The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction

[Misery Esquire]

Considering the Tyranids are not known for extreme level psykers...

I'd say they are, seeing as their primary feature as the "bugs race" is the Hivemind, a psychic gesalt of a (possible) trillion trillion lives.

They're practically Old One design, if they were constructive rather than destructive. Which is why my favorite (absolutely noncanon) theory is that they're what the Outsider C'Tan came up with.

...Although, I guess that's automatically debunked by the Newcrons fluff. Ah, well.

[etesp]

@Glyphstone: Right, nothing threatening to a ship which keeps its distance then.

@Kinslayer: They certainly have amazing warp communication, but as far as direct psychic assaults go (tearing warp holes, long range telekiniesis), they seem to be unimpressive compared to the best of a few other races (and the head exploding when they try to channel too much will be an issue)? Sure, with a insane number and adapted a lot, there's something there.. but with what Glyphstone said, if even the GEoM did not use stellar distance TK.. a ship lightyears away dodging fast with zero warp presence to track it.. is not really assault able.

[The Glyphstone]

Not that even that doesn't have its exceptions, of course - Machine Empathy is a recognized psychic talent, effectively telepathy for mechanical/technological devices. There aren't any Alpha or Alpha+ machine empaths in canon, but if one existed, they could still pose a threat. It is, however, not something the Tyranids will have.

[Maugan Ra]

And, of course, there's always the fairly logical outcome of this situation. The Hive Mind comprehends that it is under assault by something within this galaxy that is considerably more dangerous than anything it has previously believed to exist here. So it retreats to outside the galaxy again.

And then it activates everything it has, deploys in a widely dispersed pattern, and hits everywhere at once. The vast bulk of the enemy fleets aren't nearly as dangerous as the Culture, and even the Culture cannot be everywhere, or move from place to place with the speed necessary to fight on anything more than a small number of fronts. Worlds fall to the Tyranid advance by the dozens, and then the hundreds, and then the thousands. And every world that falls is consumed wholesale and it's every inhabitant devoured, before the newly reinforced splinter fleet fragments and heads for the next half dozen of known inhabited worlds (the information obtained by Lictors and other specialist organisms).

The Tyranids might never bring down even a single Culture ship. They don't need to. Because once all the other worlds are gone, the Tyranids turn around again and head back out into the interstellar void, leaving the Culture and whatever they managed to protect directly sitting in the barren wreckage of a galaxy. Because the Hive Mind has the numbers and coordination to fight a unified war on a hundred thousand fronts, and no one else does. There's more to a war than simply who has the biggest guns, after all, and from what I've seen the Culture would consider the total outcome of such a conflict a loss.

[Fan]

That depends on the strength of the psyker(s), and how many of them are working in concert.

I wasn't really talking about attacks against ships, anyways - I don't think even the Emperor wielded telekinesis at stellar distances. But, say, an inorganic drone can still be thrown around by telekinetic force if a psyker attacks it with such.

The Emperor never used TK, but he did use directed bolts of psychic energy, and warp rifts to wipe out enemy fleets entirely.

It is debatable, though this is fanfiction, so I'd say it's not too big a deal to attribute him the feat for the storm of his name.

[Tiki Snakes]

And, of course, there's always the fairly logical outcome of this situation. The Hive Mind comprehends that it is under assault by something within this galaxy that is considerably more dangerous than anything it has previously believed to exist here. So it retreats to outside the galaxy again.

And then it activates everything it has, deploys in a widely dispersed pattern, and hits everywhere at once. The vast bulk of the enemy fleets aren't nearly as dangerous as the Culture, and even the Culture cannot be everywhere, or move from place to place with the speed necessary to fight on anything more than a small number of fronts. Worlds fall to the Tyranid advance by the dozens, and then the hundreds, and then the thousands. And every world that falls is consumed wholesale and it's every inhabitant devoured, before the newly reinforced splinter fleet fragments and heads for the next half dozen of known inhabited worlds (the information obtained by Lictors and other specialist organisms).

The Tyranids might never bring down even a single Culture ship. They don't need to. Because once all the other worlds are gone, the Tyranids turn around again and head back out into the interstellar void, leaving the Culture and whatever they managed to protect directly sitting in the barren wreckage of a galaxy. Because the Hive Mind has the numbers and coordination to fight a unified war on a hundred thousand fronts, and no one else does. There's more to a war than simply who has the biggest guns, after all, and from what I've seen the Culture would consider the total outcome of such a conflict a loss.

Surely the response of the Hive-Mind to realsing the Culture is trying to wipe them out is to splutter in confusion about how on earth they got infront of them and to flee in a different direction.

It's funny because of the whole, what is so horrible that the Tyranids would be fleeing from it thing they have in the fluff.

[Maugan Ra]

The Emperor never used TK, but he did use directed bolts of psychic energy, and warp rifts to wipe out enemy fleets entirely.

It is debatable, though this is fanfiction, so I'd say it's not too big a deal to attribute him the feat for the storm of his name.

I've always felt fine with assigning the Emperor that sort of power. The other option is that a warp storm just so happened, by complete coincidence, to form on top of Vandire's fleet just as they were about to bring down Sebastian Thor.

The Emperor has been dead for millennia. The God-Emperor of all Mankind is quite a different story, however...

[The Glyphstone]

Surely the response of the Hive-Mind to realsing the Culture is trying to wipe them out is to splutter in confusion about how on earth they got infront of them and to flee in a different direction.

It's funny because of the whole, what is so horrible that the Tyranids would be fleeing from it thing they have in the fluff.

Unless whatever the Tyranids are fleeing from is worse than the Culture...

[Tiki Snakes]

Unless whatever the Tyranids are fleeing from is worse than the Culture...

The Culture as imagined by the fandom perhaps?

I'm joking of course. I've no idea what the Culture's fandom is like beyond these boards and less idea what the culture is actually like. Still, if we assume they've been fairly described in these threads for the most part, the idea of the culture through the same perception that gives us Superman punching people into the sun and tearing their heads clean off their necks at FTL speed is...more than a little unpleasant to consider.

[Murska]

Hmm. So, the psychic beacon draws All the Tyranids, which arrive at the same time due to FTL shenanigans, or at least enough of them to result in a supermassive black hole, which then eats a Culture ship or two.

[Misery Esquire]

Unless whatever the Tyranids are fleeing from is worse than the Culture...

Cybersith Time Lord Demons Wizard (Level 20) Channelers from the Universe of Neverwas and Could-Have-Beens, with perfect control of power of the heat death of the universe itself at every fingertip, creating galaxies at a whim and retroactively having erased you from exsistance. And then recreated you, with everything the same throughout your entire species' history, except that you are fanatically loyal, now.

That is obviously the reasonable explaination.

[The Glyphstone]

Cybersith Time Lord Demons Wizard (Level 20) Channelers from the Universe of Neverwas and Could-Have-Beens, with perfect control of power of the heat death of the universe itself at every fingertip, creating galaxies at a whim and retroactively having erased you from exsistance. And then recreated you, with everything the same throughout your entire species' history, except that you are fanatically loyal, now.

That is obviously the reasonable explaination.

Who are also Goffic Vampyres?

[etesp]

@Maugan Ra: I could definitely see them running, but trying to feed off by far the most well defended galaxy , and one defended by an entirely unknown force which you apparently can't harm is really stupid when there's much tastier snacks around. A widely spread all out attack would.. not be entirely containable by the current Culture. There would be losses. Significant ones, if there was not much preparation/they were not intercepted on the way in. But the speed at which a Hive or splinter fleet gets shredded, the fact that they have to make a slow in system approach (50 days? that's an eternity with well spread out Culture forces, which they will be by the time Tyranids can make an all out attack), and the fact that without superinsanewtf concentrations of 'nids.. there nothing they could even theoretically do to touch smartly played low end Culture ships.. I could see the Culture defending a large portion of the galaxy with a little preparation. And the Tyranid losses would outweigh their gains by an insane margin, it's suicidal.

Also, Culture FTL is likely to get a massive boost from Tau warp skimming. If it's a straight multiplier on the amount you can go FTL..

@Fan: Bolts of psychic energy should be easily dodgeable unless they're massively FTL, but on command warp rifts would actually be pretty scary for the Culture. Where did that happen, what's the evidence that it was him, and is it consistent with his power use in general?

[The Glyphstone]

Culture FTL wouldn't be compatible at all with Tau warp-skimming...the latter is still Warp travel, just a weak and shallow version of it. Culture FTL doesn't work in the Warp, and their realspace FTL is already faster than most Warp travel.

[Maugan Ra]

You might be underestimating the size of the galaxy somewhat. The Milky Way has a diameter of well over 100,000 light years, and contains somewhere between 100,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 stars.

The Imperium of Man controls, at absolute best, less than a hundredth of a percentage of those star systems. In and around their territory - because it's not a single, lumpen mass, since Warp Travel doesn't typically lead to well defined real space borders - are uncounted millions of other species. They might be pre-space flight, or just stretching their hands out into space, or even masters of their own interstellar empires. The Imperium habitually genocides half a dozen of them every year, at least, and has been doing so for the last ten thousand years straight. None of these races have the ability to fight the Tyranids by themselves, and very few of them are willing to work together. Heck, there's a mention in the main rule book of a desperate alliance between an Imperial Admiral and a coalition of half a dozen lesser races to fight off a single Tyranid splinter fleet at one point. Within five years of their historic victory, that very same Admiral had personally genocided at least two of his previous allied races.

This is what I mean when I say the Tyranids don't have to fight the Culture. They eat damn near everything - right down to the planetary topsoil. And they have the numbers to launch a coordinated assault on every single possible front at once, coming from all directions of the galactic disk.

The Culture might be able to beat the Tyranids to death easily in a straight fight. But they are not fast enough, do not have enough ships, and do not have sufficient early warning to meet more than a fraction of the Tyranid attacks, especially given that the Shadow in the Warp completely cuts off interstellar communication in entire Steller regions.

Hell, be generous. Say the Culture destroys 10% of the attackers. And say another 20% are stopped and thrown back by the races presently capable of resisting a Tyranid attack. That still, at the end of the war, leaves 70% of the galaxy barren and lifeless for millennia to come, while the Tyranids make a net gain in biomass terms and float back off into space.

The Tyranids are the doomsday scenario of the 41st millennium. Nothing and no one in setting outdoes them, and nor do the Culture.

[The Glyphstone]

The only winning move is not to play.

[comicshorse]

Unless whatever the Tyranids are fleeing from is worse than the Culture...

Daleks, definitely daleks

[Fan]

I'd say Chaos beats the Nids handily, they can create worlds given enough time, their numbers actually beat the Nids out if they're allowed to break out of The Warp (It has been defined in multiple points as a Daemon being the manifestation of someone's revenge plot, or the grief of the loss of a loved one, or the lusts of idle humanity, or the rage felt by someone denied everything in life.), having literally infinite daemons with which to toy around.

Couple that with their machinery being built on the souls of the damned, and they don't seem to need to actually eat anything with the exception of Slanneshi who eat for pleasure.

They're pretty damned crazy.

[Murska]

Culture FTL wouldn't be compatible at all with Tau warp-skimming...the latter is still Warp travel, just a weak and shallow version of it. Culture FTL doesn't work in the Warp, and their realspace FTL is already faster than most Warp travel.

I think this is the question Culture is interested in. How do you know it doesn't?

[The Glyphstone]

I think this is the question Culture is interested in. How do you know it doesn't?

Because the Warp isn't real, in conventional senses. The entire point of the Culture is that they run off super/hyper-science, mega-advanced physics, and post-singularity technology. Inside the Warp, Physics as a concept doesn't exist in any recognizable form - whatever principles allow their FTL drive to go FTL aren't even conceptually possible there, hence the need for Gellar Fields to protect ships by giving them a bubble of 'normal' where reality still has meaning. Imperial ships don't use their regular drives in the Warp, they use their special Warp engines, which are similarly useless in realspace.

I'd say Chaos beats the Nids handily, they can create worlds given enough time, their numbers actually beat the Nids out if they're allowed to break out of The Warp (It has been defined in multiple points as a Daemon being the manifestation of someone's revenge plot, or the grief of the loss of a loved one, or the lusts of idle humanity, or the rage felt by someone denied everything in life.), having literally infinite daemons with which to toy around.

Couple that with their machinery being built on the souls of the damned, and they don't seem to need to actually eat anything with the exception of Slanneshi who eat for pleasure.

They're pretty damned crazy.

Except that if Chaos has the ability to employ all of their infinite numbers, that means they've already overrun Reality and so have won anyways. They may have a higher theoretical strength of numbers and effectively unlimited reserves, but their practical force-at-point application of those numbers is far lower.

[Fan]

Which is why they haven't won Glyphstone, a lack of ability to bring their numbers to bare, and Cadia shutting down their most effective avenue of attack, along with worlds dedicated to stopping them at every warp rift.

The only problem is, the specific thing that caused The Warp to become so powerful in the past WAS real space attempting to seal off the warp, and it got to the point where there were visible rips in the fabric of reality before The Old Ones could remove what they were using to seal it off, and shut down the pylons.

If the Culture attempts to seal off an already fractured universe, I don't think it'll end too well for reality.

[The Glyphstone]

I think you missed about a dozen pages of discussion, the 'seal off the Warp' plan isn't even being considered right now. It is indeed about a bad a plan as Operation Tyranid Bug-Zapper.

[etesp]

You might be underestimating the size of the galaxy somewhat. The Milky Way has a diameter of well over 100,000 light years, and contains somewhere between 100,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 stars.

<Tyranids can flood so much that most worlds will fall, because not enough ships>

The Tyranids are the doomsday scenario of the 41st millennium. Nothing and no one in setting outdoes them, and nor do the Culture.

Of those 100,000,000,000 - 400,000,000,000 stars, how many are inhabited by sentient life other than Orks (who can give the Tyranids a run for their money) or Necrons (who are not biomass, so not attractive)? And, even if we're just trying to cover every area of the galaxy with defenses. Let's run some numbers.

Starting points:
The milky way galaxy has a surface area considerably under 2.05^42 meters squared.
That's a cylindrical protection using maximum thickness and width all the way around for simplification. The actual area needed to be defended would be considerably smaller.
Ship effectors are easily into double digit light years, one post indicated that a high end ship had a range of 1000 Ly. Drones are at least into light seconds, but I've not been able to find many sources for them.
Assuming 10 lightyear range and ability to kill as fast as 'nids move into range ship can protect a circle with an area of ~594133873678074200 m^2
Drones and lower end ships can fill in gaps, and the internal fleet can easily chase down and pick off those that slip through.
With those numbers, you need the equivalent of 47887.5 ships to prevent any Tyranids entering. Culture FTL is much faster weakpoints can be covered quickly if the Tyranids try to enter.
Note that the Culture may well have some weapons with much higher range available, but less delicacy/destructive power, so they don't usually bother.

That sounds like quite a few ships. But we've gone from 6 to 1274 GCU+ and 103450 independent drone+ in six months. Geometric growth at the same rate means that in ~one year, there'll be enough ships. Can the Tyranids invade a galaxy from EVERY DIRECTION AT ONCE in under a year? And the Culture is not even that focused on production, they're spending a lot of effort on exploring right now. Nor are they focusing on weapon platforms, which would certainly be much faster to produce than full ships with hyperdrive/Mind.

I've made a few assumptions, like being able to fire at a large number of targets at once. With something like a very fast moving large area pancaker, sweeping through your area regularly seems possible. Additionally, both spreading out thinly and focusing down one place are terrible tactics. Thinly spread fleets are beatable by natives/picked off by drones even if a few slip through. Focusing a huge fleet on one spot may overwhelm the defender's ability to keep up fire, but the much better FTL allows that point to be reinforced before it breaks.

Oh, and the new gravity tunnel FTL.. that sounds pretty laughably easy to shut down. These things can't FTL near a solar system, put a gentle gravity field over the area they're firing on and lolsublight in extragalactic space, gives plenty of time to build up or kill them.

Ok. Maybe they can slip through. Maybe the Culture's not perfect defense. But this galaxy is far far far more effort than others they'd try and crack. The Tyranid's imperative is to survive, not waste most of their species trying to drain just one galaxy which is particularly well defended.

The Tyranids are absolutely terrifying to wh40k. But they are bugs to the Culture. Numerous, annoying, and with some sting, but bugs nonetheless. Their best move is to run.

@Warp/Hyperspace: Ok, I wasn't sure what had been agreed on how shallow/shielded skims would work. My guess would be that deep/mid warp would wreak all physics, but very shallow would still function, and having your field on would maybe make it doable (if less reliable).

[Maugan Ra]

I always forget the bloody stupid newer canon of Tyranid FTL. Which makes my inner astrophysicist rage. I always preferred it when they just used warp travel like everyone else...

Anyway, that aside, there's always the important point in the fact that just being able to hit something a ridiculous distance away does not mean that's a reasonable engagement range. After all, in a void, a solid projectile weapon has an unlimited range (cref: Sir Isaac Newton, deadliest son of a bitch in space).

So... how exactly are these forty eight thousand heavily armed drone ships going to detect the Tyranids and know where to shoot? It doesn't help much having a 10 light year range and having the sharpest damn eyes in the cosmos if physics dictates that you only see your potential target ten years after he was actually there.

[Doran]

The Culture have FTL sensors though, no use having FTL effectors without those.

[The Glyphstone]

I guess the drones have FTL sensors.

[etesp]

I always forget the bloody stupid newer canon of Tyranid FTL. Which makes my inner astrophysicist rage. I always preferred it when they just used warp travel like everyone else...

Anyway, that aside, there's always the important point in the fact that just being able to hit something a ridiculous distance away does not mean that's a reasonable engagement range. After all, in a void, a solid projectile weapon has an unlimited range (cref: Sir Isaac Newton, deadliest son of a bitch in space).

So... how exactly are these forty eight thousand heavily armed drone ships going to detect the Tyranids and know where to shoot? It doesn't help much having a 10 light year range and having the sharpest damn eyes in the cosmos if physics dictates that you only see your potential target ten years after he was actually there.

Yea, old FTL seemed much more consistent.. gravity tunnels >_>. If they warped in, this whole system would not work, and I'd have to find numbers of occupied worlds to run numbers on instead.

Effectors can be used as FTL sensors over absurd distance (e.g. sensitivity to hack into a computer from over a lightyear away), and as weapons which are entirely not solid projectiles (unblockable without effectors of your own, I believe). They've probably got an assortment of other FTL sensors too, but I've not found the specifications for those. A systematic large area pancaker or gridfire sweep would be probably more efficient on concentrated areas of space, and that's not a solid projectile either.

Also, I think I massively overestmated the number of ships required. As well as the 10 ly engagement area, they could easily sweep around a much larger area in some pattern if they had a decent hyperdrive, and return before any 'nid would have time to pass too deep. Depends on how quick hyperdrive and weapon production is.

Oh, and if there's an issue with buildup of biomass causing incoming Tyranids to feed/grow, station a few black holes spread out, and throw the bodies at those. Or gridfire. Girdfire's cool.

The Culture is not just an insanely technically advanced race, it's an insanely technically advanced race in a universe which has laws which let you do utterly crazy things.

Edit: Probably afk for a week, have fun blowing up everything :)

[jseah]

Culture FTL wouldn't be compatible at all with Tau warp-skimming...the latter is still Warp travel, just a weak and shallow version of it. Culture FTL doesn't work in the Warp, and their realspace FTL is already faster than most Warp travel.

Because the Warp isn't real, in conventional senses. The entire point of the Culture is that they run off super/hyper-science, mega-advanced physics, and post-singularity technology. Inside the Warp, Physics as a concept doesn't exist in any recognizable form - whatever principles allow their FTL drive to go FTL aren't even conceptually possible there, hence the need for Gellar Fields to protect ships by giving them a bubble of 'normal' where reality still has meaning. Imperial ships don't use their regular drives in the Warp, they use their special Warp engines, which are similarly useless in realspace.

The idea here is that the Warp exists parallel to all 4 dimensions of hyperspace. Hyperspace drives work because distances are less along the 4th dimension (so if you are some way into hyperspace, the distance you travel is less than the X ly to the next system). Too far up or down makes you hit the Gridfire Walls so there's a limit.
By bending space around their ships (the same kind of thing that allows them to use Displacers and Gridfire), the Culture achieve a slow FTL that is multiplied by hyperspace.

The Culture does not have significant FTL if you have a magic speedometer on the ship, they just cheat.


If you give them REAL FTL, even a weaksauce one like the Tau drive, it gets multiplied by the distance contraction from hyperspace.

[Gavinfoxx]

I agree and like that this combination should work.

However... isn't canon divergent on whether or not the warp engines are to make the hole in the warp or are also propulsion within the warp? I've seen it said that ships use their normal engines in the warp...

Also, have you made.a choice on old canon ftl for tyranids or new canon or some bizarre mix?

Also, in old canon... did tyranids go mad in the warp or were there specialist breeds to see in the warp or were they already mad or what?

And has anyone come up with what happens when a machine looks into the warp?

[jseah]

Also, have you made.a choice on old canon ftp for tyranids or new canon or some bizarre mix?

No idea what you're talking about. I'm going off the Lexicanum, and that is the Narvhals and gravity corridors. (the only reason why the Culture can spot them mid-flight, but it's still an unlikely occurance)