Could Nids put up a fight?

>>53317711
Or would they be constantly sharpening themselves against the others, making it fucking terrible for everyone else?

>>53317755
So like it combats them constantly to become deadlier? Because don't needs evolve to meet their current threat? They could hurt themselves by adapting to fighting these guys only to catch a bolter to the chest later on in kife and be completely destroyed by it.

>>53317711
>Flood
I believe they would be pretty evenly matched at first but ultimatly the Nids would lose since the Flood are far more resilient and can assimilate other lifeforms much more quickly.

>The Thing
Nids would probably lose a few units before realizing something was wrong and destroying the Thing.

>Top Left
Isn't that just another Tyranid?

>Bottom Left
What's this supposed to be?

>>53317711
Well, the Flood goes down to being a virus or a virus like life form. I think the smallest unit of life Tyranids go to is single cells, though they have some viruses. So I think the Flood is able to infect Tyranids and that doesn't shake out well for anyone.

We don't really know how the Thing works, other than it can perfectly mimick down the cellular level and has semi-controlled growth. I'd give it to the thing, because it seems virulent enough that it could infect an entire hiveship pretty quickly if it got into contact. Though if the tyranids discovered it it's lights out.

>>53317866
Wouldn't what happens to The Thing also apply to The Flood though? What would stop the Nids from eating Flood infected organisms?
Yeah top left was to include them in the pic
Bottom left is The Ancient Enemy, from "Phantoms"

>>53317971
Isn't The Flood just a fungal infection from hell?

>>53317711
>The Thing
Would probably we be able to beat it mostly since, if The Things is to be trusted (Which I remember hearing it is over the newer movies)it doesn't have much experience actually fighting.

>Bottom Left
No clue.

>Flood
Tyranids have no chance in Hell if we're using the strongest iteration of Flood, who almost casually walked over the Forerunners. Flood also have better vectors of invasion, and are known for turning a faction's own weapons against them. Integrated biological weaponry should be a peace of cake for them.

>>53318011
Yeah, but it's slightly more complicated than that. It hijacks it's a host bodies cells, rather than actually destroying them and making new ones out of the material, at least initially.

>>53318146
I guess that would give it an edge
The Nids would basically be in a race to fight their own hive fleet
>>53318119
What book did The Flood do this in?

>>53318146
Nah, Flood wreaks havoc on host cells too. Rapid necrosis followed by internal rearrangement, so the Infection Form fits better in the chest cavity. Generally most hosts we see (Brutes, Elites, Humans) are already well suited for housing the IF, and little damage will be done, but smaller creatures like Grunts and Jackals are used to create more Carrier Forms.

>>53318219
It was over the span of a few, I know the big name one is Silentium. The Flood basicallt show up with Precursor (Pre-Forerunner Uberfaction) tech integrated into their forces, and start stomping left and right.

>>53318267
>Precursor (Pre-Forerunner Uberfaction) tech integrated into their forces, and start stomping left and right
Do they operate like the hive fleets where the gravemind has separate forces? Why not keep the precursor tech?

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>>53318219
Don't know if the Tyranids can do this but the Flood are able to take over inorganic structures like space stations extremely quickly.

They assimilated a massive alien space habitat in the span of a few weeks.

>>53318340
>Do they operate like the hive fleets where the gravemind has separate forces?
There's multiple Graveminds, I think.Not entirely sure, been awhile since I read up.

>Why not keep the precursor tech?
The Flood dealt with in 'Modern' Halo are a fraction of a fraction of what there was. The rest died off, with very few pockets remaining.

>>53317866
>I believe they would be pretty evenly matched at first but ultimatly the Nids would lose since the Flood are far more resilient and can assimilate other lifeforms much more quickly.

Nids just eat the flood, also graveminds are a form of meme at this point theyre so inflated beyond anything the actually accomplished.

The nids assimilate biological weapons meant to wipe out planets, and ones specifically meant to wipe them out.

They eat every other contender.

>>53317711

Nids would probably be able to detect the Thing via hivemind.

I feel like the nids would very quickly adapt their organisms to resist the flood, eventually leading to the flood being consumed. But the first few encounters would be very interesting.

I don't know how the thing works so Idk, although the hive mind would surely be able to detect any kind of mimicry.

Idk what the other thing is.

>>53318690
The 'Nids are pretty slow at adapting, comparatively.

>>53318690
http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/The_Ancient_Enemy
Think of The Blob only extremely smart and with psychic powers

>>53318352
'nids do manage to do things like steal the entire ocean inside of a few months though so I'm going to give them a tie on the terrain corruption front.

It'd certainly be messy.

>>53318803
Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, yo.
>>53319001
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPTbuuJkY5k

>>53317711
The thing is from the C'thulu universe, so they propbably eventually kill it but that is literally the least of their problems.

>>53319197
The Ancient Enemy is more lovecraftian than The Thing m8
>>53319152
He really was, no one I've talked to has even heard of that movie, I fucking love it.

>>53317971
M8, the nids took on Nurgle's rot and won.
The flood ain't got shit on them.

>>53319221
Chaos is cute but Azahoth it is not.

>>53319221
Sorry, just making a really obscure Kevin Smith reference (though I totally believe it). Did like the book, though.

>>53319259
Chaos gods are made from mortal emotion, Lovecraft pantheon says the universe says the Elder gods dreams made everything.

Lovecraft has the Descarte "unmoved mover" true god intonation.

Technically the Chaos gods aren't even big "G".

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SHOO! SHOO!

>>53319331
yeah they'd probably fuck all four of them up

>>53319348
Hey, hey, not fair! We're talking about monsters here, you can't just have a Progenitor Race that *makes* monsters showing up!

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>>53319365
>Hey, hey, not fair! We're talking about monsters here, you can't just have a Progenitor Race that *makes* monsters showing up!
Technically that's what the Flood is, dried Progenitor flakes gone bad...

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>>53319365
GET OUT OF MY YARD THEN, AHHHH

>>53317711
>or would the Nids evolve and become immune to that shit?
They pretty much already are. Tyranids are basically immune to disease, parasitism or infection of any kind because they're already stuffed with cocktails of highly aggressive tyrannic microbes, parasites and symbiote organisms whose only purpose is to go FUCK OFF WE'RE FULL when anything invasive tries to get in. Their blood is swimming with Phage Cells which are the last word in microbiological warfare - they are to other hostile microbes and viruses what a space marine is to an unarmed toddler, and function as the Tyranids digestive system but distributed throughout the entire body instead of just being in the stomach. In other words, if you get under a Tyranids skin, ITS eating YOU.

A flood spore would try to infect a Tyranid and then go fuck wait fuckfucKFUCKFUCKFU- as it realizes it just fed itself to its would-be victim and is eaten alive.

>>53317711
I recognize the thing and the flood which are formidable opponents, but what's the picture with the group of people supposed to represent?

>>53319626
Read the thread next time bud
The Ancient Enemy
Shit has been posted like 3 times

Nids would win against the Flood easily. The Nids are very skilled at taking on fellow organic hiveminds. The only way you can "fight fire with fire" involving the Nids is by using some kind of magic to enhance your hivemind shite, like how Chaos infects Nids.

Ancient Enemy is the same story, the Nids have probably consumed hundreds, thousands if not millions of these alien hiveminds throughout their trek across the galaxy.

The Thing however, now that's something else. The Thing is rather unique, in that it's like some kind of cellular, almost molecular hivemind.

The Thing would give the Nids a run for their money for sure. I don't know who'd win.

>>53319642
>The Thing is rather unique, in that it's like some kind of cellular, almost molecular hivemind.
So are nids, see >>53319509

The ones you see on the tabletop aren't the only Tyranids. They have Tyranid plants, Tyranid viruses, Tyranid bacterium, Tyranid everything, all symbiotically linked and working together under one mind.

>>53319660
Have you even seen The Thing?

The Thing is unique since it is a cellular hivemind that can force the infected to do things without the infected even knowing it is infected.

>>53319685
That's really not far off from Genestealer infection. And it wouldn't work on Tyranids due to aforementioned Phage Cells and co

>>53319685
>can force the infected to do things without the infected even knowing it is infected.
Source on this
For some reason I'm remembering Carpenter saying once you get the Thing Aids you're basically dead and the thing is running the show

>>53319803
As I recall, the idea of micro infections was an idea proposed by Blair that probably wasn't entirely accurate, since all the assimilations we see are highly violent, and if it could infect people easily and stealthily it had no reason not to do so.
People generally assume that the immune system is capable of fighting it off in tiny doses, or the infection is slow enough that we ever saw anyone fall to it

>>53317711
>Nid vs Flood
To keep it simple it will be a Human Flood World.

Infiltrator Wave will encounter difficulties as Genestealers won't be able to infect, while Lictors unable to extract proper info on the enemy that is not about static defenses & vehicles. The Flood will similarly be unable to glean info on the Nids themselves but probably enough to know they're coming, so it becomes a race to deal with defenses, with the edge for Nids atm.

First Wave will also be an intense time for both sides as Nids will do their gaunt swarm with Warriors, while the Flood brings their force to bear. Gaunts & Warriors would be swift to deal with those that become infected, but a little slow by infected Warriors/Genestealers & reviving the fallen that has not been completedly Nom/Dakka'd. Larger forms also come into play later but with similar results (an Infected Carnifex would be scary)
However Nids would be smart enough to get a FOB up thanks to the Infiltrators.
Still though Flood has an Edge with being able to disrupt synapse and revive the fallen.

Late Engagements is the most difficult for the Flood, as if they do not stop the Nids' continuous food frenzy or if they do not disrupt synapse well enough, the Flood risks being overrun.

>TLDR
While Nids brings an edge to almost all 3 stages of a fight, Flood have the advantage of infecting/disrupting Nids and synapse and would boil down to how well the Flood will be able to use the infected nids (those that they even manage to infect and survive the first engagement) and other tools available

>>53319894
Fuck off. The Flood are dumb fungi zombies. They were hardly a threat in Halo, and they certainly won't be in 40k.

I mean, the Flood was defeated by a fucking guy in near-Future iPod power armour and a space M4.

The Tyranids routinely fight and win against guys in far-Future space-tank power armour carrying rocket-machine guns.

>>53318777
Nids adapted to nugels rot and lifeeater virus. That means it can adapt very fast.

>>53317711
Nid are a poor mans Aliens, they fail in all ways.

>>53319916
Have two
(You)

>>53319943
But it's true.

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>>53319931
>poor mans Aliens
>fail

No, it's the post-Alien xenomorphs that fail. An army of around 200 adult xenomorphs can't kill one spaceship full of Marines? What the fuck?

In Alien, a JUVENILE xenomorph of hardly a day old almost managed to kill off an entire mining station.

FUCK I HATE JAMES CAMERON SO FUCKING MUCH I HATE HIM I HATE HIM I HATE HIM!

>>53319894
>nids
>getting infected
Smug Tyranid and crying Nurgle.jpg

>>53319979
Aliens was much better than Alien.

>>53319983
I wonder how much of that is just Nurgle getting gimped by his own Chaos portfolio.

Nurgle's plagues often end up ineffective against Tyranids. But the Techno-Chaos virus thingie that turn people in TETSUO-IRON-MAN-GIGER machine-flesh tumour monsters works just fine on Tyranids.

But those tech viruses are a wee bit too much from Tzeentch's portfolio so Nurgle won't use it.

>>53318340
They all died, minus some petri dishes some random saved.

That's what the HALO rings are for. They wipe out all sapient life in the galaxy, starving the Flood to death.

>>53319916
>>53319894
ah I forgot to mention that it was going to be recently splintered Hive-ship to hypothesize how a roughly equal force of the two would do against each other.
Otherwise it'll just be a ROFL-Stomp on the Flood, and even with a single Hive-ship it's still pretty close to a RoFL-stomp on the Flood as I doubt the Flood can get too close to a Higher Synapse creature without being drop in or ambushing them (the latter being unlikely as the nids would usually flood every hole with smaller nids prior to the H.Synapse creatures come to the front).

Also the Flood is still at a generally disadvantage as they would general need to use looted weapons to deal some damage to the Nids's frontline.

>>53320019
You're a fucking retard, and here's your (you) you uncultured savage monkey.

>>53319894
Tyranids develop plasma burn syndrome like srgt. Johnson. Become immune to flood control and use tyrannic phage organisms to devour the flood with ease

>>53319979
Alien was a monster hunting terrified miners that had no way of combating it, in an area that aided the xenomorph in every way.
Even The marines got assraped when they first went in, and later only survived as long as they did because their location favoured them.

>>53320039
Did you know that Aliens is actually rated higher than Alien on RottenTomatoes?

>>53320034
>>53320046
Also I realized that the Flood may need to infect the Nid's weapons separately as it's a also a separate. The Exocrine being the primary example

>>53320070
also a separate organism*

>>53320069
>rottentomatoes
>implying plebs know their kino

>>53320070
The biggest weakness is that the flood needs a nerve network to infect things.

It's entirely ineffective against the Tyranids phage warfare.

>>53319979
>ALIEN

Fucking, I DO NOT WANT TO SEE ALIEN 1 3 TIMES.

I WANT TO SEE ALIENS 2.0, FUCKING LOTS OF THEM IN A SPACE OPERA WAR ACROSS A PLANETSCAPE, FUCK SAKES HOLLYWOOD

>>53320089
>implying your opinion matters any more than a single one of theirs
AvP 2 was the best of the AvP game series.

>>53317866
>>53318119
The Thing in the story is both telepathic and also incredibly intelligent - it built a cold-fusion reactor and null-gravity drive with equipment found in an American research station in the 80's.

It is INCREDIBLY virulent, and takes only and hour or so to entirely overtake a human sized organism. All it needs to do is infect a feeding station/pit and it will spread like wildfire.

If anything, the Nids are an example of an organism that may have evolved in a similar pattern to the Thing.

Incidentally, Blair infected himself by touching the eraser of his pencil to the 'dead' thing and touching it to his lip. He was infected and taken over mere hours later, and no one realized it through the rest of the movie. Other parts of the Thing distracted everyone while he built his escape ship.

The Thing is hideously dangerous because even the small parts are intelligent.

>>53320180
>The Thing is hideously dangerous because even the small parts are intelligent.
This.
The Bennings scene showcased why the thing is more than the average monster that happened to be smart, like the xenomorph.
It could have changed and attacked, but instead it chose to spread terror and paranoia. In one scene, we found out that it has sapience, is capable of abstract thought, and can use that as a weapon in order to allow other parts of it to survive.
It's probably among the top 3 scenes, alongside Mac realising he's truly alone.

>>53320180
>is both telepathic and also incredibly intelligent

If that is the case, wouldn't the fire blood test not work since it could say "Hey, you cells are going to have to stay still so we can sell this."

>>53320108
It's the same as Terminator anon, all we wanted was a terminator film set in those cities of ash and skulls and endless fighting. What we get was time travel x 5? or was it 6.

>>53317711
>Flood
Depends on what level theyre at, Nids are basic bio-wizardy in a lot of ways, they can fight off any known infection in a matter of hours even from gods of disease and plague. They likely cant be infected by flood and even if they could they would be killed instantly while mutating. Planetary levels of flood, the nids would win, even solar systems. However once the flood reach the point where they can infect machines with logic and infect space and time, nids get stomped

>The thing
Nids win this pretty easily, being synaptically linked they would know when one creature shuts off from the rest, however they likely can fight off the thing infection or at least slow it. Nids win with ease.

>Swarmlord
Well he is a nid

>Bottom left
What are they?

>>53320095
>The biggest weakness is that the flood needs a nerve network to infect things.
but being living creatures do they not have a nervous system and a brain to control said system?
because non-synapse creatures (excluding Lictors and Genestealers) can go feral (if separated from synapse) and act on their own instinct, the Zoanthropes are just giant floating brains in the physical sense.

also while the nids could quickly adapt to the Flood. couldn't the Tyranids also simply use Acid Blood early on, or are Parasites unaffected by acid? because I sure that the basic nid isn't immue to a rocket to the face

>phage warfare
I'm more familiar with their solid projectiles and less on their biological warfare..

>>53320108
>Not wanting to see alien 3 times
At what point in your life did you realise you were a disgusting pleb?

>>53319931
Hardly?
>>53319979
This sorta, Alien made the creature seem malicious, devious, smart, and dangerous

Since then the alien has kinda been played down, heck in the new film 2 xenomorphs kill a total of 3 people before dying off. That and their reproduction relies on other hosts. Tyranids consume entire galaxies, xenomorphs have yet to conquer a planet

>>53320019
They're different movies, and hard to compare.
Alien is a brilliant horror film.
Aliens is a great action film.

The big problem with Aliens is it ruins the xenomorph for anything else, as we know it's capabilities after that.

>>53320235
No matter how smart you are, you still feel pain.

>>53320280
Alien, Alien Covenant and Prometheus are the same movies.

>>53320235
That is a subject brought up in a comic book; the pain test doesn't work if the cells are attached to a larger, more stable version of the thing.

>>53320258
Depends - something people forget is that the Thing can utilize the organic components of anything that it has been at any point in it's past - even if the particular piece of the Thing in question has never been part of something in it's own past. That means, if the synaptic net is biologically based, the Thing can become part of it, and then you have an even more horrific version of Nids emerging as it subsumes them all and they become a collective of infinitely adaptable units that can merge, separate, and even further mutate to suit whatever situation. Worse, if you take the Thing as described by the book, it not only assumes the intellect of the things it is mimicking, but also is telepathic, meaning it can insert itself into the synaptic net just fine.

If anything, you would have to be worried about the nids not WANTING to fight it off.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QAoONl2P8fw
This feels appropriate

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>>53317711
>This is a Tyranids v. Flood thread now
So out of plain curiosity, in a Flood v. Thing match-up, which organism infects the other? I would imagine the thing would infect the flood infector organism, but I can't be sure.
>Tyranids win
Why? Because they are the most numerous and capable species on this list by far, since it is stated they have consumed other galaxies before.
>>53320390
Keked

>>53320266
Tyranids literally strip world's of all biological matter. Microbes included

>>53320510
The Flood needs specific cells to be able to affect the hose.

The Thing BECOMES those cells. Flood is subsumed.

>>53320767
fair enough.

I think the thing would get hunted quickly if it encountered nids because the hive mind might think something is off.

For the flood I think the thing could infiltrate and then get taken over by the flood creating flood things and then the galaxy is fucked.

>>53320510
To be fair, it is entirely possible the Thing has also consumed galaxies before - it can build spaceships with mid-tech materials and a few cells can infect an entire person in hours by touch.

It's worse than the Nids because the Nids don't infect you by touch, they still have to eat you and you can blow them up and be sure they're dead. Burning clearly doesn't necessarily kill the Thing.

>>53319001
They take the ocean in a few days.
5e rulebook put the average tyranid invasion at 26 days from first spore landing to a completely stripped planet.

Which according to some other fluff involves making the planet noticably smaller, an example earth sized world had its diameter reduced by 4%.

>>53320027
Its worth mentioning that tyranid hiveships have been directly attacked with exterminatus grade virus bombs, the kind the rapidly liquify all life energetically enough to set the atmosphere on fire on more rich biospheres.
Not only did it not kill them, but by the time of the next engagement hiveships had added the virus to their own bioweapons.

>>53322471
Which can make sense i suppose.

Assuming that they also drink oil and possible certain kinds of soils aswell as probably all moisture

>>53319923
But they also got wiped out by the Tau bio engineering a virus.

>>53323052
Wat.

>>53319001
>nids do manage to do things like steal the entire ocean inside of a few months
you mean a few days

>>53320510
Depends entirely on unknown variables, primarily size. With a sufficiently large Gravemind, The Thing could has countless worlds of biomass but would still be fucked because of the Logic Plague. Alternatively, the moment it tries to subsume and become Flood Cells, the Gravemind will take control,as the Gravemind holds ALL Flood cells.

Another variable is tech level. Flood can pretty much take over any kind of tech and use it with surprising precision. Even with basic Human/Covenant weaponry the Flood could probably fight The Thing, but holy shit if they got even a little Forerunner or Precursor gear it's a bad day fo the Thing.

I imagine the Flood would beat the nids, or at least be able to far against one hive fleet at a time. After all the flood did beat the Forerunners which were infinitely more stronger than the Covenant and the UNSC combined.

>>53323314
The Flood were defeated by a guy in iPod power armour armed with a space M4.

Incidentally, the Forerunners were also defeated by a guy in iPod power armour armed with a space M4.

The Flood are weak shit. The Forerunners are/were weak shit. Get the fuck out.

>>53323409
>Incidentally, the Forerunners were also defeated by a guy in iPod power armour armed with a space M4.
Wat?

>>53323409
Please note that the flood were contained on the Halo Rings and massively smaller i nscale than they were during the Forerunner's times. Also Masterchief killed like one Forerunner.

>>53323215
>Even with basic Human/Covenant weaponry the Flood could probably fight The Thing, but holy shit if they got even a little Forerunner or Precursor gear it's a bad day fo the Thing.
Piss off. If The Thing can make a goddamn anti-grav saucer in a couple hours with some ductape and soldering iron, think about what The Thing could do with Forerunner tech.
>>53323409
Oh wait, not that much, seeing how shitty Forerunner tech is. Can't even beat a slightly genetically modified guy armed with 5-minutes-in-the-future weapons and armour.

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>>53323422

>>53319894
the flood need a central nervous system. The Nids can quickly fix that problem with bio engineering on the fly. They could also just start a slow process of digesting the planet from orbit.

>>53323436
Excuses from Bungie "I've lost control of my franchise" Studios to save their horrid storytelling.

Goddamn I hate how the post Combat Evolved games ruined such effective and efficient story telling.

>>53323452
>>53323439
>They haven't read the thread

Just stop. Forerunner-Era Flood are not the same as 'Modern' Flood, and Chief has never even fought proper Forerunners.

>>53323474
2, 3, and even Reach were great desu.

>>53323506
Feck off.

>>53323215
>Forerunner or Precursor gear it's a bad day fo the Thing.
Holy shit yes. The Forerunners made any Exterminatus-level tactics from 40k look childish by comparison (and that's without bringing up the Halos).

The Precursors? Their tech is based on something called "neural physics" (the concept that inanimate matter and thought are inextricably linked and that the universe itself is effectively a living entity), and had built things like 'star roads', which they used to connect entire star systems across the galaxy. In short, the Precursors made reality their bitch. There's a reason the Forerunners had to fire the Halos in the first place. They couldn't compete (plus it was the only way to cripple the massive galactic 'neural physics' network Precursor tech ran on).

Facing modern-era Flood, aliens like the Thing and Nids stand a decent chance of winning. Forerunner-era Flood on the other hand? Yeah, Nids and the Thing are fucked. Nids 'nomming on a planet? Flood wipe it (and the Hive Fleet) out with a pair of 'star roads'. Same goes for the thing.

Seriously, Exterminatus level actions were getting thrown around like candy during the Flood-Forerunner days.

>>53323543
>none of it in the game
>all that advanced forerunner tech got shot up by a dude with a space M4
>goddamn hardlight shotguns

Truly, the Forerunners were a great civilization with unrivalled technology.

Fuck, Halo has become such fucking useless shit. I'm off, seeing if I can get Marathon working.

>>53323592
I mean, it was always the case from the literally the first game. You discover a moon sized superweapon with a stable ecology on it's surface. Then promptly shoot all the machines left to guard it and blow the whole thing up like it's babytime frolics. Such is the nature of crunch vs fluff.

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>>53319721
>That's really not far off from Genestealer infection.>>53320357
>That means, if the synaptic net is biologically based, the Thing can become part of it, and then you have an even more horrific version of Nids emerging as it subsumes them all and they become a collective of infinitely adaptable units that can merge, separate, and even further mutate to suit whatever situation. Worse, if you take the Thing as described by the book, it not only assumes the intellect of the things it is mimicking, but also is telepathic, meaning it can insert itself into the synaptic net just fine.
>If anything, you would have to be worried about the nids not WANTING to fight it off.
It actually kinda irks me that Tyranids don't use Thing-like infection, but then again I want Tiraniddo Waifus...

>>53323215
>Even with basic Human/Covenant weaponry the Flood could probably fight The Thing, but holy shit if they got even a little Forerunner or Precursor gear it's a bad day fo the Thing.
Again, the Flood basically are the Precursors/their technology, hence every Gravemind is able to be the SAME Gravemind.

>>53323634
It was far less jarring in Combat Evolved than in the other games. With each game, I just became less and less interested in the story, until I just returned my copy of 3 without having finished it.

The Flood being something the humans can fight has ruined the power scaling of the factions in the narrative.

They should have turned the Flood into some kind of degenerated heavily damaged remnant of the big Forerunner villain. Don't even give a name to the thing that the Forerunners fought. Just have this thing that calls itself The Flood that does things out of some ancient compulsion that it doesn't understand due to all the data corruption/loss of memories, etc. etc. whatever, you get the idea.

>>53323719
>The Flood being something the humans can fight has ruined the power scaling of the factions in the narrative.

When do they do that? The closest they ever got to successfully fighting them was when the Shipmaster glasses all of west Africa to eliminate the single ship that crashed. They only beat them because the Gravemind, inexplicably, sends the entirety of High Charity to the Ark.

>>53323719
>They should have turned the Flood into some kind of degenerated heavily damaged remnant of the big Forerunner villain. Don't even give a name to the thing that the Forerunners fought.
Anon, that sort of is what they did. The Flood are the remnants of the Precursors, after they reverted themselves to dust. That dust went through heavy radiation and mutated into Flood Spores, which then used its knowledge of Precursor Mental Physics to rip the Forerunners apart.

The Flood fought now are after an unknown number of being starved to the point of virtually being eradicated, with only a tiny number of spores having survived. They managed to regrow themselves in CE that fast after being brought back, and if the Proto-Gravemind on the Truth and Reconciliation had fully manifested then Chief would have been fucked.

>>53320180
The nids are outright psychic though. There would be no infiltration without them knowing. No masquerade will not instantly be recognize as existing outside the hive mind.

>>53323465
so you're saying that the Nids would rather go like the Adept (from the superhero greentext) and just become a vegetable.
also to digest a planet from orbit would require capillary towers
>>53320529
Is that before or after they literally eat all the biological matter and take down the enemy defenses/resistance, or do they sit there as drinking from the capillary tower straws as the enemy forces shoot at them and tear down said towers

>>53323905
Not just psychic. Also magical.

They're psychic enough to hinder the 'magic' of others (Imperials, Eldar, Chaos, etc.)

>>53323719
>Just have this thing that calls itself The Flood that does things out of some ancient compulsion that it doesn't understand due to all the data corruption/loss of memories, etc. etc. whatever, you get the idea.

Technically speaking, it's somewhat implied in the fluff that the Flood are essentially the Precursor form of what you're talking about. I had an explanation for it but >>53323853 beat me to the punch.

And its worth noting that the Flood were close to completing that Proto-Gravemind on the first Halo humanity finds in under 48 hours (the Battle of Installation 04 lasted approximately 3 days, based on the fluff I've read). Even in their weakened/groggy state, the popcorn bastards work fast. 'nids, by comparison, take 51 days on average before they have completely eliminated all general resistance and start nomming the entire planet.

>>53324153
>And its worth noting that the Flood were close to completing that Proto-Gravemind on the first Halo humanity finds in under 48 hours (the Battle of Installation 04 lasted approximately 3 days, based on the fluff I've read). Even in their weakened/groggy state, the popcorn bastards work fast. 'nids, by comparison, take 51 days on average before they have completely eliminated all general resistance and start nomming the entire planet.
You do realise that the Gravemind is fighting humans from the year 2200 something, IIRC. The Tyranids are fighting humans from the year 40,000.

That's a huge time difference, and even if you consider that the Imperium has forgotten a lot of technology, the Tyranids are still fighting enemies with technology so far ahead that you can't even compare that to what the Flood was up against.

>>53324179
That's not really relevant, because Tyranids consume a planet in a month if left entirely alone. The Flood could probably do it in a week if what we've seen is to be believed.

>>53317711
The thing is highly variable here. Are you saying one thing has to attack the tyranids from scratch or are we allowed to assume a whole homeworld ecosystem of things or a hive fleet of things as it were? Cause one human sized thing definitely loses, but I could see an entire planet or system that has fallen to things posing a threat.

>>53324225
A matter of 5 days, as I recall, and by that point entire mountains of Flood mass had erupted onto the planet's surface. And that was with Forerunner and Prometheans fighting them.

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>>53319331
Hey there.

>>53320108
Xenomorphs don't lend themselves to galactic war.

They are basically just a human parasite that hitches a ride and kills unsuspecting civilians or scientists every so often.

Humans in the Alien universe have interstellar travel, particle beams and pulse rifles. xenomorphs are semi-intelligent animals with acid blood.
The only reason they are a threat at all is because nobody knows about them and they infest remote backwater colonies without a military presence.

>>53320311
>xenomorphs have yet to conquer a planet
>he hasn't read the comics

>>53324225
>That's not really relevant, because Tyranids consume a planet in a month if left entirely alone. The Flood could probably do it in a week if what we've seen is to be believed
Pretty much. When it comes down to an eating contest, the Flood have the 'nids beat hands down.

In a head-to-head fight though, we'd have to use the Forerunner-era Flood for sake of fairness, when the Graveminds have reached "Key Mind" status (when Flood have consumed/assimilated entire planetary systems) to compare it to the Hive Fleet/Hive Mind, where they have access to a tactic called a 'logic plague' (essentially attacking and subverting through non-biological means via a sort of "philosophical corruption"). This tactic ended up turning many Forerunner AIs (and even a few Forerunners) against the Forerunner military during the Forerunner-Flood War.

There's also something important to realize about normal Flood infection: When a bio-organism is infected, its so thorough that all infected consciousness and memories are absorbed into the Gravemind, and this infection can't be wiped away by a simple 'mind transfer' or destruction of the physical body. In other words, any 'nid that got infected would become a permanent servant of the Flood (and give the Gravemind a direct link to any Synapse Creature nearby).

Which basically ends up with a 'who can subjugate the other's mental consciousness first?' contest between the Hive Mind and Gravemind. No idea which side would win that particular battle, but the idea of a Flood-controlled Hive Mind or a Hive Mind-controlled Flood is fucking terrifying to think about.

>>53324806
At least in warhams as far as I know the only thing that can by the rules beat the Hive Mind as a whole in a psychic contest are the Enslavers and only due to their mind control being so strong that it can take control of things like unmanned vehicles, minor gods, etc without issue without any need for contact.

>>53324806
Pound of biomass to pound of biomass, I think the Flood probably has the Tyranids beat for processing power. The Tyranids rely a lot more on individual synapses creatures doing some amount of the thinking, where as the Flood is almost entirely centrally controlled beyond instinct.

The thing would assimilate everything. Even the ancient menace. It is way more virulent than the nids or the ancient enemy, and probably more than the flood.

>>53323905
They wouldn't be able to deal with something that replicates itself at a cellular level.

>>53324907
synapze creatures don't donthe thinking. they simply serve as relays.

tyranids are completely contrally controlled.

>>53323041
yeah some older fluff mentioned burrowing forms go after miberal deposits and can make it as deep into the ground as the mantle.

still 4% diameter is a huge amount of material to remove in a matter of days, that's something like 10% of the planets mass. with Earth that would mean removing enough material build their own Mars.

>>53326898
Expecyall that shit gets turned into new biomass as a part of the fleet
Nids are scary

>>53324002
I mean, if the Nids find out that the flood need the thing they're taking over to have a nervous system, then yeah, they might just go for the plant route.

Drop in microscopic spores to do the work of tyrranoforming, make tyranid plants that are all perfectly capable of killing any animal or flood that comes near them while also spewing acid and whatnot. Then, just don't make anything bigger than a ripper as the Tyranid plants just slowly draw in biomass, propogate, and kill off the flood through brainless reactions.

>>53319721
Genestealers were clearly based on The Thing.

>>53320227
It's been a long time since I've watched the film so maybe I'm thinking of the wrong scene.

If you mean when Bennings-Thing does a runner and gets caught but doesn't attack I thought most people just thought it was weak from being incomplete or the transformation process in general.

>>53323905
>telepathy isn't psychic guise!
>muh NIDS

>>53328965
Maybe it tried to speak but its vocal cords were incomplete.

>>53328396
>yfw the Thing doesn't care what your cellular structure is made of

>>53328965
That's the trick.

It could have gone ANYWHERE and HID. It chose NOT to do that. Because if people were watching Bennings...they were ignoring Blaire.

>>53324806
the Thing can assimilate an entire planet in 27,000 hours according to the simulations - and that's in the 80's, with modern quarentine and attempts to combat it in effect.

How long do you think it would take to assimilate creatures that have eaten it and share food sources with each other?

>>53329408

Hmm that is an interesting theory. Considering it's ability to play dead and also keep it's cover till it is 100% blown that's not too unreasonable.

>>53329765
That also backs up the telepathy idea that was never excplored in the movie - coordination and tactical combat makes the Thing even mroe terrifying.

Do you know who the thing was in the end? Hint: "I think we should only eat out of cans, and everyone should prepare their own meals."

>>53329491
You're assuming the Nids don't have the digestive system from hell
They're basically walking digestive systems that only work to break down and absorb all organic matter
The thing would have to be magic at this point and not an organism but some kind of magical force that starts to change cells

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>>53328588
>Genestealers were clearly based on The Thing.

>>53329906
>They're basically walking digestive systems that only work to break down and absorb all organic matter

The bulk of their most numerous warrior organisms don't even have a digestive tract, they're designed to be reabsorbed before needing more nutrients. Without warrior organisms, the Hive fleet wouldn't be able to combat The Thing on the ground and Hive ships can only absorb biomass through capillaries, i.e. by things willingly throwing themselves into digestion pools.

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>>53317711
What about Abeloth?

>Tyranids absorb a planet where the Thing is.
>Thing is now an entire hive fleet at once
Nids lose.

>>53329906
Or, you know, some kind of lifeform that could adapt to hostile environments such as digestive acids (which are still only acids, anon) using a wealth of genetic possibilities from extremophiles across the universe.

If the nids have a biological function, the Thing can absorb and use that too, remember.

>>53330116
Didn't this bitch literally choke out grandmaster luke?

>>53323088
>>53323052
Tau lore you can ignore it. When you think marine wank is horrible Tau go ballistic.

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The Ancient Enemy was eaten by basic bacteria, so it's completely outclassed in this fight.

I don't think anything can possibly be done about the Thing. It doesn't corrupt, or eat, or control. The Thing is completely identical to whatever it infects. Logically this absolute subversion would fool the Graveminds and Hive Minds.

It's unclear what exactly differentiates Thing cells from non-Thing cells, but since the Thing is telepathic, it could be that it only exists as some sort of energy that can only manifest itself through cells it has marked through touch, but it's speculation at this point.

I think the only real weakness it has, is that it doesn't really have the personality to wage war, at least from what we've seen. All it wants to do is survive at all costs, even going so far as to attack itself to provide a distraction, to direct suspicion somewhere else, or to create new opportunities to assimilate.

Basically this >>53330164

Assuming each combatant goes into the fight knowing they have to destroy the others, the Thing wins without trying.

If each combatant is just teleported into the universe, the other races would discover it eventually, and probably create some countermeasure to guard against it, but would ultimately lose because they are all utterly incapable of defending or attacking The Thing without destroying themselves in the process.

>>53329906
you know, the magic of nids keeps croppign up in this thread because WH40Kids can't stand the idea of their team losing.

Claiming Nids are the ultimate planet destroying machine when they're regularly being fought back by humans using tech only slightly more advanced than ours and refusing to recognize the Thing as not only physically capable but smarter than any race in WH40K (can any of them use helicopter and snow tractor parts to make a cold fusion engine from scratch by memory alone?) just tells everyone that you're the worst kind of fanboy.

If it were just physical ability the Nids might have a chance. Agaisnt somethign that can THINK better than they can as well? Pretty sure the Thing will win by taking over a few hive worlds and then just waiting for the nids to arrive while it absorbs every race in the entire galaxy.

>>53330116
Isn't she just a force version of the Thing?

>>53320180
WAit, so in the book the Thing just wants to go home? Man, that kinda spoils it for me

>>53320180
How come the Thing didn't just tell the humans it wanted to go home instead of nomming them then? Can it even be directly communicated with?

>>53330532
No, it doesn't want to go home.

It wanted to get to civilization.

That makes it WORSE.

>>53330596
The Thing even possessed a sense of humor. Did you not see the noose in Blair's cabin when MacReady went to speak with him?

>>53324685
> or the books

>>53330773
I thought blair was gonna an hero but Thing gained control before he did it.

>>53330347
>Claiming Nids are the ultimate planet destroying machine when they're regularly being fought back by humans using tech only slightly more advanced than ours
Except the nids have literally never once lost to the Imperial Guard alone in the history of 40k.

Their only major defeats were from Space Marines plot armour combined with simultaneous massive space battles using very advanced spaceship tech, and Eldar.

> the Thing as not only physically capable but smarter than any race in WH40K
Tyranids are a neural network of trillions of highly intelligent psychic organisms that are telepathically linked, including some creatures that are literal just giant brains functioning as hyper-efficient quantum super-computers that have catalogued the full genomes of every species they've encountered across multiple entire galaxies. The Thing doesn't have shit on that.

And on top of that the Thing would literally kill itself by getting inside a Tyranid because their Phage Cells will rip it apart and disable it faster than it can replicate.

>>53329906
>You're assuming the Nids don't have the digestive system from hell
Most don't even have a digestive system at all. They go murderfuck and if they're still standing by the time they run out of energy the hivemind has found it more efficient to reabsorb them and spawn em again rather than feed em.

>>53331160
They have no digestive tract, but they all have blood swimming with masses of Phage Cells which are an independent digestive system.

>>53331086
It is a virulently infectious telepathic organism that cannot be differentiated from the host organism with a genetic memory that included learned information the original creatures that it has subsumed in the past possessed.

I'm not making this up, this is word for word what the thing is.

It doesn't have a catlogue of the full genome of every species it has assimilated, it has access to the literal knowledge of those species and can utilize the knowledge and biology of those organism. Everything the Nids can do, it can do within itself, and it is infectious.

It's much worse than the nids, because it doesn't require their resources at all.

>And on top of that the Thing would literally kill itself by getting inside a Tyranid because their Phage Cells will rip it apart and disable it faster than it can replicate.

Yes, lets try and attack a creature that is infectious in the cellular levels...with attack cells. This is a brilliant idea that could not possibly backfire in the slightest.

>>53331086
>Except the nids have literally never once lost to the Imperial Guard alone in the history of 40k.

Hive Fleet Scarabus was defeated by Cadians without losing a single company.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Scarabus

Tryanidfags are notorious for not knowing the fluff of other factions and even their own faction.

>>53331086
>Their only major defeats were from Space Marines plot armour combined with simultaneous massive space battles using very advanced spaceship tech, and Eldar.

They lost, hard, to the Mechanicus. The mechanicus ended up being better at recursion and just grinding the other guy down than the nids.

I just remembered something.

In the short story "Outcaste", the Ordos Xenos infect genestealers with some fungus that has properties of the thing. I don't remember how exactly it went. Somebody should read the story.

>>53331210
>es, lets try and attack a creature that is infectious in the cellular levels...with attack cells.
....I don't think you have the slightest fucking clue how cellular biology works.

>>53331242
Shut up, Carnac.

>>53331086
>lol never defeated
>these defats don't really count!
>they're just plot armor
>my nids don't have plot armor at all they're just that good!
>except these times
>and this time
>they're goign to take over the whole galaxy for sure!!
>except when people gang up on it
>totally immune to infections at the cellular level because of their blood
>what do you mean circulatory system?
>Their blood is everywhere!
>in every single cell inside and out!
>I'M NOT MAKING SHIT UP!
>YOU'RE WRONG!

>>53331271
>>totally immune to infections at the cellular level because of their blood
>>what do you mean circulatory system?
>>Their blood is everywhere!
That's canon, you dumb faggot. They have a hybrid circulatory system with incomplete blood vessels and haemolymph bathing intercellular spaces (I'm copying this word for word out of their codex) in addition to their three hearts.

If you don't even know Tyranid biology what are you doing in this thread. I'm not even gonna bother addressing the rest of that garbage right now because I need to leave to go see the Alien movie.

>>53331262
Neither do Nids or the Thing, anon.

Canonically NOTHING KILLED THE THING. Blair and several others were infected by the burned remains of the Thing. The Explosions didn't even necessarily kill it, only scattered it across the snow where it would freeze and was harmless.

Even then, it still managed to survive the burnign of the camp.

Because only a Thing would accept food from an opened source - say, a bottle of whiskey - from someone else who might or might not be a Thing.

How many times have we had this thread?

>>53331320
Because biology doesn't matter. that's the issue.

The Thing is Telepathic.
The Thing can replicate any type of biological organism to the point of perfection.
The Thing can mix and match any kind of organism biology with any other organism's biology.
The Thing's cells can individually infect an entire human sized creature in less than an hour (e.g. Bennings).
The Thing can create high technology devices using low technology scrap in days using knowledge from previously assimilated organisms.

Biological defenses don't work on it because it subsumes the defenses and becomes them. It cannot replicate technology within itself, but it can make use of technology around it using nothing but blueprints from previously assimilated lifeform's genetic memories.

The nids can't win because all they have is their biology - the psychic network is telepathic in nature, which means the Thing can infiltrate and replicate that too. You can't win again the Thing if all you have is biology, because it's biology isn't just superior - it will become part of the Thing.

Nids are world devouring mosnters, but they're still biological, and the Thing is an entire genetic biochmistry lab all on it's own, with every single subsumed species it has ever come into contact with as tools to mix and match with.

Are you getting it now? The Nid's are just more tools for it to use.

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>>53331320
>nid biology is perfect
>against something that copies other creature's biology perfectly
I foresee this ending badly for everyone else, actually.

This thread is full of people that don't know how cell biology works
How an extremely hardy 40k tier immune system would annihilate any microorganism

>>53331327

>nothing killed the Thing

Except they did.

Blair was infected by the escaped dog.
The others were infected either by the dog as it walked around camp or by The Thing as it walked around as a human form.

The only reason that the Thing from the Norwegian camp never died was because it dived into the snow and got left alone. There's a bunch of preestablished stuff that needs to work for Thing infection too.

It can't infect dead people. Otherwise the guy with the slit wrists would be a Thing.

>>53331436

>Telepathic

Short Story? Yes. Movie? Never confirmed and extremely unlikely.

>replicate any biological organism

Yep but not perfectly or it'd know it had fillings etc.

>mix and match

Not really. It never did that.

>individual cells

Never confirmed. Only assumed from Blair with a computer simulation. The Thing could have been rusing them using Blair's intelligence.

>create high technology

Not in the movie. In the short story? It made a nuclear reactor and UFO. In the movie it could have been nothing but a prop to waste time.

There's as much evidence to the contrary which is why any assumptions are useless.

>>53331086
Nigga you don't understand

The Thing would subvert the Phage cells the moment they came into contact

Furthermore, because Thing cells are identical to non-Thing cells, why would the Phage cells attack Tyranid biology?

>>53332110
>It can't infect dead people. Otherwise the guy with the slit wrists would be a Thing.
Frozen Thing is still Thing.

>>53329491
What simulation?

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sup organism coming through

>>53332689
Watch the movie, senpai.

>>53332869
Oh that part. For a second I thought you meant someone for real actually made a simulation to test this shit out. If there was a real simulation out there I would've been impressed!

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>>53330116
>What about Abeloth?
>>53330376
>Isn't she just a force version of the Thing?
SHE IS A CUTE! A CUTE!!!
>>53331544
>I foresee this ending badly for everyone else, actually.
Or again, Tiraniddo waifus...

So what I've gathered from this thread is:

Nids vs the Flood = Slight advantage to Flood, but either way the rest of the galaxy's fucked by whatever abomination results from their collision.

And The Thing is allegedly OP as fuck.

>>53330264
>If each combatant is just teleported into the universe, the other races would discover it eventually, and probably create some countermeasure to guard against it, but would ultimately lose because they are all utterly incapable of defending or attacking The Thing without destroying themselves in the process.
Or in other words, pull a Forerunner purge the Thing from galaxy via kamikazi Halo firing.

The Thing wins. Simply because it can imitate and attack from within. Not only being able to fight like a tyranid due to taking its form, but also by infecting the ones they fight with itself. It would be able to get into those feeding pools and fuck shit up.

If tyranids could spot it, then it'd become a mess of constant cellular cold war with each one trying to top the other. Flood and other shit stand out too much to really have a hope of infiltration and aren't as virulent to be able to out compete them.

If The Thing gets it's game going then Nids are fucked

>>53333196
>And The Thing is allegedly OP as fuck.

It's not necessarily that (Necrons, Supreme Commander, The Culture, any mechanical race really, are completely invulnerable to it and can ignore it without any consequence), it's just that the Thing is the mother of all hard counters to biological civilizations. And OP pit it against some of the two biological-ist races in fiction, so naturally they get rekt.

>>53320335
That's not true, Prometheus is Alien rendered incoherent by having some other movie about ancient creators mixed into randomly and having the script edited by a retard. I haven't seen covenant yet, but I suspect I won't bother as it's almost certainly shit.

>>53333446
From the little I read the Thing is technologically minded, so all it needs to do is infect a biological race with technology and then it can wage war against any mechanical species that threatens its existence.

>>53333509
It is but I think we don't have stats on their technology

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All these posts about infectious organisms that devour worlds and destroy civilizations, and not a single mention of the Bydo? For shame /tg/, for shame.

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In this Nids vs. The Thing debate the lynchpin seems to come down to telepathy. So really what should be argued here, past all your extraneous bullshit, is:

Could The Thing infiltrate and subvert the Hivemind.

I'm an admitted Nid fanboy. I have a nid army and have had for the past few editions. I also admittedly haven't seen The Thing.
But nids have a hivemind on an intergalactic scale. Telepaths that aren't even in direct contact with the hivemind, just near it, will have their domes pop from the SHADOW of this fucking enormous telepathic entity's tiniest bits hovering in the same system as their planet.
I don't think The Thing can compete with that.

>>53329906
It is like magic and is based on Lovecraftian mythos. The only thing it hates is cold, which means nothing since if it takes the form of a dog like it did in the movies then it can survive just fine in those environments. The whole reason it never spread like wildfire is that there is no plant or animal life in antarctica for it to easily snatch up.

>>53333302
Until, you know, the Tyranids completely obliterate it because it doesn't interact normally with the Hive Mind.

>>53333579
I was going to post it but I couldn't find my R-Type folder

>>53333580
If The Thing perfectly replicates an organism and is fully capable of being a participant in the hive mind (which is what it would need to do in order to actually pass as any tyranid organism smarter than a gaunt) it's entirely probable that the two-way telepathic communication could cause some kind of cross contamination between both.

Being part of the hive mind means contributing to and being part of a single collective consciousness. At the point where that happens the two things might just merge together.

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>>53333605
This thread desperately needs more Bydo related things.

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Here is the flood at full power......

It's fucking terrifying.

>>53333642
If what the thing really wants to do is assure its survival and propagate itself across the universe all it has to do is let itself be digested by the Tyranids, the Norn Queens will go "Oh shit, there's a way to make each individual Tyranid cell into a sentient survival machine with indepedent survival instinct? I gotta tell everyone about this!" then suddenly the next wave of Tyranids across the entire galaxy are composed of Thing cells that also are linked together with the hive mind and now everybody is fucked.

>>53333700

And gets rekt by iPod power armor man. So, what we are told of the flood and what we see happen are two different things.

>>53333594
>because it doesn't interact normally with the Hive Mind.

It would though. That's the Thing's whole gimmick, and why it's so scary. It perfectly subverts the host.

>>53333723

Nid fans can't comprehend how a Lovecraftian monster shits on their precious space locusts.

>>53333298
>Flood and other shit stand out too much to really have a hope of infiltration and aren't as virulent to be able to out compete them.
Problem with this claim is that Flood don't necessary need to compete on the infiltration level, since they're capable out out-pacing everybody else in terms of the eat/consume/infect department. Seriously, who needs infiltration when you can just overwhelm the enemy

The Thing can infect an entire planet 27,000 hours, according to the simulation data.
270,000 hours = 1125 Days = a little over 3 years.

The Nids can consume a planet (if left completely unchecked) in a month. They average little over 3 months if facing resistance.

The Flood? Consume/infect entire planets within 5-7 days (and that's when they're facing Forerunner tech), resistance or no resistance.

As for the Thing being able to control the Flood... it'd probably end up in a cellular cold war just like with the Nids, since yeah, it is actually as virulent as they are, and like the Hive Mind, the Grave Mind telepathic/psychic link is part of all infectees/Flood Forms in the entire galaxy when it reaches a strong enough point, and it already gains the knowledge/memories from its victims just like the Thing...

Also this >>53333700

It's pretty much a "which space parasite do you want to get fucked by first?" contest at this point if we're being completely honest with ourselves.

>>53333723
>It perfectly subverts the host
In this case that means it obeys the collective will of the hivemind.

>>53333718
The Flood the chief fought were to the Flood in the file I posted what sea sponges are to us.

The Flood at full power would destroy anything short of the Time Lords.

>>53333769

The flood aren't a threat. If the Halo games are any indication then you could kill the flood. Saying "oh the flood is badass guise!" and then having a faceless mook wipe them all out kinda kills off the power level. Ancient enemy got killed by bacteria.

That leaves Lovecraftian monster vs nids. And the thing wins hands down. The other two aren't even relevant.

>>53333777

>subverting means obeying

Anon... I think it's time to admit Lovecraft monsters are more OP than your space locusts.

>>53333809
See >>53333796
Also, your hateboner for Halo-related fluff is showing again. Seriously, you're bias on this is blatant it's not even funny.

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>>53333642
>If The Thing perfectly replicates an organism and is fully capable of being a participant in the hive mind (which is what it would need to do in order to actually pass as any tyranid organism smarter than a gaunt) it's entirely probable that the two-way telepathic communication could cause some kind of cross contamination between both.
>Being part of the hive mind means contributing to and being part of a single collective consciousness. At the point where that happens the two things might just merge together.
>>53333711
>If what the thing really wants to do is assure its survival and propagate itself across the universe all it has to do is let itself be digested by the Tyranids, the Norn Queens will go "Oh shit, there's a way to make each individual Tyranid cell into a sentient survival machine with indepedent survival instinct? I gotta tell everyone about this!" then suddenly the next wave of Tyranids across the entire galaxy are composed of Thing cells that also are linked together with the hive mind and now everybody is fucked.
And thus, TIRANNIDO WAIFUS!!!

>>53333740
The problem is that in the case of a race where the majority of its members have no intelligence and obediently destroy themselves on command this doesn't work. The Thing wont let itself be destroyed and Tyranids are expected to destroy themselves, they literally walk willingly into digestion pools so their biomass can be re-absorbed into the fleet, Tyranid ground forces don't survive a Tyranid victory, they get broken down into amino acids and sucked up by their spaceships through giant straws.

So what exactly is the thing supposed to do in that situation?

>>53333857
The Thing should fuck people instead of eating them
It would survive better

>>53333848

Not being bias. I like the flood more than the nids as a concept. But the fact is that saying how powerful an enemy is and then having that enemy be more pussy than goombas does not mean you still get to brag. It just means Halo hyped up an enemy to make a game where you fuck up a powerful enemy. But hyping them up that much just to bring them down shows how shit they are.

I can say any monster is badass and powerful, but if I then had this apparently badass thing die to a guy with Windows 10™ power armor, all I did was defeat the whole point in saying how powerful and dangerous the enemy I made is.

>>53333889

Go right into those digestion pools and take over the hive fleet. That is giving the thing the perfect vector for infection.

>>53333835
Tyranid organisms that either have a synapse connection themselves, or are within the range of one that does are totally obedient to the will of the hive mind. So something that is actually perfectly imitating one of those creatures has to be perfectly obedient to the will of the hive mind otherwise it will out itself as not being a Tyranid (or at least indicate that it's a defective mutant).

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>>53333894
>The Thing should fuck people instead of eating them
>It would survive better
EXACTLY!

And then we shall ALL be Waifus!!!

This is the most interesting thread I've seen in years.

Who the fuck follows The Thing that closely?

>>53333979
I wonder what system you could use to run a game of The Thing? Gotta be some fun way to incorporate The Thing into a game.

>>53333952

Imitation does not mean following it. If I gave someone an order to do X, they may very well do X. But that doesn't mean they can't stab me during a battle to infect me, or wait to dive into the digestion pools to infest everything. It can act like it is following the hivemind and still do its own thing. Similar to how other bugs can infiltrate ant colonies or bee colonies. The illusion of obedience doesn't mean they hear the commands and obey them. Nor would a literal lovecraft monster be incapable of disregarding the hivemind.

>>53333989

Already done. There's a larp game based on it at some colleges, mafia variants, changelings in space station 13, etc.

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>>53333979
>Who the fuck follows The Thing that closely?
It's got a huge following man, and that's just the John Carpenter film...

Bet you didn't even know there was a movie done LONG before that, did you?

>>53333929
Throwing yourself into a pool of digestive fluid that routinely digests every single thing on any given planet including the micro-organisms is a really dumb gable. It'd be better of trying to infect a capillary tower.

>>53334000
>literal lovecraft monster
Isn't it just an alien

>>53334016
If you have any sources on those college games I sure would love to check em out.

>>53334030

Either would work. Given the shit the thing has done I don't think acid is gonna be a big deal. Especially since even on a cellular level it can survive. Throw it in amino acids and other compounds just gives it more shit to stick to and spread. Either way it'll get in there and get tyranids because, as said earlier, the thing is a pretty hard counter to any biology based being.

>>53334000
It seems like you're missing the point. Many tyranid organisms literally do not have an independent will of their own, or have their minds totally supplanted by the hive mind. If something is trying to pretend to be one of those organisms and it isn't actually directly controllable by the hive mind it's going to reveal its true nature instantly. Orders from the hive mind aren't written or verbal communications through a chain of command, it's instantaneous psychic communication with a massive, ever-present collective intelligence.

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Leave Tyranids to me.

>>53334036
No. It's based on the lovecraftian mythos, so an alien in those settings isn't just little green men in ships. It's otherworldly and usually horrifying.

>>53334123
>little green men in ships
Oooh, deja vu.

>>53334092
From what I've read, eventually the Hivemind finds out things aren't as they seem. But it hinges entirely on when. If The Thing is able to reach a sufficient group of nids, it won't matter, because form then on the Hivemind will have to avoid the Thing for eternity since there is virtually no way for it to completely destroy the Thing. In the end, i don't see how the Hivemind avoids The Thing forever. The Thing will eventually find a sufficiently sized group of nids.

>>53334092
And, just like reality, there are ways things can appear to be part of a hivemind and not really be part of it. As we see in insects all the time. Which only becomes easier for the thing since it now has access to said hivemind, tyranid biology, and individual tyranids have no real mind to speak of. So, a person being weird may catch a human offguard, but can be unnoticed a lot easier among tyranids once you're able to spoof their biology and the way they work. 40k races can't do that very well (but human assassins can polymorph and infiltrate genestealers who also share a genetic and psychic connection). Now compare that to a creature that excels at that and can infect you on a cellular level and you are a species that is always sharing cellular information to adapt.

>>53334069
At the point where something that is allegedly supposed to be alive can survive a process the purpose of which is destroying any conceivable type of living thing including extremophile micro-organisms it is effectively magic and can't plausibly be killed by anything.

When something has no apparent limitations you're essentially dealing with arbitrarily powerful micro-wizards and discussion is pointless.

>>53334219

>you're essentially dealing with arbitrarily powerful micro-wizards and discussion is pointless.

That's Lovecraft for ya, which The Thing is loosely based on.

>>53320357
Engaging in a synaptic net means going directly vs the psychical might of the Hive Mind. Not the best idea - it's basically suicide.

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>>53317711
Why don't we just send pic related to kill the Tyranids?

>>53334234
>That's Lovecraft for ya,
Err, not really. I can't think of really anything in any book or story by Lovecraft which that is arbitrarily powerful, except for actual gods.

>>53334219
Oh, and adding to my previous point, in DoW2 you shoot a virus into the pools to kill tyranids. Since the game is canon, shit can survive in there. Even if you say it was into the capillary, the thing could then do that and it's gg. If humans of 40k can do it, the thing sure can.

>>53334288

It is based on, not written by, Lovecraft. Namely the shoggoth. Which was made by the elder things who are aliens which put the old ones to sleep until the stars all align just right. And the shoggoths brought the elder things down hard.

>>53334296
Viruses are not cellular and are not alive. The Thing is both of those.

At best the Thing could get one bioship. While that's enough for it to become a minor player on the galactic level a thing of that size will take a while to assimilate, the Hive Mind will realize that that shit is fucked and drop it, then the Thing will never get close to any other Tyranids.

>>53320510
just watched this movie like five mins ago

>>53334341

>a virus can have a shell capable of surviving tyranid phage cells and other shit but an intelligent being whose very cells are alive can't

Ya lost, kid. If a virus can be that effective against all these cellular attacks and safeguards tyranids have, the thing can as well. If a crumbling Imperium where tech is damn near viewed as magical can make it, something like the thing would have zero issue getting past or taking over said things. Tyranids would get fucked because their own canon has left that door wide open.

>>53334017
I did not. But I am now intrigued

>>53318340
Precursor tech is referred to as running on "neural phsyics" which means it was all (presumably) destroyed when the Halo Array was fired. So even if modern Flood grow to enough power to use Precursor tech, they'll have trouble finding any.

> Neural physics was a Precursor concept which posited that the Mantle encompassed the entire universe, including living beings, energy and matter. The principles of neural physics also postulated that the entire universe was living, but in a way that was beyond the comprehension of biological organisms. Blurring the line between philosophy and science, neural physics was not a mere belief to the Precursors as transsentient entities. They were able to harness its principles as a transcendent form of technology, used to create solid structures or travel the stars. The workings of neural physics were completely beyond the conventional technologies of younger races, even the Forerunners, the most technologically adept civilization since the downfall of the Precursors themselves.

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>>53334446
>I did not. But I am now intrigued
It was called "The THING from Another World."
Here's the opening credits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAWqJpRFLwE

>>53334577
More intrigued by the lore I can spend hours reading like I do with 40k. Never even played the game or watched someone play.

>>53334527
>Precursor tech is referred to as running on "neural phsyics" which means it was all (presumably) destroyed when the Halo Array was fired. So even if modern Flood grow to enough power to use Precursor tech, they'll have trouble finding any.
While you're correct, most of the thread (aside from one anon) has been using the Forerunner-era Flood for comparison against the nids, since the Flood pre-Array firing were closer in scale to the Tyranids than the ones encountered in the Halo games, which are more like a splintered Hive Fleet cut off from the Hive Mind.

Halo sounds interesting? How do I get into the lore? What games to play/ books to read?

>>53334219
Well yeah, The Thing is the crawling chaos, the king in yellow, with a splash of sci-fi paint.

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>>53334527
>> Neural physics was a Precursor concept which posited that the Mantle encompassed the entire universe, including living beings, energy and matter.
You mean the same Mantle linked to the "Forerunner" "Domain" that supposedly fixed Cortana's Rampancy and gave her power over all the Guardians and Promethean Constructs?
The thing that's allowing her to pacify the Galaxy and conveniently making it easier for a revenant space fungus to nom on?
That one?
>>53334643
>More intrigued by the lore I can spend hours reading like I do with 40k. Never even played the game or watched someone play.
Well then here's a link to that Website no one is suppose to like:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheThingFromAnotherWorld

>>53334681
A splinter fleet who's been starved for millennia.

>>53320390
that's amazing

>>53334770
>You mean the same Mantle linked to the "Forerunner" "Domain" that supposedly fixed Cortana's Rampancy and gave her power over all the Guardians and Promethean Constructs?
>The same Cortana who was more or less constantly mind-raped by Gravemind for a little over a month before MC rescued her from High Charity
>The Flood had corrupted most of the 'Domain' before the firing of the Halos, including the Flood Key Mind's old logic plague
To be fair, Cortana hasn't gone full-blown Mendicant Bias and started releasing the Flood from containment across the galaxy, so she's not a pawn of the Key Mind... at least not that she's aware of anyway.
>Chief's waifu is back but now she's going to get us all killed

Also, it's worth bringing this up because unlike Nids, Flood can infect both biological and mechanical races. (Hello Necrons. Nice empires you have there...)

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>>53335413
>To be fair, Cortana hasn't gone full-blown Mendicant Bias and started releasing the Flood from containment across the galaxy, so she's not a pawn of the Key Mind... at least not that she's aware of anyway.
That's the real kicker, the Flood don't need to to directly control her, just misguide her altruism via their proxies (HELLO Warden Eternal) and twist her actions to their own ends.

Either she succeeds in subduing the Galaxy leaving it wide open for their consumption, or she fails and takes all the blame, leaving the Flood free to wait it out until another patsy comes about.

>>53333913
What part aren't you understanding? It seems like you're trolling or willfully ignoring shit. The flood that the chief fought was a fraction of a fraction of what the flood was at its height. Seeing as how all the arguments for the other races in this thread are putting to use the full potential of whatever race they think would win, why are you stripping the flood's full potential?

>>53334250
It comes down to biology.

Is the tyrannic hive mind psychic net based in biology?

>yes
The Thing can imitate it perfectly and infiltrates as per normal. Thing wins.

>no
It's another case of WH40K fanboy "NID MAGIC" and the kids are still fighting a terrible war of attrition against their own biology against an intelligent enemy that can use technology, biology, and genetic recombination from anything it's ever encountered, including the nids.

>>53317781
thats not how it works at all

>>53334411
You clearly don't know how viruses work vs a single cell organism which is what we assume The Thing is, in its most basic form.
I'll try and break this down barney style
Think of a virus as a special kind of magnet that can only attach itself to very specific metals. This magnet doesn't think or feel or have a purpose because it's just a magnet. Said magnet is wandering around in a huge pool of water. It doesn't move on its own because it can't it just goes where the currents take it. When said magnet comes close to the metal it can attach itself to, it'll attach itself and release the "kill juice". The kill juice takes all the properties that make that metal a metal and uses them to make several copies of other little magnet like the magnet that put its "kill juice" into it. Those magnets then go and continue the cycle.
Viruses aren't alive, they're simply dead things floating around that can latch on to specific parts of specific cells and use that cell to replicate itself.
The thing isn't viral it's clearly alive.

>>53335769
Didn't the Tau use this against them
They reverted to some old weapons and killed a bunch of Nids because they had adapted to other advanced weaponry
What makes you say it wouldn't work?

>>53335860
>Viruses aren't alive
>Opinions differ on whether viruses are a form of life, or organic structures that interact with living organisms.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848616300103

>>53323905
It doesn't just pretend to be the thing it consumes. It very well IS the thing it comes.

Which would be an interesting thing to wonder, if a thing-infected tyranid would either serve the original thing, or the tyranids.

>>53336094
Both.

The Thing canonically built a force field generator to contain a cold fusion power source out of materials available in a 1970's Antarctic research station. It is telepathic enough to not only assimilate knowledge from others to use without having infected them in the first place, but chose to accept biological weaknesses in the host bodies as tools to further create disruption, fear, and social control through fear and paranoia until such time as another part of it was nearly done with a craft that was capable of intercontinental flight. Some of the hosts didn't realize they were Things until it was convent to no longer hide the fact they were Things.

It really does come down to whether the psychic network of the Trynanids is biological (and several people have quoted text indicating that is the case) or not. And if it is, the Thing can infiltrate the 'Nids until it is finished with assimilating their main cognition points, at which point the Thing now takes over the entirety of the universe in short order.

The Thing is a self propagating apocalypse.

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>>53336379
>Some of the hosts didn't realize they were Things until it was convent to no longer hide the fact they were Things
The Thing sounds like an Alpha Legion plot.

>>53323215
I'd like to point out >>53336379. The Thing has access to ultratech that it put together using what is essentially scraps. It isn't just biologically superior, it is intellectually superior all the other creatures listed.

It would not be far fetched to think it would be able to use magic if it assimilated chaos worshippers with knowledge of rituals.

thanks for making me waste like four hours reading up on Halo lore asshole

If the Thing infiltrated the Hive Mind why would it still be able to act independently? If it doesn't shrivel up from the Shadow in the Warp when the Tyranids arrive, successfully infects a Tyranid despite the bio-defences (which it could perhaps do), isn't immediately detected by the Hive Mind and manages to hide by connecting with it, what's the game plan from there on? If you trick the Hive Mind into thinking you're a Tyranid then the Hive Mind will just control you as a Tyranid.

>>53317866
The flood would lose invariably, they only nom sentients. Seriously, that's the whole point of the halo array, it destroys sentient life. Anything with a nervous system just sort of dies. Microbes and other shit stick around.

Nids eat everything, including the mineral resources of the planet if some sources are to be believed. They react far faster to changing tactics and whole hive fleets don't die to a single low power space marine, more of a skitarii in 40K power level terms.

>>53332799
My Salamander gene-seed brother.

>>53336780
The flood are actually precursors of the Halo Universe making them far more sinister than just a parasite.

>>53336973
They adapt terribly slowly. That's what damns them. They're simply not as fast and don't have as many sources of food. They eat the planet too, according to a lot of sources. Then they eat the stuff that eats the planet, shit out a few more ships and continue on their way. Unless you give the flood extra shit they lose. And since the picture is a UNSC marine flood form I'm going to guess we're dealing with 'modern' flood.

Seriously the flood are basically nids but slightly worse.

>>53336585
Because it is still capable of independent action even as the host is acting normally. Even while the host body was dying it waited until the doctor tried to resuscitate the body before pulling a fast one and eating he doc's hands and then infecting him...which most people forget was an almost IMMEDIATE infection, as the Doc's body started to react within minutes of being killed (as did several other people, meaning that Blair's estimate of full-world contamination was off by at least two orders of magnitude). The fact that it can act like a standard tyrannic means it can infect more tyrannies as time goes on, until suddenly you have an entire hive fleet of shapeshifting, intelligent, potentially individual monstrosities that can access higher tech than anyone else in the galaxy and has an even wider array of biological nightmare fuel to work with than the kid's themselves do.

All it takes is a few stray cells touching yours and you're on a countdown. That means all the Thing has to do is casually touch any other tyranid in passing and the infection spreads like wildfire, even if it is pretending to be a good little kid and isn't distinguished from the rest. Blair was infected by touching a pencil tip to his lips that had touched a burned husk of a thing. That's some insane virulence.

>>53337068
Seriously, fuck this computer's autocorrect.

>>53336780
Yeah, the only thing Tyranids don't eat is Necrodermis.

Because you don't want to eat nano-machines that can teleport back to a machine shop for reconstruction. Really bad for your organs when a significant portion of your molecules just teleport away.

>>53337210
.....and that leads to the horrifying realization that the Thing can use it's hideous biology to reprogram individual nano machines at the cellular level.

>>53337245
It will be tricky to learn how to program Necrodermis.

But when The Thing does... well, fuck it man. Game over for everyone. Not even Chaos can stop The Thing now.

>>53337384
Force fields and cold fusion with scrap from 70's research station, dude.

It's a fucking smart monster.

>>53337415
I know. But it will need fucking microscopic limbs in order to create nanotech tools to interface with the necrodermis, and then it needs to reverse engineer the programming language the Necrons use.

That's a bit more difficult than building some high tech stuff out of scraps.

>>53335613
Holy glandular swelling, Batman!

I see Cortana has optimised her holographic interface for interaction with males.

>>53337068
I agree that the Thing could probably maintain autonomy if it were far enough away from the Hive Mind and it could infect other nids by contact, but when near a synapse creature it would be entirely under Hive Mind control. The Hive Mind totally overrides base instinct- that's the whole point of Instinctive Behaviour. We also see that the Hive Mind does work on a cellular level, the phages and toxins from a toxicrene are even capable of thought. If any of the Thing's cells are doing something independent they aren't hooked up to the Hive Mind, and if they aren't hooked up to the Hive Mind then they aren't hidden.

>>53337436
>absolute cellular control, including tentacles extending from it's cells
>the combined intellectual capacity of every creature it's ever had contact with in it's entire existence
I think it could manage eventually.

>>53337524
So basically what you are saying is that the kids are just the Thing, except not as smart and more specialized than it is.

It would be in the Nid's best interest to be subsumed by the Thing.

>>53335413
>Also, it's worth bringing this up because unlike Nids, Flood can infect both biological and mechanical races. (Hello Necrons. Nice empires you have there...)
Nids can consume mechanical races. They just chose not to consume Necrons, because only a fucking retard would consume Necrons.

>>53337524
The Thing does not work on instinct. The Thing is a cellular hivemind. It doesn't matter what the Shadow of the Warp tells the Tyranids to do, The Thing can just control its host on a cellular level.

>>53317866
>Nids would probably lose a few units before realizing something was wrong and destroying the Thing.
they would not.

>>53337686
He's also wrong about the Flood. The Nids would rip the Flood a new asshole. Doesn't matter if you can assimilate faster if your opponent can kill you faster than you can assimilate.

The Flood were defeated by some guys with 5-minutes-in-the-future technology. The Tyranids routinely fight guys that make the Forerunners look like cavemen smashing stones together.

The only real thread on the list is The Thing.

My argument is that if the Thing was to masquerade as a Tyranid by connecting with the Hive Mind it wouldn't have any autonomy. For the sake of the argument I accept that the Thing could infect and even control nids, but the moment a synapse creature gets close it's dominated like any other gaunt.
>>53337614

The Thing would not be able to resist the Hive Mind. The Hive Mind can break physics with a minute fragment of its willpower, brute force won't cut it. I mentioned instinct because the only way I can see the Thing doing anything independently is if it's not thinking. If it's not hooked up to the Hive Mind then that's a different scenario.
>>53337592
I'm saying that the Thing can't hide by connecting with the Hive Mind because it would lose control, even on a cellular level. If the Thing infected an entire hive fleet it would still be overwhelmed by the Hive Mind.

>>53337793
So, 'Nid magic, got it.

>>53337793
>I'm saying that the Thing can't hide by connecting with the Hive Mind because it would lose control, even on a cellular level.
Then why can anyone else not be controlled by the Hive Mind? If what you say is true, then all sentients would be effected all the time, especially if they had telepaths.

>>53334114
tell me about the bydo instead of just complaining about how now one is talking about the bydo, I've played R-type a miniscule amount and I know fucking nothing about them you fucking autist.>>53333579
>>53333579
>>53333677

>>53337804
>>53337804
Good. We're on the same page.
The Thing cannot connect with, and still be independent of, the Hive Mind because it's 'Nid magic.
>>53337815
The Hive Mind doesn't connect with anyone else. It probably can't. If the Thing where to imitate a nid and connect, however, it would be controlled.

>>53320266
Been a while so i may be wrong but the Tyranids basically do what they do best and swarm with shit on every level from the cellular up. It's a bit more intense than grafting onto a creatures nervous system.

>>53337879
The Thing is an aggressively telepathic being that can control minds according to the original story.

www.outpost31.com/books/who.txt

It's entirely possible that the Thing could control other Nids.

Threads like these is one of the reasons i love /tg/.
Being slightly hungover and just casually read interesting discussions while my brain returns to normal functionality. Good goin m8s!

>>53337974
My point is not that the Thing can't control nids. I've accepted that this can happen. My point is that if it tries to hide from the Hive Mind by telepathically masquerading as a nid and sending "nothing unusual going on here" signals, as has been suggested in this thread, it'll get overwhelmed once it's near a synapse creature and lose independence. If it disconnects then it's not hiding anymore.
I only know the surface level info on The Thing and I think it's really cool. Thanks for posting the book. I'll read it when I have time later and then who knows? Maybe I'll find my true answer and forever be at peace.

>>53337879
>>53338077
>The Thing cannot connect with, and still be independent of, the Hive Mind because it's 'Nid magic.
I'm inclined to believe The Thing mind and the infected mind are not one and the same within each host. No interest in dealing with anything but the movie Thing, though.

>>53338138
Pretty much yeah. The Thing and The Thing Overmind are not the same thing, as the blood test showed.

>>53337793
Irrelevant, The Thing controls its hosts on a cellular level. It can override anything being sent from the brain because it controls things down to cells, perhaps even deeper.

Remember, it can make blood crawl. That's how much control it has over the flesh of the host.

>>53320046
Johnson was a SPARTAN I.

>>53317711
The Flood are really no match for the Nids. They don't adapt very fast, if at all, on a biological level which means even if they can take over the first wave of Nids the Hivemind will eventually just adapt around them.

The ancient enemy got beaten by bacteria, so it would lose in short order.

We honestly just don't know enough about the Thing to make any bets. If it is simply a virus or a microbe then it too will eventually just be adapted around.

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>>53337858
Not that anon, but I'll sum it up best I can:

The bydo are basically genetically engineered, magitech versions of The Thing and Tyranids. They are canonically created through a mix of mad science and "black magic", which partially explains the following insanity.

They assimilate everything they touch, both organic and inorganic. And they exist simultaneously as a wave and a solid, which makes them even more virulent and infectious, since they can travel and infect as inconspicuously as a sound or a pulse.

There are only 2 weapons that can truly harm them:

-The "wave cannon" technology implied by R-Fighters, which can annihilate them due to sharing the same dual wave/matter form.

-Other Bydo tissue, as employed by humans in the form of Force Pods.

>>53338412
Don't forget the time travel.

Also, am I the only person who drew their own levels for R-Type on my math grid papers in primary school?

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>>53338463
Yup! They can do that too.

>Also, am I the only person who drew their own levels for R-Type on my math grid papers in primary school?

Nope!

Also gonna dump 2 rare pieces of official art

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>>53338540

Would melta be the best solution against the Thing?

>>53317711
Nids get acid blood upgrades because they're hence they can become completely immune to infection (not to mention infiltrating them is impossible due to the whole synapse thing)
Not to mention Nids have been shown to evolve IMMUNITY to fucking nurgle diseases, the other two options are still based on science fiction, not demonic space magic.

No idea about the bottom left.

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>>53328588
excuse me?

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>>53317711
I'm not well versed in flood lore but: Do they have mind bullets?
Nids have mind bullets
Mind bullets are neat.

>>53338977
Bottom left gets rekt by hydrocarbon-eating bacteria.

>>53339048
so most bacteria?

>>53339060
The ones used to eat oil after spills.
A random modified protobacterium eats it.

In my opinion, the Thing wins for a simple reason.

1: If thing can assimilate Nid's mental abilities and mimic them, the hive mind will be mimicked and then taken over. The Tyranids become the Thing. The Thing Wins.

2. If the Hive mind detects the Thing and consumes it, and the Hivemind discovers the Thing's ability to control it's own cells utterly, the Nid's develop that power as well, and become the Thing. The Thing wins.

There is no way this works out well for anyone except the Thing.

>>53319221
I loved that movie.

>>53320019
Yup. Aliens is much better paced. Alien is half a great movie.

>>53319221
>>53319152
I really preferred the book. The movie glossed over what was really going on.

>>53320959
I don't think it was ever proven that the homemade spaceship would even be functional. We just see it building a device that ultimately is never put into practice. What would it even use as an energy source to get off the continent? I always figured that the Thing was somewhat autistic and just mimicked behaviour rather than actually understanding them.

>>53328588
Genestealers are a mix of Alien and Shadow Over Innsmouth.

>>53319848
Everyone forgets the first very quiet infection, and then the forget how quickly the others progressed compared to Blair's timeline, and they also forget how stealthily Blair was infected in comparison.

A few cells, eraser to lip. That's all it took.

>>53340848
In the book, it built force field containers for atomic energy systems and an antigravity backpack.

In the movie, it deliberately used other infected to istract, draw attention, and cause trouble, specifically to keep people from bothering Blair. It also put together the flying machine from pieces of other equipment that it had destroyed on it's own.

That's not autistic mimicry, that's malice aforethought and deliberate planning.

>>53341017
It's not made evident in the movie. All we see there is that it has been building something.

>>53337858
This. The Bydo would eradicate everything up there. They're a fantastic creation that's somewhat wasted on a side-scrolling shoot 'em up.

>all these people arguing in favor of The Thing who don't even know what the Shadow in the Warp is

If the Thing is telepathic, would go insane and die from psychic overload just from getting near the Tyranids synapse web.

>>53341991
Agreed. I love the Thing, but it's best chance would be the long war. Infect a few stray beings, then build up from there. Build up it's own Hive Mind rather than trying to match it right off the bat.

>>53342045
Sounds about right to me.

The Flood and The Thing would both definitely lose in a head-to-head, but if you add a third party for them to infect they might stand a chance.

>>53338077
It would only obey the synapse creature until it was no longer convenient for it to do so, or more likely, until another Thing elsewhere needed a distraction.

As already stated in this post >>53336379

There were people who didn't even know they were infected until the Thing assumed direct control of them. And when you have thousands of nids crawling over each other, the infection would spread like none other. Even the synapse creatures would be infected in short order.

>>53328588
The space ship hoping clawed aliens who sometimes extra teeth inside their mouths and implant hosts to reproduce?

Yeah 100% the thing mate

File: 1418432486249.jpg (2MB, 2480x3508px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 2480x3508px

>>53336379
>And if it is, the Thing can infiltrate the 'Nids until it is finished with assimilating their main cognition points, at which point the Thing now takes over the entirety of the universe in short order.
>The Thing is a self propagating apocalypse.
>>53337384
>But when The Thing does... well, fuck it man. Game over for everyone. Not even Chaos can stop The Thing now.
>>53337592
>It would be in the Nid's best interest to be subsumed by the Thing.
>>53340343
>There is no way this works out well for anyone except the Thing.
THUS THE COMING OF THE TIRANIDDO WAIFUS!!!

>>53337441
>Holy glandular swelling, Batman!
>I see Cortana has optimised her holographic interface
Yes Robin, yes she has...

>>53337703
>The Tyranids routinely fight guys that make the Forerunners look like cavemen smashing stones together.
>implying the Forerunners, the guys who used Exterminatus-level tech for 'small scale' incursions (seriously, the Halo arrays are just the tip of the iceberg), aren't as technologically advanced as the factions in 40k

>>53337062
>And since the picture is a UNSC marine flood form I'm going to guess we're dealing with 'modern' flood.

Majority of the thread has been using Forerunner-era Flood (since the modern Flood are an unfair comparison to make against the Nids), which were OP as fuck. Just read >>53333700 for how scary those lil popcorn bastards get when they're at full strength. The modern Flood are barely 1/1000th of a fraction as dangerous as the Forerunner Flood (and that's being generous).

Seriously, in a match of Forerunner-Flood versus Tyranids, it's pretty much an 'unstoppable force meets immovable object' scenario slightly tilted in the Flood's favor since it can infect/persuade the minds of others into surrendering to the Flood's will via the logic plague (something that can affect both artificial and biological minds and bring the infectees to the Flood's side, INCLUDING NID LIFEFORMS), which means it could (theoretically) corrupt the Hive Mind itself.