Read Codex: Tyranids 5th Edition.
I'll get right on that right after you send me the money to buy a splat book I'll never use. I prefer post-suck Imperial Guard myself.
For
postmodernCanadaCadia! :rawr:
Man the Imperium's propoganda is really funny, why would they paint themselves as sucking so much?
The Enemy of the UrFascist is both Strong and Weak to justify the perpetual totalitarian dictatorship/oligarchy the Imperium maintains. Easier to keep the proles in line if there's several bogeymen who threaten the Empire at all times.
While it is true that individual Codexes do indeed make the army they're for sound ultra cool and awesome and about to totally stomp down all opposing forces ever, this is usually via focusing on thier strongsuits and victories and so on, I'd like for you to provide evidence that the fluff at face value is in universe propoganda, as that's the claim you're making here. I mean, why is the tabletop fluff any more propoganda then the PC game fluff? Especially since it's mostly the same fluff.
....
I just moved house, so you'll have to forgive my lack of cited sources until I can dig up what box my novels and codexes got put into, but from what I can recall, when Tyranids invade a world, they drop down all the feeding organisms in thier fleet, which get down to eating everything edible on the planet, at the same time they Tyranoform the planet, it's basically a form of terraforming, initial stages involve inducing the maximum amount of plant/animal biomass on a planet, and then eating all of it, growing vast digestion/spawning pools where the fully gorged feeding forms dive straight into the acid pits to be dissolved and pumped up the feeding spires that grow up into orbit for the bioships to suckle on.
This is just counting a standard swarm in and feed operation, and not dealing with the whole other bucket of fish that you can get via genesteeler infiltration. In terms of specific numbers of a Tyranid force? Well it's hard to say, it'd depend on which fleet we were looking at here, what point in time and if it's a Hive or a Splinter fleet.
If the codex's are
not an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the varying factions why are they significantly more objective, and deserving of consideration to be taken at face value, than say the PC games which seem to go to greater lengths to reach a reasonable compromise? We see for instance a handful of Space Marines being badass and doing their fluffy thing but with some limitations, why is it unreasonable to conclude that the Tyranids may also have some unbeknownst weaknesses or limitations to hold them back?
I don't have any reason to disbelieve or say that what you say isn't in the codex's or anything like that, but I am fairly dubious that the Tyranids are so unstoppable given the cyclical AWESOMESSED FACTION EVAH of the codex's and given their treatment in the PC games where
while a clear and present danger and threat were still defeated by the Blood Ravens.
As I said, I feel the codex's alone are fairly dubious and have reasons to maintain a healthy skepticism, but the books I think would be fine to draw upon.
Technically speaking, it's irrelevant because all you need is for a sufficiently powerful weapon to detonate before it's intercepted over at least the front ranks and given that TSFs are able to detect laser tracking and at least attempt to avoid the shot that gives a pretty decent time frame for a multi-hundred m/s projectile and depending on their actual layout they could be trying to not shoot Forts giving you [at least] nearly 70m of altitude to work with before they can even start hitting it. Also consider that some sort of guided missile could be utilized as they don't actually have to fly at vulnerable high altitudes. Alternatively: Thermonuclear Bouncing Betties, a perhaps simpler method of doing the same thing. Remotely activated "landmines" which launch themselves to an appropriate air bursting altitude and detonate.
As elaborated by Koolaid the bouncing betties won't work, they'll get zapped. Additionally in episode 8 we see what size the hoards can be... They're
thousands of square kilometers the nukes you can direct fire just won't cut it, they're flanking nearly the entirety of the remainder of Russian held kamchatka.
This is of course being lenient and accepting that the Destroyers are a totally impenetrable against anything wall of destruction despite anything ~Mohs 15 being brittle as hell, exposed legs, and this:
http://i.imgur.com/sbSSr.png that I don't know the context of but seems to indicate being less than invulnerable. According to the fact sheet the only truly reliable information on their durability is "120mm cannons are useless". Hitting them in the "face" with a kiloton warhead is probably going to hurt regardless.
Maybe I missed it but Wikipedia didn't quite imply increased brittleness as the Moh scale went up, for instance graphite has a Moh value towards 1 and is very brittle, but diamond doesn't strike me as being particularly brittle. Can you explain/show where increased hardness correlates to increased brittleness?
Kiloton warhead to the face sure, that hurts probably, its just strategically pointless given the maps so far.
Also that one picture without context doesn't mean very much, that could be from that fancy railgun in development/being tested as of the current episode.
As an aside, it's worth noting that there are semi-successful orbital drop operations in the setting utilizing semi-laser resistant drop pods large enough to contain a giant robot. Now stop and think about what else they could have put in there aside from a giant robot and a walking corpse.
There's the risk that even this won't always work, additionally its insufficient to stop or dig out a hive, that's why the TSF's are needed, the TSF's need to get inside the hive to blow up the reactor which is a few hundred km down.
Goddamnit why are people giving spoilers? We're on episode 8 of a damn prequel and I haven't played the Visual novels and intend to play them, I think I'll avoid this thread if that's going to keep happening. Its really basic courtesy guys.
.
, I beat him once...), why? because it's balanced so it doesn't happen, that's why you can't use the games as guidelines, their just not accurate to the universe as written, hell, come to think of it a single spacemarine squad with a melta bomb or two, could, by it's self, wipe the floor with the Tau force I'd be using.
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