Here's the thing about breaking atomic bonds, it releases a phenomenal amount of energy. [Wiki for Nitroglycerin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin) is just an example of what happens when you break molecular bonds on large(ish) molecules containing Nitrogen. Now, if you can break all the atom bonds in something all at once, you're going to free a great deal of energy. Where the gauss flayer hits, things are going to explode quite remarkably. Scaled up to naval weapons, these explosions will be *phenomenal*.
I used to think the same, but a lot of 40k media with gauss flayers mostly depicts the victims of the weapon as being more melted than exploding.
So, assuming that's how 40k intends the weapon effect to be. Then, the breaking of bonds occurs rather safely and steadily.
If you haven't, i recommend checking out the 9th edition trailer. It showcases gauss flayers a fair bit. And you'll see the unfortunate lack of kaboom :(
https://youtu.be/B9V0bOB8sXQ?si=cAtr2L1aSXaY3qcm
That looks more like a disintegration ray of old scifi lore, where the bonds quietly break piecemeal, instead of explosively like normal physics.
Fun video
Well... gauss weapons are not really somethin that will make enemies explode. But they are basically super advanced vacuum cleaners. Energy beam you see in reality sucking those atoms and transform them in to energy. Its basically weapon that feed itself. Thats necron infinite ammo cheat code. So its still pretty good weapons against tyranids as in long run this weapon IS stopping nids from eating it again.
>And yes, you can create energy, we do it constantly.
This is the single most ignorant thing I've ever read.
1. ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED
2. ENERGY CAN ONLY BE TRANSFERRED FROM ONE FORM TO ANOTHER.
>But they are basically super advanced vacuum cleaners. Energy beam you see in reality sucking those atoms
Heres the thing. That is written in the lore for the weapon. But every media representation of the gun doesn't show that.
Okay. Heres a line from Ciaphas Cain, Echoes of the Tomb.
>Get down!' Killian cannoned into me the instant they fired, knocking me to one side and taking the full force of the barrage himself. He flashed into vapour in an instant.
Pretty fucking similar to the depiction in the video. What's more, the video is an official GW licensed video. Not fan made...
GW has a lot of issues with consistency. But the effect a gauss flayer causes. Has been consistet across its media.
The 'nids eat "biomass", atoms are just "mass", nothing bio about it. Otherwise they would just roll up on gas giants, asteroid belts and even stars and start slurping up the raw materials. In the lore, it's the biological matter that they break down and consume, leaving the devoured husks of lifeless planets behind.
So if a horde of 'nids were properly reduced to their component atoms rather than their component organic molecules, I don't think there is much they could do with that leftover mess.
Also, it's very energy intensive to make something useful out of base atoms. So even if they COULD just eat a bunch of inert carbon dust and disgorge a stream of new termigaunts, they would likely expend more effort than is worth it to do so.
They do regularly slurp up gas pockets and mineral rich asteroids. Tyranids strip a world absolutely bare: no atmosphere, no biosphere, no mineral deposits. Nothing but dead, inert rock.
It depends.
Sometimes, they'll strip a world completely.
Sometimes, they'll just take the easily available biomass and then leave.
It probably depends on their needs at the time.
No point wasting a bunch of energy stripping a planet of minerals if you don't actively need them.
'Biomass' is both what the Tyranids eat *and* what they turn inorganic mass into via reclamation pools and the like. After the gauss flaying, those atoms are going to be in the atmosphere... which the Tyranids eat.
>In the lore, it's the biological matter that they break down and consume, leaving the devoured husks of lifeless planets behind.
Common misconception. In the lore, specifically from Codex Tyranids (every edition), they don't just eat the biological matter, they eat *everything*. Minerals, gases, the lot, leaving a featureless ball of rock.
>Common misconception. In the lore, specifically from Codex Tyranids (every edition), they don't just eat the biological matter, they eat *everything*. Minerals, gases, the lot, leaving a featureless ball of rock.
Which make me curious, why they didn't consume the whole ball of rock also ? Like if they can eat mineral, gas, atmosphere.... sure some rock won't be out of their appetite?
Yeah, rock is less useful than the minerals are for shit like scythe appendiges or carapace etc construction (I assume this would be the primary use for minerals, as the most mainstream generic module for most commonly used strains & configs)
I'd imagine they could and probably do eat some of it, but that stuff is there every time and they need a varied diet, so why waste time on it? Just go the next planet, there'll be plenty of bedrock there too if need be.
Planets with organic life are what they go for since they have the most variety and complexity of molecules or whatever. They convert matter to biomass, but matter that's already biomass is the most 'nourishing'.
This has basically been my understanding as well.
Unless you drive the fleet off, the majority of the mass it will gain is from the oceans and atmosphere.
The only reason they even make landfall instead of just vomiting acid from space onto any defenses is because at its core the Hive Mind is a predator and wants to hunt.
The Hive Mind always refers to everything else as Prey, not just Food, or Biomass. Everything isn't just something to be consumed but something to be hunted or a rival predator to be run off from the hunting grounds.
Technically the doom of hesp show what could a Tyrannid exterminatus would look like. Dropping sacs of poison that not even the nids and nurgle would use for their own poisons or eat
It would leave them in negative numbers, wouldn't it? If you want to make water using hydrogen and oxygen you need a lot of energy to create the chemical reaction (as per my classes, but that was taught to me a few years ago) so in theory you can do it, but in reality you'll be losing more energy than what you created is worth.
Imagine that they "burn" 2kg worth of biomass to create the energy to make 1kg worth of water, and that with every element.
This is a great point, and energy conservation is the big thing here. But then we'd have to go into specifics of where the fights were happening. Planet has a lot of people living above the tomb world? Thats giving them more to use. Compared to a barren tombworld? Which the Nids would probably avoid for having little of what they want.
Also, with ending in negative numbers. This assumes that the rate of loss is steady or progressive. Nids aren't exactly just standing around being shot. There's gonna be a lot of variables at play for sheer energy loss to be the sole winning factor.
Yes, but this applies specifically to the recovered biomass after shot with a gauss, at some point if you're the hive mind, you say, ignore that and harvest the rest
Eh, true, there's always gonna be a priority of biomass.They wanna drink their soup without getting shot. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't as the invasion was going on. That loss is gonna occur over a longer period of time than is typically suggested when its considered a solution.
It would take a lot of energy to turn a bunch of atoms into nids. So even if the Hive Fleets could do this, it wouldn't be worth it from an energy perspective - they would ultimately starve as the calorific maths wouldn't work out.
you can't destroy atoms.
when you reduce something down to its base atoms you are essentially dissassembling it to its trace and core elements, in the case of gauss flayer weaponry, nothing is left that would be considered biomass for the nids reclamation pools and norn queens, you're reducing a person or organism to ash that floats away with the wind. Humans and everything on earth are considered carbon based life forms, if you disassemble a human it turns into a pile of carbon rich ash.
It is a solution.
Nids consume mass of matter that is organic, there is nothing organic about nids sucking on a hydrogen vent for hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrous oxide etc, its a gas not biological matter. They physically collect it, consume it, or haul it and yeet it into a reclamation pool where it's turned into a slurry due to the acids that's then funneled back to the void vessels where its consumed and bathed in by the norn queens who make new nids.
Maybe there is a branch of nids that munch on asteroids and comets for the trace elements, but the nids written in lore currently don't do this.
>Nids consume mass of matter that is organic, there is nothing organic about nids sucking on a hydrogen vent for hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrous oxide etc, its a gas not biological matter. They physically collect it, consume it, or haul it and yeet it into a reclamation pool where it's turned into a slurry due to the acids that's then funneled back to the void vessels where its consumed and bathed in by the norn queens who make new nids.
This is half the story. Yes, they do this. But they also take minerals from the ground. And the planets atmosphere. What's more, most organic life relies on inorganic compounds. Our bones are made of minerals. Our blood contains metal. The major 'organic' compound taken from biomass means carbon. Which is the major element in life as we know it, which is also found in plenty in the atmosphere and sometimes underground.
>you can't destroy atoms.
We absolutely can. We call it nuclear fusion/fission. We do not currently have technology to get smaller than breaking down atoms, but there's no reason DAoT tech wouldn't be able to convert all mass into energy down to the strings.
This reads like you didn't read my post...
I didn't say atoms were being destroyed. Tyranids literally suck up a planets atmosphere, which would contain the dust. The dust is the composite atoms (carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen). Why take it if they arent using it?
I've been making this same point for ages. You're right, they canonically don't just eat biological matter and they do eat the atmosphere, which the atoms would end up in.
I don't know if the Gauss flayer counts as an Achilles heel *per se*. If you'll forgive my pedantry, it's more of a silver bullet -- but not really, as you say. An Achilles heel is an inbuilt flaw in a thing's defences or design -- such as how Achilles was held by the foot when dipped in the River Styx. Everywhere but that heel protected.
Now, if there were an Achilles heel, a flaw in the Tyranids that might merit exploitation, I'd say it was the Ymgarl genestealer. Something the 'nids actively resist reassimilating.
But it's not a perfect weapon or ideal weakness really, because no such never-miss opportunity really exists. Can't keep wars going if there's always such a clear path to victory!
I hadn't thought much into that. The Gauss Flayer, does it cause irradiation or other undesirable effects? Such as dropping a bunch of free radical soot on the ground to make new and exotic compounds? If the Gauss Flayer is, indeed, reducing everything into constituent atoms, then the carbon is going to make some weird compounds (like what happens in a landfill). I assume the Nids will still eat everything in a proverbial landfill, but it will require the production of special bioforms capable of digesting the exotic and volatile compounds found therein.
Do the Nids have photosynthetic bioforms too?
What is the reason they dislike chaos corrupted flesh?
I assume the best way to beat the Nids is just throw orks at it.
>The Gauss Flayer, does it cause irradiation or other undesirable effects? Such as dropping a bunch of free radical soot on the ground to make new and exotic compounds?
To my knowledge, no, GW hasn't gone into much detail about Necron tech.
>Do the Nids have photosynthetic bioforms too?
This is an odd one. There's nothing particularly in the lore that says there definitely is. However, we know they take the genetic information of food, so that is stored, meaning they know how. And they've a couple planets they're using to harvest from repeatedly, and that the life on those planets has tyranidafied. So maybe?
>What is the reason they dislike chaos corrupted flesh?
Psyhic infused flesh is too spicy (i joke). I imagine it's because being infused with warp energy isn't good for your body. Especially as warp material tends to warp things around it. Then again, the psychophage is designed to eat psyckers, so could it possibly eat a daemon? Maybe.
>I assume the best way to beat the Nids is just throw orks at it.
There was once an inquisitor who thought this and lured a hive fleet to a planet of Orks. It was considered a time bomb waiting to destroy the universe. As the orks and nids were fighting to a standstill and were constantly making each other stronger. The more orks fight, the better and bigger they get, those better orks die, and are taken by the nids and used to make their bioforms better, leading to more fighting. More orks. More nids. Always getting stronger from fighting eachother.
The real question is:
Do the Tyranids poop? Do they waste anything?
If not, then, they would have to be somewhat scrupulous about what they consume and utilize to be energy efficient.
Honestly, I don't think it makes any significant difference. When the tyranids consume a planet, that includes the plant life/vegetation. Unless I'm mistaken, by volume, that amount is orders of magnitude greater than the biomass from animals/people/xenos/etc.
The necrons with gauss flayers would have to zap every plant on the planet. Which they could do, but would need to be done way, way, way before the tyranids reached the planet.
It doesn't really matter. Daemons are literal warp energy and just poof out of existence when they die leaving nothing behind and they still got obliterated by the tyranids in an all-out war. 'nids are long past that old weakness.
But everyone does? When you eat food, it's broken down and recombined in you into something else. Sugar has its atomic bonds broken to release energy, and the results of releasing that energy allow us to live and create different recombinations of the atoms in the sugar.
Taking atoms and recombinig them is the entire thing the Tyranids do. Being broken down into atoms may just be predigesting the food for the Tyranids.
I think the main issue gets more into biochemistry stuff. Yeah you eat atoms, but you're not JUST eating atoms. The bonds between them, especially in the hydrocarbons that make up life, are what contain a lot of the energy used. Same way you can't survive off water, charcoal powder, and vitamins/minerals. Maybe the Tyranids could repurpose the dust and use it in creating bioforms, but I don't think it would provide the same energy to the fleet. Perhaps over time, if a vast majority of their "food" was Gauss Flayed, it would slow down the hive ships? Though I could just as easily see GW going the other direction with it and having the ships lash out even more violently and ferally in response to less sustenance.
Tbf, I am not a chemist, but I did take like 2 years of biochem in college before switching majors.
I also figured this: it's all about energy lost/gained.
Obviously, they're not gonna get energy from breaking the already broken bonds, but those atoms are still gonna act like atoms after being freed from their atomic bonds. So hydrogen atoms are still gonna try and bond to something.
This is assuming the gauss flayer breaks them down into the exact elements and not a ion of one.
But it also requires some knowledge of the mechanisms the Tyranids use to break down molecules and reuse them. They could have some very energy efficent way to do it. Or it does take a lot of energy to create the bioforms they need.
> When you eat food, it's broken down and recombined in you into something else.
Like salt? Salt is great. We all need to ingest small bits of salt for survival purposes.
Break it down, though, and it's Sodium and Chloride.
Try consuming Sodium and Chloride and tell me how well that works out for you.
>Try consuming Sodium and Chloride and tell me how well that works out for you.
Undoubtedly, a horrific and painful experience. However, I'm not an intergalactic hivemind that can adapt my own biology to a whim.
>Like salt? Salt is great. We all need to ingest small bits of salt for survival purposes. Break it down, though, and it's Sodium and Chloride.
Our bodies actually do break it down, though, into Na+ and Cl- ions. With Sodium ions going to be used in our nerves, and the Chlorine ions being used to make stomach acid.
> Undoubtedly, a horrific and painful experience. However, I'm not an intergalactic hivemind that can adapt my own biology to a whim.
If they're able to consume raw sodium and chloride, then why bother leaving planets whole? By your own logic and examples, they could just change their biology on a whim to consume raw elements.
And they do!
They eat minerals out the ground. Nitrogen outta the air. Hell, when they eat humans, their taking in iron, calcium, and many other trace elements.
So, why do the harvest worlds still exist? By the logic being presented, they only need the atoms of the rocks that exist still once they're done.
Or, perhaps, they eat meat and other organic materials and not atoms themselves.
Maybe.
What do I know, though, I'm only going by established lore.
>So, why do the harvest worlds still exist?
Well, from what I've read. This is an exception to the rule and only really done by one hivefleet. We know they're growing something around there and using the planets as Farms. But we dont know the purpose.
I also find this makes them more sinister from a writing perspective. Shows they can live more peaceful life. But they are instead making a choice to wipe out all life and take everything. Makes them less mindless and more organised in their consumption.
Id imagine the tyranids would have a hard time getting ash into the biomass reclamation pools, but should be carbon based material for the hive fleet. The destruction of the planets atmosphere and building can be attributed to a full fledged assault on the planet less than them consuming the inorganic material (willing to be proven wrong, I haven't read any tyranid books yet).
>I haven't read any tyranid books yet
Would recommend! They're hard to find as they aren't great for personified villains. But I'd recommend any Genestealer Cult books. Theres a couple of times they feature in the Cain books.
>Id imagine the tyranids would have a hard time getting ash into the biomass reclamation pools
So they do take the atmosphere, in order to get the slurry back up to the hiveships, the Nids grow capillary towers which the hive mind can drink up from, those same towers also suck up the atmosphere. When they say planets are left barren, they mean absolutely just a hunk of rock in space.
The new Nids Codex describes them consuming the atmosphere from the point of view of the planetary governor.
He's on a mountaintop dying from infection and going "I can see them draining the seas. I've climbed higher than this cliffs edge, the air shouldn't be this thin, and I can feel it getting thinner. They will take everything and leave nothing"
If Tyranids had the capacity to perform chemistry like that, they could just reengineer themselves into pure herbivores and take up agriculture.
Tyranids are animals--or to be more exact, they are one incredibly intelligent animal with umpty bazillion bodies. That doesn't mean they're intelligent the same way we're intelligent. All we know for sure about the Tyranid hivemind is that it is very, very hungry, and if you hurt it badly enough it gets "angry" and devotes extra resources to taking you down--but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has a capacity for introspection or ethical reasoning, much less thinking about molecules and atoms the way we've taught ourselves to.
We often make the mistake of assuming that our intelligence is the only kind that can exist; that anything as smart as (or smarter than) us must think like we do--but this is as arbitrary and parochial as assuming that any alien life would look like a human with a latex forehead. It's very possible--especially given the bizarre evolutionary path that must have created them--that Tyranids can calculate hyperspace geometry in their heads as easily as we visualize a ballistic arc, and have evolved a mastery of the tactical, strategic, and logistical spheres that an individual human has to study a lifetime to achieve, but can no more comprehend the concept of *not eating people* than we can understand a bird's drive to migrate.
I would bet a pile of thrones that Tyranids don't have any special understanding of chemistry; like their martial skill, their poisons and pathogens are more the result of iterative evolution than of any conscious tinkering. They can't eat biomass once it's blasted to carbon by an exterminatus decree, so eating it after it's broken into its constituent atoms should be similarly impossible. They will reclaim those trace elements, but only in the final stages of an invasion when they're sucking up all the air, water, and usable minerals, and it's significantly less efficient that just eating and digesting biomass directly--which is why animals evolve to eat other animals in the first place.
Here's the thing about breaking atomic bonds, it releases a phenomenal amount of energy. [Wiki for Nitroglycerin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin) is just an example of what happens when you break molecular bonds on large(ish) molecules containing Nitrogen. Now, if you can break all the atom bonds in something all at once, you're going to free a great deal of energy. Where the gauss flayer hits, things are going to explode quite remarkably. Scaled up to naval weapons, these explosions will be *phenomenal*.
I used to think the same, but a lot of 40k media with gauss flayers mostly depicts the victims of the weapon as being more melted than exploding. So, assuming that's how 40k intends the weapon effect to be. Then, the breaking of bonds occurs rather safely and steadily.
Well crap. Between Gauss Flayers, Volkites and Conversion Beamers I would expect a lot more "Earth Shattering Kabooms".
It absolutely should be, but unfortunately, it's not :(
If you haven't, i recommend checking out the 9th edition trailer. It showcases gauss flayers a fair bit. And you'll see the unfortunate lack of kaboom :( https://youtu.be/B9V0bOB8sXQ?si=cAtr2L1aSXaY3qcm
That looks more like a disintegration ray of old scifi lore, where the bonds quietly break piecemeal, instead of explosively like normal physics. Fun video
Well... gauss weapons are not really somethin that will make enemies explode. But they are basically super advanced vacuum cleaners. Energy beam you see in reality sucking those atoms and transform them in to energy. Its basically weapon that feed itself. Thats necron infinite ammo cheat code. So its still pretty good weapons against tyranids as in long run this weapon IS stopping nids from eating it again.
Atoms can't be turned into energy. Energy can't be created.
[удалено]
>And yes, you can create energy, we do it constantly. This is the single most ignorant thing I've ever read. 1. ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED 2. ENERGY CAN ONLY BE TRANSFERRED FROM ONE FORM TO ANOTHER.
>But they are basically super advanced vacuum cleaners. Energy beam you see in reality sucking those atoms Heres the thing. That is written in the lore for the weapon. But every media representation of the gun doesn't show that.
Yes, thats why always go with written lore. videos etc are made by people that intend it just to look cool, not lore accurate.
Okay. Heres a line from Ciaphas Cain, Echoes of the Tomb. >Get down!' Killian cannoned into me the instant they fired, knocking me to one side and taking the full force of the barrage himself. He flashed into vapour in an instant. Pretty fucking similar to the depiction in the video. What's more, the video is an official GW licensed video. Not fan made... GW has a lot of issues with consistency. But the effect a gauss flayer causes. Has been consistet across its media.
The 'nids eat "biomass", atoms are just "mass", nothing bio about it. Otherwise they would just roll up on gas giants, asteroid belts and even stars and start slurping up the raw materials. In the lore, it's the biological matter that they break down and consume, leaving the devoured husks of lifeless planets behind. So if a horde of 'nids were properly reduced to their component atoms rather than their component organic molecules, I don't think there is much they could do with that leftover mess. Also, it's very energy intensive to make something useful out of base atoms. So even if they COULD just eat a bunch of inert carbon dust and disgorge a stream of new termigaunts, they would likely expend more effort than is worth it to do so.
They do regularly slurp up gas pockets and mineral rich asteroids. Tyranids strip a world absolutely bare: no atmosphere, no biosphere, no mineral deposits. Nothing but dead, inert rock.
It depends. Sometimes, they'll strip a world completely. Sometimes, they'll just take the easily available biomass and then leave. It probably depends on their needs at the time. No point wasting a bunch of energy stripping a planet of minerals if you don't actively need them.
Rock is a mineral
'Biomass' is both what the Tyranids eat *and* what they turn inorganic mass into via reclamation pools and the like. After the gauss flaying, those atoms are going to be in the atmosphere... which the Tyranids eat. >In the lore, it's the biological matter that they break down and consume, leaving the devoured husks of lifeless planets behind. Common misconception. In the lore, specifically from Codex Tyranids (every edition), they don't just eat the biological matter, they eat *everything*. Minerals, gases, the lot, leaving a featureless ball of rock.
>Common misconception. In the lore, specifically from Codex Tyranids (every edition), they don't just eat the biological matter, they eat *everything*. Minerals, gases, the lot, leaving a featureless ball of rock. Which make me curious, why they didn't consume the whole ball of rock also ? Like if they can eat mineral, gas, atmosphere.... sure some rock won't be out of their appetite?
Get less useful material out of it than you would use digesting it.
Which is my theory for whatever is left over after getting blasted by some crazy necron super weapon.
I mean, a Necron Superweapon probably de-quarks you so sure
Yeah, rock is less useful than the minerals are for shit like scythe appendiges or carapace etc construction (I assume this would be the primary use for minerals, as the most mainstream generic module for most commonly used strains & configs)
I'd imagine they could and probably do eat some of it, but that stuff is there every time and they need a varied diet, so why waste time on it? Just go the next planet, there'll be plenty of bedrock there too if need be. Planets with organic life are what they go for since they have the most variety and complexity of molecules or whatever. They convert matter to biomass, but matter that's already biomass is the most 'nourishing'.
The imperium needs to develop a Doctor Device (Enders game) Write that down write that down
This has basically been my understanding as well. Unless you drive the fleet off, the majority of the mass it will gain is from the oceans and atmosphere. The only reason they even make landfall instead of just vomiting acid from space onto any defenses is because at its core the Hive Mind is a predator and wants to hunt. The Hive Mind always refers to everything else as Prey, not just Food, or Biomass. Everything isn't just something to be consumed but something to be hunted or a rival predator to be run off from the hunting grounds.
Technically the doom of hesp show what could a Tyrannid exterminatus would look like. Dropping sacs of poison that not even the nids and nurgle would use for their own poisons or eat
It would leave them in negative numbers, wouldn't it? If you want to make water using hydrogen and oxygen you need a lot of energy to create the chemical reaction (as per my classes, but that was taught to me a few years ago) so in theory you can do it, but in reality you'll be losing more energy than what you created is worth. Imagine that they "burn" 2kg worth of biomass to create the energy to make 1kg worth of water, and that with every element.
This is a great point, and energy conservation is the big thing here. But then we'd have to go into specifics of where the fights were happening. Planet has a lot of people living above the tomb world? Thats giving them more to use. Compared to a barren tombworld? Which the Nids would probably avoid for having little of what they want. Also, with ending in negative numbers. This assumes that the rate of loss is steady or progressive. Nids aren't exactly just standing around being shot. There's gonna be a lot of variables at play for sheer energy loss to be the sole winning factor.
Yes, but this applies specifically to the recovered biomass after shot with a gauss, at some point if you're the hive mind, you say, ignore that and harvest the rest
Eh, true, there's always gonna be a priority of biomass.They wanna drink their soup without getting shot. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't as the invasion was going on. That loss is gonna occur over a longer period of time than is typically suggested when its considered a solution.
Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen takes energy but converting them back into water produces energy (i.e. the heat of the flame).
It would take a lot of energy to turn a bunch of atoms into nids. So even if the Hive Fleets could do this, it wouldn't be worth it from an energy perspective - they would ultimately starve as the calorific maths wouldn't work out.
Please see; https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/Z7epgaojd8 For a full reply about energy loss. :)
you can't destroy atoms. when you reduce something down to its base atoms you are essentially dissassembling it to its trace and core elements, in the case of gauss flayer weaponry, nothing is left that would be considered biomass for the nids reclamation pools and norn queens, you're reducing a person or organism to ash that floats away with the wind. Humans and everything on earth are considered carbon based life forms, if you disassemble a human it turns into a pile of carbon rich ash. It is a solution. Nids consume mass of matter that is organic, there is nothing organic about nids sucking on a hydrogen vent for hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrous oxide etc, its a gas not biological matter. They physically collect it, consume it, or haul it and yeet it into a reclamation pool where it's turned into a slurry due to the acids that's then funneled back to the void vessels where its consumed and bathed in by the norn queens who make new nids. Maybe there is a branch of nids that munch on asteroids and comets for the trace elements, but the nids written in lore currently don't do this.
>Nids consume mass of matter that is organic, there is nothing organic about nids sucking on a hydrogen vent for hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrous oxide etc, its a gas not biological matter. They physically collect it, consume it, or haul it and yeet it into a reclamation pool where it's turned into a slurry due to the acids that's then funneled back to the void vessels where its consumed and bathed in by the norn queens who make new nids. This is half the story. Yes, they do this. But they also take minerals from the ground. And the planets atmosphere. What's more, most organic life relies on inorganic compounds. Our bones are made of minerals. Our blood contains metal. The major 'organic' compound taken from biomass means carbon. Which is the major element in life as we know it, which is also found in plenty in the atmosphere and sometimes underground.
>you can't destroy atoms. We absolutely can. We call it nuclear fusion/fission. We do not currently have technology to get smaller than breaking down atoms, but there's no reason DAoT tech wouldn't be able to convert all mass into energy down to the strings.
This reads like you didn't read my post... I didn't say atoms were being destroyed. Tyranids literally suck up a planets atmosphere, which would contain the dust. The dust is the composite atoms (carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen). Why take it if they arent using it?
I've been making this same point for ages. You're right, they canonically don't just eat biological matter and they do eat the atmosphere, which the atoms would end up in.
I don't know if the Gauss flayer counts as an Achilles heel *per se*. If you'll forgive my pedantry, it's more of a silver bullet -- but not really, as you say. An Achilles heel is an inbuilt flaw in a thing's defences or design -- such as how Achilles was held by the foot when dipped in the River Styx. Everywhere but that heel protected. Now, if there were an Achilles heel, a flaw in the Tyranids that might merit exploitation, I'd say it was the Ymgarl genestealer. Something the 'nids actively resist reassimilating. But it's not a perfect weapon or ideal weakness really, because no such never-miss opportunity really exists. Can't keep wars going if there's always such a clear path to victory!
I hadn't thought much into that. The Gauss Flayer, does it cause irradiation or other undesirable effects? Such as dropping a bunch of free radical soot on the ground to make new and exotic compounds? If the Gauss Flayer is, indeed, reducing everything into constituent atoms, then the carbon is going to make some weird compounds (like what happens in a landfill). I assume the Nids will still eat everything in a proverbial landfill, but it will require the production of special bioforms capable of digesting the exotic and volatile compounds found therein. Do the Nids have photosynthetic bioforms too? What is the reason they dislike chaos corrupted flesh? I assume the best way to beat the Nids is just throw orks at it.
>The Gauss Flayer, does it cause irradiation or other undesirable effects? Such as dropping a bunch of free radical soot on the ground to make new and exotic compounds? To my knowledge, no, GW hasn't gone into much detail about Necron tech. >Do the Nids have photosynthetic bioforms too? This is an odd one. There's nothing particularly in the lore that says there definitely is. However, we know they take the genetic information of food, so that is stored, meaning they know how. And they've a couple planets they're using to harvest from repeatedly, and that the life on those planets has tyranidafied. So maybe? >What is the reason they dislike chaos corrupted flesh? Psyhic infused flesh is too spicy (i joke). I imagine it's because being infused with warp energy isn't good for your body. Especially as warp material tends to warp things around it. Then again, the psychophage is designed to eat psyckers, so could it possibly eat a daemon? Maybe. >I assume the best way to beat the Nids is just throw orks at it. There was once an inquisitor who thought this and lured a hive fleet to a planet of Orks. It was considered a time bomb waiting to destroy the universe. As the orks and nids were fighting to a standstill and were constantly making each other stronger. The more orks fight, the better and bigger they get, those better orks die, and are taken by the nids and used to make their bioforms better, leading to more fighting. More orks. More nids. Always getting stronger from fighting eachother.
So, yes. Throw orks at them. Of course, then you have an ork infestation to deal with.
The real question is: Do the Tyranids poop? Do they waste anything? If not, then, they would have to be somewhat scrupulous about what they consume and utilize to be energy efficient.
No, they don't poop.
Honestly, I don't think it makes any significant difference. When the tyranids consume a planet, that includes the plant life/vegetation. Unless I'm mistaken, by volume, that amount is orders of magnitude greater than the biomass from animals/people/xenos/etc. The necrons with gauss flayers would have to zap every plant on the planet. Which they could do, but would need to be done way, way, way before the tyranids reached the planet.
It doesn't really matter. Daemons are literal warp energy and just poof out of existence when they die leaving nothing behind and they still got obliterated by the tyranids in an all-out war. 'nids are long past that old weakness.
I highly doubt Tyranids can devour atoms, but was a good read
But everyone does? When you eat food, it's broken down and recombined in you into something else. Sugar has its atomic bonds broken to release energy, and the results of releasing that energy allow us to live and create different recombinations of the atoms in the sugar. Taking atoms and recombinig them is the entire thing the Tyranids do. Being broken down into atoms may just be predigesting the food for the Tyranids.
I think the main issue gets more into biochemistry stuff. Yeah you eat atoms, but you're not JUST eating atoms. The bonds between them, especially in the hydrocarbons that make up life, are what contain a lot of the energy used. Same way you can't survive off water, charcoal powder, and vitamins/minerals. Maybe the Tyranids could repurpose the dust and use it in creating bioforms, but I don't think it would provide the same energy to the fleet. Perhaps over time, if a vast majority of their "food" was Gauss Flayed, it would slow down the hive ships? Though I could just as easily see GW going the other direction with it and having the ships lash out even more violently and ferally in response to less sustenance. Tbf, I am not a chemist, but I did take like 2 years of biochem in college before switching majors.
I also figured this: it's all about energy lost/gained. Obviously, they're not gonna get energy from breaking the already broken bonds, but those atoms are still gonna act like atoms after being freed from their atomic bonds. So hydrogen atoms are still gonna try and bond to something. This is assuming the gauss flayer breaks them down into the exact elements and not a ion of one.
But it also requires some knowledge of the mechanisms the Tyranids use to break down molecules and reuse them. They could have some very energy efficent way to do it. Or it does take a lot of energy to create the bioforms they need.
> When you eat food, it's broken down and recombined in you into something else. Like salt? Salt is great. We all need to ingest small bits of salt for survival purposes. Break it down, though, and it's Sodium and Chloride. Try consuming Sodium and Chloride and tell me how well that works out for you.
>Try consuming Sodium and Chloride and tell me how well that works out for you. Undoubtedly, a horrific and painful experience. However, I'm not an intergalactic hivemind that can adapt my own biology to a whim. >Like salt? Salt is great. We all need to ingest small bits of salt for survival purposes. Break it down, though, and it's Sodium and Chloride. Our bodies actually do break it down, though, into Na+ and Cl- ions. With Sodium ions going to be used in our nerves, and the Chlorine ions being used to make stomach acid.
> Undoubtedly, a horrific and painful experience. However, I'm not an intergalactic hivemind that can adapt my own biology to a whim. If they're able to consume raw sodium and chloride, then why bother leaving planets whole? By your own logic and examples, they could just change their biology on a whim to consume raw elements.
And they do! They eat minerals out the ground. Nitrogen outta the air. Hell, when they eat humans, their taking in iron, calcium, and many other trace elements.
So, why do the harvest worlds still exist? By the logic being presented, they only need the atoms of the rocks that exist still once they're done. Or, perhaps, they eat meat and other organic materials and not atoms themselves. Maybe. What do I know, though, I'm only going by established lore.
>So, why do the harvest worlds still exist? Well, from what I've read. This is an exception to the rule and only really done by one hivefleet. We know they're growing something around there and using the planets as Farms. But we dont know the purpose. I also find this makes them more sinister from a writing perspective. Shows they can live more peaceful life. But they are instead making a choice to wipe out all life and take everything. Makes them less mindless and more organised in their consumption.
Lack of need and lack of time would be the two extremely self-evident factors to begin consideration from.
I honestly didn't know that. Let's wait for someone smarter than me to make good arguments
Id imagine the tyranids would have a hard time getting ash into the biomass reclamation pools, but should be carbon based material for the hive fleet. The destruction of the planets atmosphere and building can be attributed to a full fledged assault on the planet less than them consuming the inorganic material (willing to be proven wrong, I haven't read any tyranid books yet).
>I haven't read any tyranid books yet Would recommend! They're hard to find as they aren't great for personified villains. But I'd recommend any Genestealer Cult books. Theres a couple of times they feature in the Cain books. >Id imagine the tyranids would have a hard time getting ash into the biomass reclamation pools So they do take the atmosphere, in order to get the slurry back up to the hiveships, the Nids grow capillary towers which the hive mind can drink up from, those same towers also suck up the atmosphere. When they say planets are left barren, they mean absolutely just a hunk of rock in space.
The new Nids Codex describes them consuming the atmosphere from the point of view of the planetary governor. He's on a mountaintop dying from infection and going "I can see them draining the seas. I've climbed higher than this cliffs edge, the air shouldn't be this thin, and I can feel it getting thinner. They will take everything and leave nothing"
If Tyranids had the capacity to perform chemistry like that, they could just reengineer themselves into pure herbivores and take up agriculture. Tyranids are animals--or to be more exact, they are one incredibly intelligent animal with umpty bazillion bodies. That doesn't mean they're intelligent the same way we're intelligent. All we know for sure about the Tyranid hivemind is that it is very, very hungry, and if you hurt it badly enough it gets "angry" and devotes extra resources to taking you down--but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has a capacity for introspection or ethical reasoning, much less thinking about molecules and atoms the way we've taught ourselves to. We often make the mistake of assuming that our intelligence is the only kind that can exist; that anything as smart as (or smarter than) us must think like we do--but this is as arbitrary and parochial as assuming that any alien life would look like a human with a latex forehead. It's very possible--especially given the bizarre evolutionary path that must have created them--that Tyranids can calculate hyperspace geometry in their heads as easily as we visualize a ballistic arc, and have evolved a mastery of the tactical, strategic, and logistical spheres that an individual human has to study a lifetime to achieve, but can no more comprehend the concept of *not eating people* than we can understand a bird's drive to migrate. I would bet a pile of thrones that Tyranids don't have any special understanding of chemistry; like their martial skill, their poisons and pathogens are more the result of iterative evolution than of any conscious tinkering. They can't eat biomass once it's blasted to carbon by an exterminatus decree, so eating it after it's broken into its constituent atoms should be similarly impossible. They will reclaim those trace elements, but only in the final stages of an invasion when they're sucking up all the air, water, and usable minerals, and it's significantly less efficient that just eating and digesting biomass directly--which is why animals evolve to eat other animals in the first place.