Real size of the Leviathan

[NidNoms]

Fellow Tyranid's, i have another puzzle in my head, i have just finished reading the Leviathan supplement some time ago and it has sparked something, we all know that the Hive Fleet Leviathan originated in the southwester sector of the Galaxy and very close to Terra. But in the Supplement, they are know somehow in the northeastern part of the Galaxy, how? did a tendril go that far to search for new feeding grounds? or is this Hive Fleet bigger then what we have been told? 

[Remalis]

It's all terrifying speculation really. The prints of galactic maps are only really showing the leading edges of the various fleets into the galaxy. They don't represent what mass of the fleets trail back into the void between galaxies.
There's also the speculation that there is only one true fleet of Tyranids, and if you were to span out far and wide enough, you'll see a weblike filament connecting them all to a common source. ....

[lordsia]

You want to get really confused, try to figure out how fast Tyranid FTL is. Supposedly, it takes them years if not decades between systems - except that that would mean centuries if not millennia for the fleets to penetrate, let alone overwhelm, single sectors.

[NidNoms]

Jan 22, 2015 23:05:40 GMT lordsia said:

You want to get really confused, try to figure out how fast Tyranid FTL is. Supposedly, it takes them years if not decades between systems - except that that would mean centuries if not millennia for the fleets to penetrate, let alone overwhelm, single sectors.

beats Warp Travel

[lordsia]

In terms of reliability, I guess. It's not supposed to be faster though.

Related thought; what does the Hive Mind do with all absorbed bio-mass? Earth alone has something like 5.15x10^18kg of gases in the atmosphere, 1.4x10^21kg water in the hydrosphere, and there's 5.6x10^14kg pure carbon tied up in bio-mass. The Hive Mind slurps it up in less than four months.

Assuming that Hive Ships are about ten times the size and a thousand times the mass of Imperial battleships, we're talking about almost five hundred to five thousand bio-ships, each 50+ kilometres and 1-10 teratonnes of mass, for each planet consumed. And that's just from the atmospheric gasses; adding in the oceans increases that by a thousand-fold, and grabbing a bit of crust could easily double it again...

[NidNoms]

Jan 24, 2015 2:01:39 GMT lordsia said:

In terms of reliability, I guess. It's not supposed to be faster though.

Related thought; what does the Hive Mind do with all absorbed bio-mass? Earth alone has something like 5.15x10^18kg of gases in the atmosphere, 1.4x10^21kg water in the hydrosphere, and there's 5.6x10^14kg pure carbon tied up in bio-mass. The Hive Mind slurps it up in less than four months.

Assuming that Hive Ships are about ten times the size and a thousand times the mass of Imperial battleships, we're talking about almost five hundred to five thousand bio-ships, each 50+ kilometres and 1-10 teratonnes of mass, for each planet consumed. And that's just from the atmospheric gasses; adding in the oceans increases that by a thousand-fold, and grabbing a bit of crust could easily double it again...

to answer your question. this Attachment Deletedand this Attachment Deleted

[blackrainbow]

Jan 24, 2015 2:01:39 GMT lordsia said:

In terms of reliability, I guess. It's not supposed to be faster though.

Related thought; what does the Hive Mind do with all absorbed bio-mass? Earth alone has something like 5.15x10^18kg of gases in the atmosphere, 1.4x10^21kg water in the hydrosphere, and there's 5.6x10^14kg pure carbon tied up in bio-mass. The Hive Mind slurps it up in less than four months.

Assuming that Hive Ships are about ten times the size and a thousand times the mass of Imperial battleships, we're talking about almost five hundred to five thousand bio-ships, each 50+ kilometres and 1-10 teratonnes of mass, for each planet consumed. And that's just from the atmospheric gasses; adding in the oceans increases that by a thousand-fold, and grabbing a bit of crust could easily double it again...

Also, see the many unsuccessful fleets out there that get wiped out. Plus plenty of it converted to energy to sustain all those fleets/tendrils.

[glitchrr36]

there is a theory that the nids are just a "hand" for some unspeakably massive entity somewhere in the void, which uses them to acumulate biomass to feed into itself

[NidNoms]

Apr 26, 2015 0:07:10 GMT glitchrr36 said:

there is a theory that the nids are just a "hand" for some unspeakably massive entity somewhere in the void, which uses them to acumulate biomass to feed into itself

interesting 

[grarik]

Jan 24, 2015 2:01:39 GMT lordsia said:

In terms of reliability, I guess. It's not supposed to be faster though.

Related thought; what does the Hive Mind do with all absorbed bio-mass? Earth alone has something like 5.15x10^18kg of gases in the atmosphere, 1.4x10^21kg water in the hydrosphere, and there's 5.6x10^14kg pure carbon tied up in bio-mass. The Hive Mind slurps it up in less than four months.

Assuming that Hive Ships are about ten times the size and a thousand times the mass of Imperial battleships, we're talking about almost five hundred to five thousand bio-ships, each 50+ kilometres and 1-10 teratonnes of mass, for each planet consumed. And that's just from the atmospheric gasses; adding in the oceans increases that by a thousand-fold, and grabbing a bit of crust could easily double it again...

I think you need to consider the size of hive fleets as well. The way I understand it tyranids approach space warfare in the same manner as planetary warfare: sheer numbers to overwhelm. As such a fleet could comprise of 10,000+ bioships of various size. Due to the relative short range of their ship-to-ship weaponry they'd take horrendous casualties while closing in to attack range, but they'd have plenty more ships to continue the attack.

I wouldn't discount the possiblity of "biomass containment" ships existing as well. Essentially massive creatures that exist for the sole purpose of containing compressed gasses, water, etc. They wouldn't be seen by imperial forces because they wouldn't actually take part in the invasion, instead sit in a safe place somewhere nearby with the narvhals and other non-combat bioships until either the planet is overwhelmed, in which case they'd get refueled, or the invasion was defeated, in which case they'd instinctively try to link up with another hive fleet

[jaysic]

Leviathan is the third "wave" to crash into our galactic shores.

Behemoth came in as 1 massive fleet from the eastern fringe, which somehow got wiped out at ultramar.

Kraken shows up, and splits into several smaller "splinter fleets" to try and avoid losing everything in 1 big battle, like behemoth. They also arrived on the eastern fringe.

Leviathan also split into several tendrils, but rather than coming in from the east, went below the galatic plailne, then emerged from below. It's not so much arriving at different parts of the galaxy, but different tendrils emerging from, literally, the depths of empty space. This, on a galactic level, looks like jaws clenching onto it's prey, and (please do not swear) up both communication and warp travel on a much larger scale, further hampering the Imperium from sending reinforcements like it did to ultramar, while also not telegraphing the fleets next target.

[mattblowers]

Theres a picture of the leviathon in another thread on this forum! It's quite large.

[NidNoms]

Jun 25, 2015 19:07:50 GMT mattblowers said:

Theres a picture of the leviathon in another thread on this forum! It's quite large.

 this is not topic related

[BattleMetalChris]

Jan 22, 2015 23:05:40 GMT lordsia said:

You want to get really confused, try to figure out how fast Tyranid FTL is. Supposedly, it takes them years if not decades between systems - except that that would mean centuries if not millennia for the fleets to penetrate, let alone overwhelm, single sectors.

That's not entirely out of the question. Fluff-wise (assuming the current cannon is at the year 999.M41, which I've seen in a few sources) there's been 260 years since first contact on Tyran.

[Kyokii]

As an aside to their FTL, I thought they did the gravity well bend spacetime thing? Their attacks take decades because they slow down at the edge of star systems to prevent crashing into them (or, in a real world sciency thing: not annihilating the star system with particles that collect along the space warp bubble thing that then get catapulted at bull (please do not swear) speeds into things. I forget what it's called)