Why is the Flood considered overwhelming in numbers ?

[Sarevok]

This is a Repost from a response I made at Spacebattles.

Where do the Flood get so called superior numbers from ? They don't breed. They don't have factories making guns and ammo. And they certainly don't have any orbiting shipyards producing starships. Their numbers come from what corpses they can reanimate and weapons are whatever they can salvage from wrecks.

So how the heck is the Flood suppose to outnumber anyone ? The Flood cant trade 100 combat forms for one enemy soldier because they don't have that many.

It is the Flood who would be outnumbered

Anyone, even present Earth would be able to drown the Flood in infantry. Say for everyone of us they kill and convert they lose ten of themselves. The exchange ratio is firmly in our favor. The flood lost ten dudes to gain one new convert. Now they no longer have the ten dudes left to repeat the same feat. The lone surviving flood combat form is hunted down and killed.
[/quote]

So how come the Flood are such a universe destroying threat to people with near star trek level of technology ?

[Vehrec]

The flood might not breed, but they can turn almost any biological matter into flood. Dogs, cats, plants, once they get rolling, anything organic and alive or freshly dead is a viable bio-stock to make more flood forms. If it takes ten of them to kill a single soldier, that's fine. They can use unarmed civilians and livestock to get the ball rolling and outnumber the world's militaries a hundred to one.

Furthermore, while they are unlikely to avail themselves of factories during an active phase of an area's takeover, the Flood are not above using all of their foe's technology. Why wouldn't they have factories making guns and ammo and orbiting shipyards-if they can capture anything at all, they'll put it to use. And that use will be exactly what you say does not happen.

[The Grim Squeaker]

The flood might not breed, but they can turn almost any biological matter into flood. Dogs, cats, plants, once they get rolling, anything organic and alive or freshly dead is a viable bio-stock to make more flood forms. If it takes ten of them to kill a single soldier, that's fine. They can use unarmed civilians and livestock to get the ball rolling and outnumber the world's militaries a hundred to one.

Furthermore, while they are unlikely to avail themselves of factories during an active phase of an area's takeover, the Flood are not above using all of their foe's technology. Why wouldn't they have factories making guns and ammo and orbiting shipyards-if they can capture anything at all, they'll put it to use. And that use will be exactly what you say does not happen.

Precisely. The use of biomass (limited to things with a undefined "large" central nervous system) means they can field stupendous amounts of combat forms, and the use of civilians allows them to outnumber their enemies many times over (the ratio of support personnel to combat personnel is 6-12 to 1 even in "current" militaries, and that's ignoring civilians). If you don't need training, and your grunts don't need armour to wde through heavy fire, then "huyman" waves are an excellent tactic.

[Sea Skimmer]

Korean War firepower already proved a defending force can hold even against as much as 25:1 odds if properly supported and assaulted only by light infantry and mortars (already far more then the flood has). Human waves work okay when you have highly broken or densely forested terrain to deploy them on, terrain which precludes the enemy from maneuvering a mechanized force against them or easily deploying a defense in depth. In more open terrain, or a city where cover (buildings) can all be demolished it is a very different story. A remotely modern mechanized force should be able to slaughter human waves until it runs out of ammo… and if you used nerve gas I don’t think that’s going to happen. If the Flood showed up I don't its going to take more then a week for someone to start manufacturing Sarin nerve gas landmines; rockets and artillery shells would take longer.

The biggest threat I see, barring the Flood being able to obtain and transport many planets worth of minions against a single developed world, would just be the mass ecological damage of loosing so many animals and dumping chemical weapons everywhere.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Korean War firepower already proved a defending force can hold even against as much as 25:1 odds if properly supported and assaulted only by light infantry and mortars (already far more then the flood has). Human waves work okay when you have highly broken or densely forested terrain to deploy them on, terrain which precludes the enemy from maneuvering a mechanized force against them or easily deploying a defense in depth. In more open terrain, or a city where cover (buildings) can all be demolished it is a very different story. A remotely modern mechanized force should be able to slaughter human waves until it runs out of ammo… and if you used nerve gas I don’t think that’s going to happen. If the Flood showed up I don't its going to take more then a week for someone to start manufacturing Sarin nerve gas landmines; rockets and artillery shells would take longer.

Except that the Flood uses weapons, vehicles, cover, technology, etc'. They overwrote and subverted fantastically advanced technology rapidly, as well as using starships and improving the available technology (slip stream).
The effectiveness of nerve gas is another question, we have no idea how the floods' biochemistry works, other than that it's based on some sort of DNA or Protein mutation (Source: Halo Cryptum).


EDIT: In short, it's not so much human waves as in waves of Soviet tanks. We're not talking Thermipole or the Zulu wars here, more like Kursk

[Sea Skimmer]

Except that the Flood uses weapons, vehicles, cover, technology, etc'. They overwrote and subverted fantastically advanced technology rapidly, as well as using starships and improving the available technology (slip stream).

When it comes to actually fighting every time the flood shows up they just seem to rush as a hoard; it doesn't matter what you have if you don't use it effectively as shown by say, Iraq. I don’t recall anything on the lines of the flood say, calling in artillery fire on a strongpoint or other truly coordinated moves. Considering how dumb everyone in Halo acts and the illogical weapons choices we aren’t given much to judge them against anyway. Should the flood be a threat, sure. But just don't see any logical basis for them being an exceptional threat. An enemy with vast mechanized hoards should be far more dangerous, like the Covenant if it was run by the USSR and not a bunch of brain dead religious leadership.

The effectiveness of nerve gas is another question, we have no idea how the floods' biochemistry works, other than that it's based on some sort of DNA or Protein mutation (Source: Halo Cryptum)

They use existing life as hosts; and it is rather implausible that they completely change the biochemistry of the host… because at that point what on earth would be the point of needing a live host in the first place? Anyway we’ve got plenty of other chemical weapons to choose from and endless toxic industrial compounds which might prove effective. Never mind the shear scale on which you can simply kill with modern armaments. The main problem is finding targets and the flood doesn’t make that very hard.

[Imperial528]

Well, the flood can use dead sentients and other dead flood as new hosts provided the bodies are mostly solid, and they can do it across a myriad of species (from aliens to plants IIRC). The only way you really kill them is riddling them with bullets, so in anything small engagement I'm sure infantry ammunition would be a problem.

Of course, when you have things like the M270 MLRS with metal rain ammunition, all you've got to do is draw the flood out into a large area and fire away.

For urban environments, a few urban APCs or Humvees would be fine, no need to waste deploying infantry, since they are at risk of being infected. There's no real need for nerve gas when frag and other shrapnel weapons will deal with them easily enough, and we're not sure if the gas that doesn't entirely destroy the environment of use would work effectively.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Except that the Flood uses weapons, vehicles, cover, technology, etc'. They overwrote and subverted fantastically advanced technology rapidly, as well as using starships and improving the available technology (slip stream).

When it comes to actually fighting every time the flood shows up they just seem to rush as a hoard; it doesn't matter what you have if you don't use it effectively as shown by say, Iraq. I don’t recall anything on the lines of the flood say, calling in artillery fire on a strongpoint or other truly coordinated moves.

Caling in artillery strikes would require that there be artillery in the area. Game mechanics explain some things, and a simple lack of equipment explains a lack of artillery or the like.

Considering how dumb everyone in Halo acts and the illogical weapons choices we aren’t given much to judge them against anyway. Should the flood be a threat, sure. But just don't see any logical basis for them being an exceptional threat. An enemy with vast mechanized hoards should be far more dangerous, like the Covenant if it was run by the USSR and not a bunch of brain dead religious leadership.

Yeah, but ineffective or not, a modern earth army would have difficulty with an enemy that could run through streams of bullets, and whose preffered tactic is "Glass from outer orbit".

The effectiveness of nerve gas is another question, we have no idea how the floods' biochemistry works, other than that it's based on some sort of DNA or Protein mutation (Source: Halo Cryptum)

They use existing life as hosts; and it is rather implausible that they completely change the biochemistry of the host… because at that point what on earth would be the point of needing a live host in the first place? Anyway we’ve got plenty of other chemical weapons to choose from and endless toxic industrial compounds which might prove effective. Never mind the shear scale on which you can simply kill with modern armaments. The main problem is finding targets and the flood doesn’t make that very hard.

Changing the biochemistry is possible , the flood reanimates the corpse like a puppet, it's not bothered by damage to the host, hence the reason why it can take so much damage.
That line of argument is problematic.

[Vehrec]

I think it's safe to say that the flood makes your biology what they want it to be-time for a flood infection form to mutate a soldier into a combat form in Halo 3 is less than 15 seconds between infection and up and at his former allies. That's not biology or chemistry, that's magic. Or at the very least, clarketech. The Flood have no 'organs', and a lot of weapons that kill living things dead just don't work on them. Oh, you shot that combat form with a discarding sabot round that liquefied its insides? They were already liquefied you moron, you just slowed it down and it'll be back on it's feet in a minute. Their dead can be reanimated after the battle by fresh infection forms anyways-unless you burn them.

The real danger is that they're fast-32 hours. That's how long it took for one forerunner world to fall after a few scattered infection forms and spores made landfall. At that point, the orbiting fleet gave up and just burned the entire world to cull the infection.

[Sea Skimmer]

Caling in artillery strikes would require that there be artillery in the area. Game mechanics explain some things, and a simple lack of equipment explains a lack of artillery or the like.

Yeah but the whole point of a real military is you produce, equip train and deploy forces with proper support so that isn't how you have to fight. Then you massacre the hell out of armed rabble which is what the Flood are.

Yeah, but ineffective or not, a modern earth army would have difficulty with an enemy that could run through streams of bullets, and whose preffered tactic is "Glass from outer orbit".

Modern earth armies have deemphasize high yield weapons and used various treaties to avoid spending money on orbital weapons. They could easily enough be present, and would be if any specific need existed for them as it would in a situation in which you are fighting an interseller war. Put some nuclear warheads on a THAAD launcher and suddenly a modern force doesn't look so bad against a space capable force.The exact details of what we have today aren't really my point. Just that organization and technology counts for a damn lot and already lets us murder mass enemies. Really all the key things about mass killing like cluster bombs, prefragmented warheads and mines ect.. were all figured out back in the 1960s.

Now anyway if the Flood are just fighting from space, then the Flood being the flood hardly matters, all that matters is the naval power match-up and who has a better fleet. The Flood can't build ships and have little if any ability to maintain the ones they capture as far as I can tell, so that does not favor them over an industrial race at all. Japan had a bunch of fight to the utter death fanatics to crew all its warships in WW2... didn't really help them. If the Flood are limited to captured ships then they might be entirely denied space power once they are recognized as a threat and arrangements are made to ensure ships are scuttled by wrecking the engines if they face capture. Can the flood fix something like a naval nuclear reactor if it gets split open by a giant linear shaped charge?

Changing the biochemistry is possible , the flood reanimates the corpse like a puppet, it's not bothered by damage to the host, hence the reason why it can take so much damage.
That line of argument is problematic.

Well all else aside, unless the Flood have supernatural powers they have to have some kind of energy using metabolism, which means you can fuck with the chemistry of it. Whatever strength they have has to come from somewhere, somehow. If the flood do have supernatural power then that's fine, but then this thread should be in Fantasy not Science Fiction and I no longer care about it.

[Imperial528]

Why bother with chemical weapons at all when good old flamethrowers and anything that fires large volumes of lead will do? Just equip all infantry with shotguns or rifles with hollow-tip bullets and there's already an advantage right there. The biggest weakness of the flood is if the host body starts to fall apart the infection form will die with it, and the best way to make something fall apart is filling it with sharp things and firing high-power shots at it.

[adam_grif]

Chemical weapons can be used in ways other than "spray it on live infected forms", for instance covering a building or street with it as an area denial weapon. Although I agree bombing and shooting them is perfectly adequate.

[Vehrec]

Now anyway if the Flood are just fighting from space, then the Flood being the flood hardly matters, all that matters is the naval power match-up and who has a better fleet. The Flood can't build ships and have little if any ability to maintain the ones they capture as far as I can tell, so that does not favor them over an industrial race at all. Japan had a bunch of fight to the utter death fanatics to crew all its warships in WW2... didn't really help them. If the Flood are limited to captured ships then they might be entirely denied space power once they are recognized as a threat and arrangements are made to ensure ships are scuttled by wrecking the engines if they face capture. Can the flood fix something like a naval nuclear reactor if it gets split open by a giant linear shaped charge?

Yeah, they can. The CCS Truth and Reconciliation was heavily damaged by the Pillar of Autumn before that ship was shot down. The Covenant ship put down for repairs and to serve as a base on the surface-and it was one of the Flood's first targets. The Covenant were unwilling to fire on their ship while it was so close to the Sacred Ring, so they sent in a strike team to reduce it from a wreck to a completely inoperable wreck. Later, Flood forms are found to have overrun the Autumn as well, despite that being in even worse shape, they flood are attempting to put it back in commission as well.

Changing the biochemistry is possible , the flood reanimates the corpse like a puppet, it's not bothered by damage to the host, hence the reason why it can take so much damage.
That line of argument is problematic.

Well all else aside, unless the Flood have supernatural powers they have to have some kind of energy using metabolism, which means you can fuck with the chemistry of it. Whatever strength they have has to come from somewhere, somehow. If the flood do have supernatural power then that's fine, but then this thread should be in Fantasy not Science Fiction and I no longer care about it.

The flood have a hivemind that can corrupt computers and remembers the entire inital war against the Forerunners. They're pretty obviously psychic/magical biological clarketech parasites.

[lordofchange13]

the flood when reaching a high enough level of infection, can actually grow new combat forms from vats of nutrients and calcium. also the flood doesn't necessarily have to send waves of combat forms at you to make one of them. there constantly pumping spores in to the atmosphere which will git you sooner or later.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Changing the biochemistry is possible , the flood reanimates the corpse like a puppet, it's not bothered by damage to the host, hence the reason why it can take so much damage.
That line of argument is problematic.

Well all else aside, unless the Flood have supernatural powers they have to have some kind of energy using metabolism, which means you can fuck with the chemistry of it. Whatever strength they have has to come from somewhere, somehow. If the flood do have supernatural power then that's fine, but then this thread should be in Fantasy not Science Fiction and I no longer care about it.

The flood have a hivemind that can corrupt computers and remembers the entire inital war against the Forerunners. They're pretty obviously psychic/magical biological clarketech parasites.

Halo Cryptum states that, what with their being [SUPER Spoilers!]Spoiler

Created by the Predecessors to destroy the forerunners. They started as a few strands of rna that made fluffy hairs on certain types of pets. The humans (Who had technology capable of taking on the forerunners at the time) and "Prophets" analyzed every last strand of the dna, and couldn't find anything harmful. They used it on the pets.
A few generations later, they had cults infecting everything that came into contact with them, and the flood overwhelming their empire before they temporarily stopped them via sacrificing a third of humanity.

The same predecessors whose structures were stated to be flat out immune to everything the Forerunners could throw at them except for the Halo effect, due to Universal-neural technobabble.

So yeah, super duper Clarketech.

Also, /skimmer, the Japanese didn't have more than what, 5-11% of their population mobilized? Not everyone can fight, militaries don't want too many people in the support arms, they want support of course, but if you can co-opt any enemy technology you get your hands on then intelligence and research are pointless, and 100+% mobilization beats 10%.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, they can. The CCS Truth and Reconciliation was heavily damaged by the Pillar of Autumn before that ship was shot down. The Covenant ship put down for repairs and to serve as a base on the surface-and it was one of the Flood's first targets. The Covenant were unwilling to fire on their ship while it was so close to the Sacred Ring, so they sent in a strike team to reduce it from a wreck to a completely inoperable wreck. Later, Flood forms are found to have overrun the Autumn as well, despite that being in even worse shape, they flood are attempting to put it back in commission as well.

God its been a long time since I played Halo… anyway attempting? Did they show any of it? Now given that the Flood can use guns I could see how they could weld up holes and that kind of repair, but fixing real machinery and electronics in anything like a real star ship would be a hell of a demanding job. After all people in Somalia can use basic small arms whom you wouldn’t trust to build a wooden house. Lots of stuff on a ship would just need wholesale replacement, and where does the flood get this from? If they can make complicated repair parts then shouldn't they be building ships and have a whole civilization going, even if one that looks like War Factory North Korea on crack? That would surely be a greater threat, even if most of the zombies have to be eaten by the others to keep working.

The flood have a hivemind that can corrupt computers and remembers the entire inital war against the Forerunners. They're pretty obviously psychic/magical biological clarketech parasites.

The memory thing doesn't really force magic to me; I mean we know of salamanders you can freeze solid and thaw out alive years later. Long lasting memory doesn’t seem inherently impossible the same way an infinite energy zombie would be (though this topic is not helped by our weak understanding of human memory). Corrupting computers is also not explicitly demanding pure magic the way I see it; biology can generate electrical charges far greater then what entering computer data requires. The main trick is creating the biological-computer link and that has been done by modern science, if only on a very very limited scale so far for blind people and certain kinds of paralysis.

Also, /skimmer, the Japanese didn't have more than what, 5-11% of their population mobilized? Not everyone can fight, militaries don't want too many people in the support arms, they want support of course, but if you can co-opt any enemy technology you get your hands on then intelligence and research are pointless, and 100+% mobilization beats 10%.

I’m not sure what peak Japanese mobilization was; probably more then 10% if you count militia, but the more important fact is that they mobilized considerably more personal then they could arm, and armed far more men then they could provide with an adequate stockpile of ammo. Those pictures of people training with bamboo spears are no joke, but it did make mobilizing even more people kind of pointless. That just points to the limitation the flood faces… with only battlefield salvage for resupply a major victory and capture of the civilian population only means so much. Most of them won't have weapons (on earth we've got about 600 million guns right now and 6 billion people). All the more so if the local population has first fought the Flood to the death, expending most of the ammo and damaging weapons and equipment the civilization had before they are captured. The Flood are a lot like zombies, they'd be a major threat if they appeared at MANY points at the exact same time by surprise but the threat drops off rapidly otherwise and its ability to arrive on the battlefield can be highly constrained.

100% mobilization could give you a damn lot of bodies sure, but that means the 10% force then needs a 10:1 kill ratio to keep even. The Flood will meanwhile only be able to arm all its forces if it captures sufficient weapons. 10:1 isn’t easy, but if you have a fully equipped and supported force, against an armed rabble with primarily if not exclusively small arms and only what transport it can capture it is a very achievable goal. In the First Gulf War the kill ratio is something like 250:1 in favor of the US; but of course the Flood wouldn’t have much reason to march out into the open desert to get murdered.

Also don’t forget our good friend laser blinding weapons. Use enough of those and even infinite flood numbers are limited to well, blindly marching forward. I can’t believe I forgot about that option. This is assuming that anti personal laser weapons are a non option. I mean really… numbers would mean almost nothing if a defender had heavy armored vehicles with multiple blinding-killing lasers against a light infantry swarm.

[Sarevok]

The flood did not corrupt computers. It talked some ancient AI into cooperating.

[Connor MacLeod]

The flood did not corrupt computers. It talked some ancient AI into cooperating.

Also we have precisely Zero idea how Halo AI's are made/function, so what may work on a Halo "AI" doesn't neccesarily mean it would work on computers or other universes' AIs robots or whatever. For all we know its a quirk in how Halo builds them.

That's really going to be the problem making any conclusions in this debate - there's a whole lot we don't know about the Flood that is relevant to deciding what is and isn't that's meant to make them dangerous. I actually have seen people interpret what evidence we do have to mean they are "impossible energy zombies" and that they can magically fabricate new flood forms out of thin air (well actually as I recall it was "they magically tap some extradimensional energy source to generate new flesh, or something like that. It pretty much amounts to thin air though.) and other absurd feats which border on the no limit fallacy threshold (much like with the Borg, I might add. There are lots of parallels between the logic used with the Borg and the Flood by some fans.) I mean just because we havent heard anything about the logistical side of the Flood (they don't just operate on fairy dust and good intentions.) that doesn't mean it doesn't EXIST...

More often than not, the arguments for "Super flood" basically come down to the fact they beat the Forerunners, but of course that can be argued several different ways, from "The Forerunners were superadvaned/superpowerful and the Flood beat them" because of stuff like making supernovas and building the Halos. On the other hand, you have people who argue the Flood won because the Forerunners are morons (which has some merit too - demilitarized or pacifists or not, they had 3 fucking centuries to topple the Flood.) And there is of course the whole "humanity/Covenant beat the Flood" angle...

I'm perfectly willing to accept that the Flood are capable of waging a more conventional war, use vehicles and weapons, or even possibly able to improve their tactics. That said, there is the simple fact they do not do so consistently - one cannot simpyl wave away the examples when they do NOT, nor did they have the same super-duper tech base/abilities/whatever that allowed them to fight the Forerunners (if it wasn't stupidity that defeated them.) What that probably points to is that there are more than a couple stages of Flood/Gravemind "intellect/competence/capability". The Gravemind/Flood force that faced off against the Forerunners and pre-Halo human forces probably is a different and more advanced kind of Flood than what we saw in the UNSC/Covenant era Halo. That much is obvious, but beyond that we don't know much about how they go from one "stage" of acapability to the other (growing bigger presumably, amassing more memories/minds and the right kind of memories/minds, etc.)

We can infer other things too. The availability of rapid interstellar transportation can benefit the flood, for example, but that alone is not a game winner (speed/range and numbers apparently do matter as well.)

It also does seem quite likely that the level of danger the Flood represents is not going to be constant for many of these factors: For example, Star Wars might be harder pressed to contain the flood than say, 40K, due to the differences in the way Interstellar transportation is handled, mentality, etc. For that matter I would wager that Chaos could give the flood some trouble (at least after it ingests some chaos corrupted flesh...)

[The Grim Squeaker]

I’m not sure what peak Japanese mobilization was; probably more then 10% if you count militia, but the more important fact is that they mobilized considerably more personal then they could arm, and armed far more men then they could provide with an adequate stockpile of ammo. Those pictures of people training with bamboo spears are no joke, but it did make mobilizing even more people kind of pointless. That just points to the limitation the flood faces… with only battlefield salvage for resupply a major victory and capture of the civilian population only means so much. Most of them won't have weapons (on earth we've got about 600 million guns right now and 6 billion people). All the more so if the local population has first fought the Flood to the death, expending most of the ammo and damaging weapons and equipment the civilization had before they are captured. The Flood are a lot like zombies, they'd be a major threat if they appeared at MANY points at the exact same time by surprise but the threat drops off rapidly otherwise and its ability to arrive on the battlefield can be highly constrained.

I'll reply in detail later (physics now), but in short - existing factories could crank out a damn large amount of weapons if needed, we're not talking tanks, but infantry weaponry. There's a lesser amount in existence on Earth due to the tiny amount of the population mobilized, and the lack of need for more guns.

100% mobilization could give you a damn lot of bodies sure, but that means the 10% force then needs a 10:1 kill ratio to keep even. The Flood will meanwhile only be able to arm all its forces if it captures sufficient weapons. 10:1 isn’t easy, but if you have a fully equipped and supported force, against an armed rabble with primarily if not exclusively small arms and only what transport it can capture it is a very achievable goal.

Except that even unarmed flood forms could very easily slaughter soft (civilian targets). As a thought example, the Flood in Japan would have quickly added China's population to their numbers, and kamikaze planes are rather more dangerous if their pilots can survive jumping out and smashing into the ship's deck. (there goes the carrier).

Also don’t forget our good friend laser blinding weapons. Use enough of those and even infinite flood numbers are limited to well, blindly marching forward. I can’t believe I forgot about that option. This is assuming that anti personal laser weapons are a non option. I mean really… numbers would mean almost nothing if a defender had heavy armored vehicles with multiple blinding-killing lasers against a light infantry swarm.

Most of the The flood models don't even HAVE eyes. (They're in fact extremely resistant to "plasma" [yes, it's sci-fi plasma, not real plasma, I know], which did blind some humans on ocassion as I recall) .

[Molyneux]

The Flood do have visible sensory organs - those stalks that look vaguely like some kind of coral polyp - but it's never been explained, as far as I know, precisely how they actually work. They can certainly perceive their environment, and don't seem to use the host body's sensory organs to do so.

At least against modern humans, I think that the atmospheric spores would be a far greater threat than the Flood infection forms themselves. Inhale too much, and you start to spontaneously Floodify.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Anyone know anything regarding the pure form flood, i.e. the transforming ones from Halo 3? I wander if those are what happens to biomass that isn't in the form of a controllable host when it doesn't go to making popcorn flood. Basically the flood has a preference for the alive/recently dead for combat forms as then it can use/modify existing tissue instead of having to create it from scratch which would be more time and energy consuming. It might explain all the funky giant lumpy growths we see after the Flood has been in an area for a while. Likewise, that also gives a use to all the bits left over from fighting and dovetails kinda nicely with the whole idea that you should be burning flood bodies.

If they can pull something like that off (essentially copying Tyranids), then given enough time it shoudn't terribly matter what the attrition ratio is, as the Flood still has your 1 guy plus whatever of the 100 dead combat forms is left minus whatever was vaporized/render unsuable and what gets consumed for energy generation. Mind you thats assuming it gets its energy for actually doing stuff like growing/moving from consuming organic material like an animal.

[Vendetta]

Anyone know anything regarding the pure form flood, i.e. the transforming ones from Halo 3? I wander if those are what happens to biomass that isn't in the form of a controllable host when it doesn't go to making popcorn flood. Basically the flood has a preference for the alive/recently dead for combat forms as then it can use/modify existing tissue instead of having to create it from scratch which would be more time and energy consuming.

Pure forms are apparently what it starts cranking out once it's been up and around for a while and has had time to consume plenty of raw resources. Infected combat forms are the quick and dirty solution to get it to that point. So yeah, all but total annihilation of combat forms can be considered "acceptable losses" to the Gravemind, because it was just going to eat them to turn them into pure forms or more infection forms when it was done with them.