.
If you mean Zerg's Overmind or Borg's Alice Kirge, then no, the Nids do not have one.
The Hivemind is literally the psychic voice of every Tyranid in existence all chattering away at once like a multi-galactic 4chan.
>>47671165
One Hivemind but two fleets eating each other means they test their unique biomorphs and share them around.
Plus, instead of two small fleets you'll have one that's twice as big.
>>47673164
The warp is between galaxies but it's dead space, trying to go full warp just leaves you dead in the water with no navigation beacon and warp-skimming to navigate and ensure you actually move will get you to Andromeda in a nice and quick 75 years minimum.
>>47676613
>the tyranids are 4chan
oh god
>>47673607
When the warp is dead, ship speed is reduced to a crawl as Imperial ship 'paddles' are slow as fuck and only used to help maintain course.
You are forced to Warp Skim, making short 'hops' through the Warp without going deep enough to even require a Gellar Field. This at it's fastest is said to be three times as slow as optimal Warp travel but it means you can maintain momentum even if the Warp is dead around you.
GW has never really gone into details about this and it looks like they even retconed it out entirely because 'how dare there be SAFE FTL options'.
>>47674100
I do like how both Nids and Orks screamed 'stacks on' thus dragging even more Nids and Orks into the fray from everywhere nearby. It was about time 40k got any kind of hope spark, no matter how much they try to grim-derp it afterwards but talking about how these super-norks will kill everything afterwards.
Frankly, the Imperium should just send the next fleet spare to start nuking all the contested planets before either side gets their shit together.
>>47669968
The hive mind is not a single organism somewhere directing all tyranids.
Hive fleets will even fight each other occasionally.
The "hive mind" is just the result of all those creature being mentally linked by dominant synapse creatures.
It's like society. It consists of tons of small systems that keep everything going, you can't just go shoot the president and immediately all postal workers fall over and go retarded.
>>47676759
Tau: "Hey humans, we have created special warp drives that allow you to travel quickly through space without potentially going insane, dyeing or showing up 2 years late AND we are happy to share it with you!"
Imperium: Fuck you xeno scum, we like the feel of our own blood cells rupturing every time we we travel.
>>47676613
Have you read the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer? Since of the advice it gives is just hilarious. Like how Orks are not as strong as they look and gaunts will run away if you kill enough of them.
>>47676917
I have one on my shelf.
I love in-universe things like that.
>>47676917
>Orks are not as strong as they look
>gaunts will run away if you kill enough of them
Well...... both of these are technically true.
Orks are fungi based life forms. Fungi cell structure is weaker than animalia cell structure, so while Orks appear very muscular, there muscle density would be less. But in saying that they would certainly still be very strong in comparison to a human.
It's also technically true that if you kill enough gaunts they will eventually run away..... but only after a synapses creature calls a retreat which could be after multiple millions of gaunts have already died.
So I wouldn't say the Primer is lying.... it's just stretching the truth.
>>47673617
Not even that works. There's some fluff from BFG where an imperial ship gets desperate and uses its externinatus virus bombs agai against some hiveships. Not only does it not work, but the next day or something when they engage the hivefleet again they discover that the nids have added the exterminatus virus too their poisons.
>>47673288
Also, it's like having a portable chaos god following wherever you go.
I loved StarCraft and wouldn't mind if it had cerebrates: super brains created for specific tasks. But the hive mind of the nids is much better, and not too different from the other chaos powers: emergent properties of vast numbers of sentients that also rules over them.
>>47674118
And all you need for this plan not to work is that genestealers are sentient. Oops.
Tyranids are more organized than humans, not dumber. Warriors aren't very creative, but they're smart. Even gaunts have a scary cunning to them.
>>47676613
>like a multi-galactic 4chan
You know, until that line, the Tyranids have never truly scared me before.
>>47676699
Must take way longer than that, else the imperium would have done it a long time ago. High level folks regularly live for multiple centuries, so while going to andromeda wouldn't be easy, it would at least be feasible.
>a ragtag group of humans with an empire .000001% the size of the Imperium managed to kill their "nids" by finding the overmind
>spess muhreens can't
>>47678491
Where does it say this?
>>47678491
No they didn't, it was the Protoss who killed the original Overmind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OlS74Yj148
>>47678467
How you going to fit 75 years worth of supplies on a ship and enough crew to be worthwhile?
You'd need a fleet of carrier ships if you plan any long term colonies and that is even more time, money and resources just to put together and an even longer trip as everyone would need to stay close so you'd need to regularly stop just to regroup.
And who's to say that no-one hasn't done it already?
Also the most likely answer is GW never thought about it hard enough and if they did they'd artificially introduce 'void horrors' or something because anything else wouldn't be grim-derp enough.
>>47678491
>overmind
See, there's your problem, Zerg only had a singular one.
Tyranid Norn Queens are on every hive ship and sometimes relocate themselves into Biotitans.
And every time you kill one, it's the trigger that has the Nids breed more of them.
Redundancy is your friend.
>>47669968
Ohpee, you are so fucking right.
I mean, there is just one super brainbug sitting somewhere, that directs all the other nis.
Finding it can`t be so hard. And then when it`s shot, all the other evil niddies drop dead or run around confused.
Damn, i guess you just discovered a major plothole in 40k lore. You debunked the entire Tyranid concept with this. You are so...
*dies of an sarcastic Irony overdose*
>>47674100
Kryptman Gamble will greate Tyranorks.
Orks that have order instilled from the Hive Mind.
>>47669968
I figured you'd need some kind of weapon to send some kind of blast that would end up effecting all the tyranids at once
the question is what strong enough to do that
>>47684019
>Nothing changes
>>47676613
Swarm Chan was never good
