In 8e (and the Xenos 2 Index) it talks specifically about how Hive Fleet Leviathan fell after almost devouring the Blood Angels and their successors on Baal (only to be saved by Deus ex Ka'Bandha and Deus ex Guilliman).
Except there was still more than enough Tyranids playing 'who's the better meatgrinder?' with the Orks on Octarius when the Blood Crusade showed up and dived into the middle of that century long slaughterfest that the Blood Crusade's momentum was brought to a standstill from getting caught in the middle of that warzone (deliberately mind you. These are Khornates we're talking about), the second time the Blood Crusade 'met its match' in its galaxy wide destruction spree.
If Leviathan has 'fallen', then what the fuck is going on over in Octarius? Did the largest Hive Fleet to arrive in the galaxy just focus most of its resources on Octarius/Octaria and Baal over 100 years and burn up all its resources as a result?
Brody Mitchell
Dude Octarius is an infinite supply of orc. It's like the nids found an infinite resource to mine in a rts. Some shit is gonna go down in fluff and I'm rooting for orks and hoping for some awesome nid/ork/chaos fluff but I think this one is gonna be the nids victory once the orks pull out to go waagh elsewhere for a bigga n betta foight. Everyone is getting bigga n stronga from this conflict. Even the Chaos boyz.
Nolan Morris
I think it's more that the main tendril fell. Kinda like how Behemoth was beaten at Macragge, but there are still Behemoth splinter Fleets around.
In any case, it looks like Hydra is just gonna eat up Leviathan's remains and make itself into the new big Hive Fleet.
Carson Rodriguez
I think "what the fuck is going on with tyranid hive fleets in general" is a better question. They show up as a massive fleet of ships, rampage through space then lose a single decisive ground action which somehow causes them to break into splinter fleets for some reason and those splinter fleets just roam around aimlessly for centuries without regrouping or behaving remotely intelligently for some reason.
It's almost as if GW is bad at writing and has no idea what to even do with half the factions.
Alexander Brooks
>but I think this one is gonna be the nids victory once the orks pull out to go waagh elsewhere for a bigga n betta foight It's possible, but considering Ghazzy already planned to leave once Octarius turned into Armageddon 2.0 (never-ending war) and went into the 100-year meatgrinder with the best Ork tek in the galaxy after he and the local boyz purged the nids from the planet in the first round (Leviathan threw two or three tendrils at that single planet in response), I'm not sure about that.
Sure, the Orks might be essentially an unlimited resource, but Leviathan only has so many nids at its disposal/biomass it can get before the amount of biomass left on the field exceeds the amount of biomass being recovered.
On average a Hive Fleet is capable ofdevour an entire Imperial World in 50 days (100 days with heavy resistance). The Octarius War (not just Octaria/Octarius, but the whole sector) as a whole has been going on for 100 YEARS.
It feels like Leviathan run of out nids before the Orks run out of greenskins. It doesn't help that team-killing fucktards like Hive Fleet Hydra are coming in and devouring Leviathan's other tendrils, draining it of resources it needs to keep fighting the Orks.
As for Chaos... the only non-daemon entities that made it off Octarius after the daemons noped out of there via passing Warp Storm to find another planet to slaughter was probably ol' Kharn and most of his World Eaters. Anyone else stupid enough to be on the surface of that death world once the daemons left likely ended up someone's lunch.
Sebastian Wright
Tyranid hive fleets will weaken considerably, or even starve to death if they don't keep up their momentum.
They're very vulnerable when they lose a battle that they've committed a lot of resources to.
Jacob Roberts
>They're very vulnerable when they lose a battle that they've committed a lot of resources to So what happens when they just have to keep eating their own biomass over and over? Because that's probably a large part of what's happening at Octarius (besides new Orks saying "Shadow in da Warp? Wot's dat?" and straight up ignoring the Hive Fleet's shadow as they charge toward the sector from all across the galaxy).
I mean, can a Hive Fleet just recycle the same biomass it deployed to the planet's surface again and again until it finally wins, or does that biomass suffer from diminishing returns (basically more a person consumes something, the less value it has to that person)?
Kayden Adams
Entropy is still a thing in 40k. The Tyranids can't just keep recycling their own shit.
Jackson Hall
Yes since they dont have any super tech or reality bending nonsense they can be brought down by attrition since the tyranids are essentially a giant beast hunting prey and if you look into stuff about giant predators they tend to need huge amounts of food(biomass) to survive which is hard when they need to spend it all just moving around and fighting wars so much which can drain them. Also keep in mind the hive fleets are entering the galaxy from another one. That kind of journey must have spent a large amount of biomass.
Jayden Morris
Nids generally don't start mass recycling biomass until the battle is won, not during the battle.
