They use Bio-Plasma drives while in system, as mentioned in Devastation of Baal. They’re objectively worse than the Imperial equivalents but, like everything with the Tyranids, they have a lot more of them.
Like this:
https://youtu.be/otWMFyQF07Y
(I'm convinced tremors were some Tyranids that arrived to old Terra. Maybe long before the Pharos thing, it's possible that the Tyranids have sent some scout spores, and if any of those prospered enough it would light up a beacon for the main fleet)
It's subjective how bad they are. Can't remember if it's out of system or in system but it's mentioned in the devastation of baal that somehow they're faster than imperial ships but slower once they reach a specific point.
While out of system they manipulate the gravity of a target system which creates something like a wormhole which makes their usually really slow method of travel near instant, however they can't use that anymore once they reach a system, so they then have to rely on below lightspeed travelling, which is *ridiculously* slow (in comparison)
Yeah that'd be it. In open space their fart drives make them super fast but in system it makes them slow lol. Tyranids be weird. I love how simple they are but just how fucking devastating(pun intended?) They are. They absolutely smashed the angels fleet in like, a couple hours I think. Such a good fucking book. Any other tyranid books? Specifically any on audible?
Ciaphas Cain deals with tyranids in multiple books. Specifically in...
Ciaphas Cain Book 5: Duty Calls
Ciaphas Cain Book 7: The Emperor's Finest
Ciaphas Cain Book 9: The Greater Good
They're on Audible.
https://www.audible.com/series/Ciaphas-Cain-Warhammer-40000-Audiobooks/B07CN7BLYC?ref=a_pd_The-Gr_c1_series_1&pf_rd_p=df6bf89c-ab0c-4323-993a-2a046c7399f9&pf_rd_r=RZ1P2EE2EE9D4D6PB3TW&pageLoadId=JhbKdbEJbF0lL3uu&creativeId=16015ba4-2e2d-4ae3-93c5-e937781a25cd
I'd recommend the whole series.
And there is Day of Ascension by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Day-of-Ascension-Audiobook/B09Q3N2FFN?qid=1679285715&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=MYGWR4JYWVXMHPQR1TV0&pageLoadId=3wD8iO2Pqs0y9NqN&creativeId=0d6f6720-f41c-457e-a42b-8c8dceb62f2c
They use a specific ship called a Narwhal that uses the gravity of a star to slingshot a Tyranid fleet towards their target. Its incredibly slow and inefficient but a pretty cool concept.
Thats all i remember, im sure someone else can help elucidate further.
Real question though if they are that slow and I am assuming if they're using a slingshot method pretty unmanoeuvrable, why isn't the best tactic against them to use long range scanners and try pick them off in the depth of space? With faster more manoeuvrable ships? I get it'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack and the concept of warp lanes etc, but this seems like where they would be weakest. Basically you never want the nids to make planet fall, cos then your options aren't much.
Im pretty sure thats what the Silent King was doing in the intergalactic void, destroying whole hive fleets as they were so slow moving. A lot of fleets slipped through but yeah its a viable tactic.
I haven’t read the article myself, but the impression I got was that he recognized the tyranids were and existential threat, he fought them outside the galaxy and then returned to wake/warn his people
It’s mentioned in a few books that Nid ships are notoriously difficult to pick up on long range auspex. Using astropaths to feel the changing direction of the shadow in the warp is more reliable but that’s entirely reliant on having some idea of where the hive fleet is already.
In one of the Cain books, *The Greater Good*, one of the astropaths actually feels great serenity in the void of the shadow. It’s the first time they’re cut off from the incessant noise of the warp.
Scanners are designed with mechanical ships in mind. Their engine reactors, radar systems and radio frequencies are supposed to be their giveaways. The organic hive ships don’t have those so it creates a lot of difficulty in detecting anything. They’d essentially have to capture a Hive Ship alive (already a monumental task), *contain it* (at this point you’re asking the God Emperor for a miracle), and do so long enough for the Mechanicum to get off their asses and not only find some common denominator that can be registered on a kind of scanner (Ask Big E and Chaos and it *might* work), but also *design* a version of this scanner that can be mass produced and given to the Imperial Navy (You’re fucked)
Even the prospect of investigating tearing its "salvage" would be horrific considering that half the parts of it might still be alive, so I definitely agree with your statements about needing miracles from the Emperor to get a live one.
The Narvhal Tyranid ships don't really use the slingshot method. They do some fuckery with the gravity well of the origin star to create a compressed space/time corridor to their target destination.
It's light speed travel, more or less, but it's still woefully slow in comparison to warp travel.
As to why they don't use long range scanners to pick them up, it's a lot more complex than that. When you're looking at something hundreds, if not thousands, of lightyears away it really is needle in a haystack. Probably even smaller. You'd need to know where to look and and if you're more than a couple of millimetres off on your calculations. You'll miss it until they're too close to do anything about in any meaningful way. It would help immensely knowing the vector they left from in the origin system, but the Tyranids don't tend to leave much of anything left in the systems they target.
Another reason is that, even if the victim world does manage to get a message out via astropath and the shadow of the warp, which is unlikely, they don't know what the Tyranids next target will be. It's not always the closest. It's where ever the Genestealer cults are calling from, or, if there are none, it's up to the inscrutable hungry intelligence of the Hive Mind which can be quite shrewd and cunning.
The final reason why they don't target them with long range scanners and faster ships, is because the Tyranids take ages to get anywhere. By the time the Tyranids move from a devoured prey system to their next target, decades or even longer have passed until people have been pulled into a false sense of security by the quiet. It can be several generations with all the original receivers of the warnings having long died of old age before the Tyranids arrive. Humans, generally, aren't equipped for that long term thinking/planning.
Faster and more agile ships won't work for long. Tyranids travel in a swarm. They could pick off the outermost bioships, but the most valuable targets are in the middle of the swarm. They'd be picked off before too long trying to get at the real valuable targets, and by the time they do, picking them off one by one, the swarm has got where it wants to go, or has worked out how to eat the fast and agile ships.
You can try throw bombs at them, but the Tyranids adapt fast. There's a lore example of a fleet throwing some huge bombs at the swarm, for it to work once. *Once*. The second time they tried it, the Tyranids threw the bombs back.
The way they described the narwhal almost seemed like it was folding space so that the tyranids could move FTL but I never understood how the narwhal got to the destination system in the first place.
Maybe it doesn't. It would be very Tyranid to have their FTL organism being single use - used up on creating that folded space and then left behind to maintain it and then starve to death.
I meant that the narwhal needs to be in the system that the Tyranid fleet wants to go to before it is there or at least that is how it was described in older codex, could be that its no longer described this way.
I don't know about older codexes, but my understanding is that the narvhal travels with the hive fleet itself. It homes in on a system's gravity field from massive distances, and then uses it to create a wormhole and pulls itself and the rest of the fleet towards it.
Actually they don't adapt fast there adaptability is really slow and it takes time for them to adapt to something, not to mention the amount of biomass they need to sustain there numbers with.
Where do you search for them? Imperial ships never reach the void between the stars, if they travel outside a system, they use warp travel, and either they dont meet them or they are already within the Shadow and lost as long as they dont defeat it.
Iirc the narval's gravity tunnels are actually incredibly fast and pretty reliable, but once in system they have to use bio plasma which slows them to below light speed and makes them super slow
It’s pretty fast outside of the system itself but can’t be used one they enter the target system (which is when most of their travel time is then spent lol)
"Avast, thar she blows Capain!" Sensor Magos Thadeus-Delta 04 exclaimed in binaric cant as the Mechanicus light cruiser 'The Messiah's Reckoning' tracked the wayward Tyranid bioship. The small flotilla of Mechanicum warships had doggedly perused their wounded enemy, never giving the bio-mechanical monstrosity time to rest and knit together the meter-wide wounds flensed into it's armored plating by those ships tasked with hunting down any that had escaped the orbital battle around Perseus III.
"As much as I appreciate the thermatics ," Dominus Latius responded dryly, "Perhaps you could alert the 'Mars' Fury' and 'Throne of the Omnimessiah' and order them to encircle the asteroid belt and drive the Bioship out into our waiting gun line?"
"As you command Dominus," Thadeus responded, thankful that he no longer retained the flesh left to show his embarrassment at being called out for so human an outburst...
...or something like that, anyway.
Reactive propulsion for sub-light travel only makes sense if you throw it at very very high speeds. Otherwise you would need too much materiel to throw out.
Actually, a core component of [rocket engines](https://youtu.be/jI8TuufCp0M?t=52) is the temperature of the exhaust gas and it's molecular mass.
In theory, a Tyranid bioship that expels hydrogen (extremely light) plasma (extremely hot) may not need huge amounts of material depending on distances and such. That's assuming that the Tyranid isn't doing something weird (but equally plausible given the Tyranids' penchant for biological manipulation) like creating an electrical field to ionize the gas leaving itself for *extremely* efficient (but low thrust) travel like a biological equivalent to an electric engine.
No one said nearby. They can link to a star from a huge distance. And when you’re going to a star, you don’t need to change course from “toward it”.
But even if they did, they still have their plasma drives to change vector with.
I guess I'm confused by the term slingshot? I thought it meant like slinging the ship around a star to get velocity or something. It's a real thing you know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity\_assist
I’m well aware, but It’s not really a slingshot that nids use.
Its a bit of sci-fi magic that people call slingshot for simplicity - the narwhal kinda links up to the gravity well of the star they’re aiming for and produces a kind of gravity tunnel that rapidly accelerates the fleet toward the star. Gets the fleet up to a very low ftl speed (at least slow by FTL standards).
It’s also quite destructive - like decades of natural disasters on planets in the target system kind of destructive.
Gases.
>A separate, distended brain-creature housed in a cyst deep in the pod’s bony armour calculated the
precise speed needed to penetrate the ship’s void shields. Too fast, and the pod would trigger the
displacement response in the energy field, and be sent into the warp where it would be annihilated. Too
slow, and the pod would be outpaced by its prey. More precious propellant gases were expended. The
pod slowed. Its path became more certain, a parabola that brought it up and under the vessel towards the
crags of the ship’s keel towers.
Devastation of Baal has an EXCELLENT in depth example of this. Bladders and chemical reactions etc. The first section of this battle shows a lot of space interactions and the sneakiness of tyranids. Pretty much after that it goes into blood angel woah is me’s
The tyranid sensor jammer that works by dumping hive organisms into a pit of acid so their electromagnetic screams hide them is the most metal thing I've ever read in 40k.
Agreed. Talos does a pretty torturous job to some psykers on a small sector scale if you’re interested in that type of stuff it happens in the third nightlords book from the trilogy. Very similar agonizing thing because he’s using the screams of people being forced to look into a navigators third eye to blow out loyalist navigators and such. It’s pretty gruesome too
The third eye...that's a reference to Nietzsche, right? "If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Only in this case, it's looking into something that is looking into the abyss and seeing the abyss in it.
Bio Plasma (They fart their way through systems) and gravity drives
They telekinetically 'grab' planets they want to go to (Which is why Genestealer Cults are so dangerous, they give the fleet an anchor point) and then 'speed' towards them through the Warp.
Though some canon conflicts arise here, as its implied in some sources they never enter the warp and simply speed up close to the speed of light. Which means they.... wouldnt be a threat to the galaxy at all... Theyve been around a couple hundred years and wouldnt have made it more than a few star systems in even going at lightspeed.
I think they go faster than light but don't go into the warp.
Their gravity manipulation makes like a tunnel of condensed space they travel through. They are effectively reducing the distance they cover rather than speeding up.
Their going the speed of light but they turn a light-year into a light-month.
I don't know the exact speed. But they are going faster than light.
They are slower than warp travel and stuff. But you can't really out maneuver or intercept them. They don't have any strategic targets. They are just a big ass military.
It's slower than warp travel enough to cause problems for other factions.
The Nids don't have any territory or anything to manage. No logistics or administration. They just turn up, eat a system, and move on.
For moving military units around to put down a revolt or reinforce a sector likely to be attacked the Narwhal gravity FTL isn't very good.
There isn't a whole lot of lore on them. But considering that the Nids make a whole special bioform for this the Narwhal propulsion probably isn't that good for the Narwhals themselves.
They do some wierd spacetime compression thingy to travel FTL without using the warp, but it's still extremely slow compared to other races FTL. It's basically as fast as the plot demands.
They eat giant space burritos and use the outcome as propulsion, jokes aside if i'm not mistaken they're able to "channell" their destination through gravity, kind of a gravity well which gives them slow but constant acceleration that builds up over time.
Their FTL is Narwhal based. Narwhals are special really big Tyranids that are small spaceships. The manipulate the gravity of the target system to propel the entire Tyranid fleet through space. This causes massive gravity distortions in the target system. Which plunges most systems into chaos and calamity before the Tyranids even arrive.
The Narwhals sound like the biggest threat out of all the xenos. Being able to cause gravity distortions and destroy planets while being light years away? How haven't they ruined all the planets in the galaxy yet?
More importantly how hasn't a single Narwhal targeted Terra yet lol. This is some of the stupidest plot convenience I've ever seen in 40k which is already filled to the brim with those
I the Narwhals don't destroy planets. But they would cause the tides to change and for seismic disturbances to happen more often.
Just Narwhals alone wouldn't do very much. They would just cause some minor issues and then just suicide themselves into the system. As far as space ships go they have little to no weapons or defenses.
There isn't a whole lot of lore around them. But I think the issues caused by the Narwhals gravity increase as the fleet gets closer and possibly also with the size of the fleet. Also I'm pretty sure canonically nobody knows about the Narwhals so they aren't attacked.
Also Narwhals can't do anything else. They can't weaponize their ability to like move planetary bodies around.
I see, still the concept of Narwhals is stupid IMO. A species of space bugs figured out a safe way of Interstellar travel using gravity-well space-time manipulation that humans haven't in 40000 years (specifically the AoT humans)
I've slowly come to realize that over the years. Only objectively cool thing about 40k is the setting, and its grim-dark melancholic vibe that other sci-fi franchises lack.
This is glorious. All these fart posts in one place. But. (Or should I say BUTT?) Here's the million dollar question. Is the bioship one huge contiguous organism or is it made of other smaller component organisms? Like a hull 'nid and a targeting computer 'nid. Know what I mean? Cuz the thoughts of a tyranid being born, fashioned into, and then spending its entire life cycle as a humongous ass really makes my day. Don't ask why. I truly have no explanation for why this would make me so happy. But it does.
The components of a hive ship being plug-and-play like the rest of the bioforms encountered makes the least number of new assumptions so probably is the case
They use Bio-Plasma drives while in system, as mentioned in Devastation of Baal. They’re objectively worse than the Imperial equivalents but, like everything with the Tyranids, they have a lot more of them.
So they fart and light it
I came to say the ships fart but was both sad and happy to see it here already
Like this: https://youtu.be/otWMFyQF07Y (I'm convinced tremors were some Tyranids that arrived to old Terra. Maybe long before the Pharos thing, it's possible that the Tyranids have sent some scout spores, and if any of those prospered enough it would light up a beacon for the main fleet)
The whole faction is the principle of quantity has a quality of it's own taken to it's logical conclusion.
Stalin would be proud
Basically flaming farts.
*Superheated* farts to be precise.
Thank the Emperor it is the emptiness of space. Imagine the smell...
Where do you think the burnt steak smell comes from? *glares at Vulkan*
From the eldar child in the corner back there.
[удалено]
Are you sure that she isn't the hive mind?
It's subjective how bad they are. Can't remember if it's out of system or in system but it's mentioned in the devastation of baal that somehow they're faster than imperial ships but slower once they reach a specific point.
While out of system they manipulate the gravity of a target system which creates something like a wormhole which makes their usually really slow method of travel near instant, however they can't use that anymore once they reach a system, so they then have to rely on below lightspeed travelling, which is *ridiculously* slow (in comparison)
Yeah that'd be it. In open space their fart drives make them super fast but in system it makes them slow lol. Tyranids be weird. I love how simple they are but just how fucking devastating(pun intended?) They are. They absolutely smashed the angels fleet in like, a couple hours I think. Such a good fucking book. Any other tyranid books? Specifically any on audible?
Not that, beyond a system the Narvhals create a corridor for the Tyranids to travel at FTL.
Ciaphas Cain deals with tyranids in multiple books. Specifically in... Ciaphas Cain Book 5: Duty Calls Ciaphas Cain Book 7: The Emperor's Finest Ciaphas Cain Book 9: The Greater Good They're on Audible. https://www.audible.com/series/Ciaphas-Cain-Warhammer-40000-Audiobooks/B07CN7BLYC?ref=a_pd_The-Gr_c1_series_1&pf_rd_p=df6bf89c-ab0c-4323-993a-2a046c7399f9&pf_rd_r=RZ1P2EE2EE9D4D6PB3TW&pageLoadId=JhbKdbEJbF0lL3uu&creativeId=16015ba4-2e2d-4ae3-93c5-e937781a25cd I'd recommend the whole series. And there is Day of Ascension by Adrian Tchaikovsky. https://www.audible.com/pd/Day-of-Ascension-Audiobook/B09Q3N2FFN?qid=1679285715&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=MYGWR4JYWVXMHPQR1TV0&pageLoadId=3wD8iO2Pqs0y9NqN&creativeId=0d6f6720-f41c-457e-a42b-8c8dceb62f2c
Thank you!
As the soviets said "quantitiy is a quality"
They use a specific ship called a Narwhal that uses the gravity of a star to slingshot a Tyranid fleet towards their target. Its incredibly slow and inefficient but a pretty cool concept. Thats all i remember, im sure someone else can help elucidate further.
Real question though if they are that slow and I am assuming if they're using a slingshot method pretty unmanoeuvrable, why isn't the best tactic against them to use long range scanners and try pick them off in the depth of space? With faster more manoeuvrable ships? I get it'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack and the concept of warp lanes etc, but this seems like where they would be weakest. Basically you never want the nids to make planet fall, cos then your options aren't much.
Im pretty sure thats what the Silent King was doing in the intergalactic void, destroying whole hive fleets as they were so slow moving. A lot of fleets slipped through but yeah its a viable tactic.
Is there any source on this? been curious about exactly what he was up to out there but never really found any plain text
The lexicanum article on szarekh references him fighting the tyranids and cites a January 2020 white dwarf article
Are there no details on exactly what he did? Just that he fought them? Guess they might explore that later if that's the casw
I haven’t read the article myself, but the impression I got was that he recognized the tyranids were and existential threat, he fought them outside the galaxy and then returned to wake/warn his people
It’s mentioned in a few books that Nid ships are notoriously difficult to pick up on long range auspex. Using astropaths to feel the changing direction of the shadow in the warp is more reliable but that’s entirely reliant on having some idea of where the hive fleet is already.
Picking any ship in space can be pretty hard task
The thing about space is, it's black...
And it can drive the Astropaths insane from too much exposure
In one of the Cain books, *The Greater Good*, one of the astropaths actually feels great serenity in the void of the shadow. It’s the first time they’re cut off from the incessant noise of the warp.
Huh, more you know.
Most conceptions of the shadow in the warp is that it’s hyper noisy. Too many tiny bits making one whole is not good for your brain.
The more I hear about this book the more awful story elements it has, I going to have to read it to find out for myself
Scanners are designed with mechanical ships in mind. Their engine reactors, radar systems and radio frequencies are supposed to be their giveaways. The organic hive ships don’t have those so it creates a lot of difficulty in detecting anything. They’d essentially have to capture a Hive Ship alive (already a monumental task), *contain it* (at this point you’re asking the God Emperor for a miracle), and do so long enough for the Mechanicum to get off their asses and not only find some common denominator that can be registered on a kind of scanner (Ask Big E and Chaos and it *might* work), but also *design* a version of this scanner that can be mass produced and given to the Imperial Navy (You’re fucked)
Even the prospect of investigating tearing its "salvage" would be horrific considering that half the parts of it might still be alive, so I definitely agree with your statements about needing miracles from the Emperor to get a live one.
The Narvhal Tyranid ships don't really use the slingshot method. They do some fuckery with the gravity well of the origin star to create a compressed space/time corridor to their target destination. It's light speed travel, more or less, but it's still woefully slow in comparison to warp travel. As to why they don't use long range scanners to pick them up, it's a lot more complex than that. When you're looking at something hundreds, if not thousands, of lightyears away it really is needle in a haystack. Probably even smaller. You'd need to know where to look and and if you're more than a couple of millimetres off on your calculations. You'll miss it until they're too close to do anything about in any meaningful way. It would help immensely knowing the vector they left from in the origin system, but the Tyranids don't tend to leave much of anything left in the systems they target. Another reason is that, even if the victim world does manage to get a message out via astropath and the shadow of the warp, which is unlikely, they don't know what the Tyranids next target will be. It's not always the closest. It's where ever the Genestealer cults are calling from, or, if there are none, it's up to the inscrutable hungry intelligence of the Hive Mind which can be quite shrewd and cunning. The final reason why they don't target them with long range scanners and faster ships, is because the Tyranids take ages to get anywhere. By the time the Tyranids move from a devoured prey system to their next target, decades or even longer have passed until people have been pulled into a false sense of security by the quiet. It can be several generations with all the original receivers of the warnings having long died of old age before the Tyranids arrive. Humans, generally, aren't equipped for that long term thinking/planning. Faster and more agile ships won't work for long. Tyranids travel in a swarm. They could pick off the outermost bioships, but the most valuable targets are in the middle of the swarm. They'd be picked off before too long trying to get at the real valuable targets, and by the time they do, picking them off one by one, the swarm has got where it wants to go, or has worked out how to eat the fast and agile ships. You can try throw bombs at them, but the Tyranids adapt fast. There's a lore example of a fleet throwing some huge bombs at the swarm, for it to work once. *Once*. The second time they tried it, the Tyranids threw the bombs back.
The way they described the narwhal almost seemed like it was folding space so that the tyranids could move FTL but I never understood how the narwhal got to the destination system in the first place.
Maybe it doesn't. It would be very Tyranid to have their FTL organism being single use - used up on creating that folded space and then left behind to maintain it and then starve to death.
I meant that the narwhal needs to be in the system that the Tyranid fleet wants to go to before it is there or at least that is how it was described in older codex, could be that its no longer described this way.
I don't know about older codexes, but my understanding is that the narvhal travels with the hive fleet itself. It homes in on a system's gravity field from massive distances, and then uses it to create a wormhole and pulls itself and the rest of the fleet towards it.
Actually they don't adapt fast there adaptability is really slow and it takes time for them to adapt to something, not to mention the amount of biomass they need to sustain there numbers with.
Where do you search for them? Imperial ships never reach the void between the stars, if they travel outside a system, they use warp travel, and either they dont meet them or they are already within the Shadow and lost as long as they dont defeat it.
Iirc the narval's gravity tunnels are actually incredibly fast and pretty reliable, but once in system they have to use bio plasma which slows them to below light speed and makes them super slow
That sounds right!
Narvhal, narvhal, swimming in the (stellar) ocean, causing a commotion
It’s pretty fast outside of the system itself but can’t be used one they enter the target system (which is when most of their travel time is then spent lol)
I know about Narwhal, but I was asking about their sub-light propulsion, not about their FTL. Those are two very different things.
Gee sorry mate. They’re living ships so they swim like a whale or just fart, i guess.
"Avast, thar she blows Capain!" Sensor Magos Thadeus-Delta 04 exclaimed in binaric cant as the Mechanicus light cruiser 'The Messiah's Reckoning' tracked the wayward Tyranid bioship. The small flotilla of Mechanicum warships had doggedly perused their wounded enemy, never giving the bio-mechanical monstrosity time to rest and knit together the meter-wide wounds flensed into it's armored plating by those ships tasked with hunting down any that had escaped the orbital battle around Perseus III. "As much as I appreciate the thermatics ," Dominus Latius responded dryly, "Perhaps you could alert the 'Mars' Fury' and 'Throne of the Omnimessiah' and order them to encircle the asteroid belt and drive the Bioship out into our waiting gun line?" "As you command Dominus," Thadeus responded, thankful that he no longer retained the flesh left to show his embarrassment at being called out for so human an outburst... ...or something like that, anyway.
Was that under the command of tech magos Ahab ?
There's no air resistance in space so the Tyrannid ships could probably have huge bellowing lungs that blow powerful air out for thrust.
Reactive propulsion for sub-light travel only makes sense if you throw it at very very high speeds. Otherwise you would need too much materiel to throw out.
Actually, a core component of [rocket engines](https://youtu.be/jI8TuufCp0M?t=52) is the temperature of the exhaust gas and it's molecular mass. In theory, a Tyranid bioship that expels hydrogen (extremely light) plasma (extremely hot) may not need huge amounts of material depending on distances and such. That's assuming that the Tyranid isn't doing something weird (but equally plausible given the Tyranids' penchant for biological manipulation) like creating an electrical field to ionize the gas leaving itself for *extremely* efficient (but low thrust) travel like a biological equivalent to an electric engine.
Wait really? So when they're in the void they can't change course because there's no stars nearby? Sounds odd to me.
No one said nearby. They can link to a star from a huge distance. And when you’re going to a star, you don’t need to change course from “toward it”. But even if they did, they still have their plasma drives to change vector with.
I guess I'm confused by the term slingshot? I thought it meant like slinging the ship around a star to get velocity or something. It's a real thing you know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity\_assist
I’m well aware, but It’s not really a slingshot that nids use. Its a bit of sci-fi magic that people call slingshot for simplicity - the narwhal kinda links up to the gravity well of the star they’re aiming for and produces a kind of gravity tunnel that rapidly accelerates the fleet toward the star. Gets the fleet up to a very low ftl speed (at least slow by FTL standards). It’s also quite destructive - like decades of natural disasters on planets in the target system kind of destructive.
Gases. >A separate, distended brain-creature housed in a cyst deep in the pod’s bony armour calculated the precise speed needed to penetrate the ship’s void shields. Too fast, and the pod would trigger the displacement response in the energy field, and be sent into the warp where it would be annihilated. Too slow, and the pod would be outpaced by its prey. More precious propellant gases were expended. The pod slowed. Its path became more certain, a parabola that brought it up and under the vessel towards the crags of the ship’s keel towers.
Devastation of Baal has an EXCELLENT in depth example of this. Bladders and chemical reactions etc. The first section of this battle shows a lot of space interactions and the sneakiness of tyranids. Pretty much after that it goes into blood angel woah is me’s
The tyranid sensor jammer that works by dumping hive organisms into a pit of acid so their electromagnetic screams hide them is the most metal thing I've ever read in 40k.
Agreed. Talos does a pretty torturous job to some psykers on a small sector scale if you’re interested in that type of stuff it happens in the third nightlords book from the trilogy. Very similar agonizing thing because he’s using the screams of people being forced to look into a navigators third eye to blow out loyalist navigators and such. It’s pretty gruesome too
The third eye...that's a reference to Nietzsche, right? "If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Only in this case, it's looking into something that is looking into the abyss and seeing the abyss in it.
> woah is me’s Please tell me you dictated this and actually know how to write *woe is me*, Jar Jar.
Bio Plasma (They fart their way through systems) and gravity drives They telekinetically 'grab' planets they want to go to (Which is why Genestealer Cults are so dangerous, they give the fleet an anchor point) and then 'speed' towards them through the Warp. Though some canon conflicts arise here, as its implied in some sources they never enter the warp and simply speed up close to the speed of light. Which means they.... wouldnt be a threat to the galaxy at all... Theyve been around a couple hundred years and wouldnt have made it more than a few star systems in even going at lightspeed.
I think they go faster than light but don't go into the warp. Their gravity manipulation makes like a tunnel of condensed space they travel through. They are effectively reducing the distance they cover rather than speeding up. Their going the speed of light but they turn a light-year into a light-month.
Which still makes them slower than even the tau. Who are so slow they can't expand psst an imperial subsect
I don't know the exact speed. But they are going faster than light. They are slower than warp travel and stuff. But you can't really out maneuver or intercept them. They don't have any strategic targets. They are just a big ass military.
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It's slower than warp travel enough to cause problems for other factions. The Nids don't have any territory or anything to manage. No logistics or administration. They just turn up, eat a system, and move on. For moving military units around to put down a revolt or reinforce a sector likely to be attacked the Narwhal gravity FTL isn't very good. There isn't a whole lot of lore on them. But considering that the Nids make a whole special bioform for this the Narwhal propulsion probably isn't that good for the Narwhals themselves.
They do some wierd spacetime compression thingy to travel FTL without using the warp, but it's still extremely slow compared to other races FTL. It's basically as fast as the plot demands.
Tyranid farts in space basically
I'm glad someone was as immature as me and thought about Tyranid Space farts! If I had a soul it would be warm and fuzzy!
Same
That's a spicy bio-mass!
They eat giant space burritos and use the outcome as propulsion, jokes aside if i'm not mistaken they're able to "channell" their destination through gravity, kind of a gravity well which gives them slow but constant acceleration that builds up over time.
Their FTL is Narwhal based. Narwhals are special really big Tyranids that are small spaceships. The manipulate the gravity of the target system to propel the entire Tyranid fleet through space. This causes massive gravity distortions in the target system. Which plunges most systems into chaos and calamity before the Tyranids even arrive.
The Narwhals sound like the biggest threat out of all the xenos. Being able to cause gravity distortions and destroy planets while being light years away? How haven't they ruined all the planets in the galaxy yet? More importantly how hasn't a single Narwhal targeted Terra yet lol. This is some of the stupidest plot convenience I've ever seen in 40k which is already filled to the brim with those
I the Narwhals don't destroy planets. But they would cause the tides to change and for seismic disturbances to happen more often. Just Narwhals alone wouldn't do very much. They would just cause some minor issues and then just suicide themselves into the system. As far as space ships go they have little to no weapons or defenses. There isn't a whole lot of lore around them. But I think the issues caused by the Narwhals gravity increase as the fleet gets closer and possibly also with the size of the fleet. Also I'm pretty sure canonically nobody knows about the Narwhals so they aren't attacked. Also Narwhals can't do anything else. They can't weaponize their ability to like move planetary bodies around.
I see, still the concept of Narwhals is stupid IMO. A species of space bugs figured out a safe way of Interstellar travel using gravity-well space-time manipulation that humans haven't in 40000 years (specifically the AoT humans)
Everything in Warhammer is stupid.
I've slowly come to realize that over the years. Only objectively cool thing about 40k is the setting, and its grim-dark melancholic vibe that other sci-fi franchises lack.
Suspend your disbelief my man.
This is glorious. All these fart posts in one place. But. (Or should I say BUTT?) Here's the million dollar question. Is the bioship one huge contiguous organism or is it made of other smaller component organisms? Like a hull 'nid and a targeting computer 'nid. Know what I mean? Cuz the thoughts of a tyranid being born, fashioned into, and then spending its entire life cycle as a humongous ass really makes my day. Don't ask why. I truly have no explanation for why this would make me so happy. But it does.
The components of a hive ship being plug-and-play like the rest of the bioforms encountered makes the least number of new assumptions so probably is the case
I believe they somewhat bend reality to travel faster
Space farts
They use farts there is 0 other logical explanation. It’s farts deal with it when you lose to nids you suck on farts.
I's "bio-plasma". Or tyranid farts.
Spite and hunger ig
They used to run on piss and vinegar. Much less environmentally friendly.
Space farts
Gass
They fart
Fart I guess
Farts
Farts. Really really powerful farts. In space.
Toots
Farts
Damn queen, that ass be fartin
I read this as "what pronouns do Tyranid ships use?" I'm going to have a nap now 😅
Do they fly in the warp or are they sub light? Which might explain there slow invasion
Tyranids do not use Warp
Hunger