If the Tyranids are so hungry all the time why don't they built farmworlds where they can turn energy and anorganic matter into organic matter without having to wipe out other races?
...
>>47099794
Because that would make them very poor antagonists for a space opera war game.
>>47099794
>If the Tyranids are so hungry all the time why don't they...
>build a dyson sphere around the galaxy
>supernova all the suns in the galaxy
>collect all the energy
>ascent to a higher energy state
>never go hungry again.
>it's all a fucking simulation anyway
>
>>47100275
Why bother doing anything when the universe will reach its heat death in 10^10^10^56 years anyway.
>>47099794
The Tyranids don't just eat all the organic matter that's already there. After they've defeated a planet's defenses, they release plantlike bioforms onto the surface which convert all available minerals into digestible biomass. The process ends with them moving all usable matter on the planet into giant digestive pools, which the spacefaring bioforms drink with giant straws; then the fleet harvests all the energy of the sun before moving on to the next star system.
>>47100275
....I have seen many terrible webcomics in my time.
This is another one.
>>47099794
Because they're not hungry. They want biomass in order to increase their numbers. At a certain point, you have to go somewhere else to get more biomass
>>47099794
converting matter to bio-matter isn't as tasty as a plump guardsman
>>47100435
/Thread. Farming would just be recycling the same biomass over and over.
>>47100455
Microorganisms on earth create huge amounts of organic matter out of anorganic ones. These microorganisms then are eaten and all the biomass wanders up the food chain.
So it's no recycling the same stuff over and over exactly.
>>47100504
Except at a point, you will be. Even if Tyranids spend the time to eat every speck of dust I'm a system, they'll still run out of additional biomass sources and go in search of more.
>>47100455
That's the thing though, if they have the ability to genetically engineer stuff, then they can probably digest almost anything eventually, not to mention it should be easy for them to collect energy from stars like a plant, though probably much better, making living dyson spheres. I imagine they would prefer to be in a constant civil war, proving to the hive mind which brood was most fitting, of course they wouldn't want competition but I imagine they would prefer to expand into emptier spaces
>>47100504
He was talking at the planetary scale. Even if you convert every inorganic molecule of matter on a planet to biomass, at some point in the future you run out of planet, even if you eat it down to the molten core.
Then you have to move on.
Planets are just specks of matter in the universe, after all, so farming would simply delay the tyranid migrations, not stop them.
>>47100435
>>47100624
Good points.
Another comment: The Tyranids aren't just looking to eat, but also to find and overcome new life-forms to integrate their genetic material into new bio-form designs.
>>47102698
NEW BIO-FORM DESIGNS!
>>47099794
They do, it's called our galaxy.
There's been tyranid invasions before. There'll be tyranid invasions long after this.
The nids show up, eat most of the biomass of the galaxy, then bugger off until it grows back.
Because 40k is a stupid stupid setting which grasps at any and all straws present in order to give their prepubescent fanbase an excuse to murder everything as a spesh mareeeen
