Designing a story campaign

[afewveiws]

So the concept for this is that a damaged bio ship survives a space battle but crash lands on an already harvested planet.

*adapt and thrive*

Decides to harvest the bedrock to supplament biomass that it has very little of.

Questions i have:
How does bedrock [granite] compare to chitin shell? I imagine it wont be super relavent on smaller bugs except will likely be heavier, but on bigger bugs ... im not sure how it would effect saves/toughness.

The second question is about the same but in relation to weapons. Thinking the fleet will be limited to melee weapons but there could be a case made for simple projectile weapons relaceing the living ammo with stone projectiles. Some guns wont be an option at all, still working out the details here.

Any lore knowledge or refrences would be helpful.

P.S. how many points do you think a hive ship costs in 40k?

[yoritomo]

If you want to get technical, granite is not bedrock. Bedrock could be one of several igneous/metamorphic rocks.

Granite itself is made up of two different rocks, Quarts crystals and feldspars. It is one of the hardest rocks (having a composition reminiscent of concrete) and also fairly dense if I recall correctly. Granite does not work as a replacement for chitin because if you hit it hard enough it will crumble (due to it being an amalgamation rather than a uniform rock). It's why we don't use concrete as tank armor.

You also need to remember that if you throw a rock into a digestion pool, you're not going to have a rock in the end; you'll have the minerals that make up that rock. That or the rock sinks to the bottom of the pool and you get nothing. You certainly won't end up with that rock on the back of a newly spawned tyranid.

What you should look into is the crystal structure of various rocks and minerials. If you take a rock down to it's base components than those components will try to form crystals. Besides, crystals look cooler than rocks on models.

[acehilator]

Yeah. Concrete was used as improvised applique armor in WW2, but it wasn't very effective, and in some cases even decreased the survivability of the tanks it was applied to.

[swarm492]

Im not sure how you want to work your weapons, but in the book Desert Raiders, Tyranid pods launched from bioships are seen to have incorporated imperial space wreckage into themselves. I would assume this means that the bioships in their rush to develop more mature pods simple incorporated non fully digested wreckage into maturing pods to speed up their viability for release.

You could do the same with the wounded bioship altering itself to discharge the planets bed rock as ammunition, or even the mass driver rounds that are still logged in its self.

Take your bullets back good sir.

[Iryan]

Considering the extreme pseudoscientific supermaterials waved around for all factions (plastisteel, ferrocrete, prometheum, wraithbone, just to name a few), looking at real-life minerals is not going to get you much farther. Even though the tyranid carapace is sometimes referred to as "chitin" or "chitinuous", it is obviously nothing like real world bug chitin either, considering it can give you the same kind or protection as SM power armour. The entire concept of "biomass" that is devoured by the swarm before it leaves is also not really well-enough defined. Do they just consume any carbon- and/or hydrogen-containing matter? What about any other elements? How does the elemental composition of a nid organism look like?

What I am getting at is, feel free to handwave anything regarding the consumption of minerals and their use as building material for new nid organisms. Just make stuff up. If you say they can make some sort of mixed boron-nitride alumosilicate composite material that is stronger than anything known irl, then they can. Worst case, you can always blame it on warpy psychic hivemind stuff.

Also, regarding the hive ships' point cost, depending on the size of the ship you are thinking of, look at the Tau Manta and then think upwards from there. IIRC the Manta is pretty small as far as 40k spaceships go, so yeah. 4-digit point values for small ships. Proper hive ships would easily be 5 digits, with main vessels probably reaching into 6 digits.

[yoritomo]

The concrete applied to tanks in WWII was called Zimmermit (probably not spelled correctly) and it was used over the designed steel armor. The idea behind it was that A) anything is better than nothing, B) the increased standoff would cause high explosive rounds to detonate early, reducing their effectiveness, and C) different mediums provide addition protection. It was never thought of as a replacement for the actual tank armor.

Modern day analysis seems to think that zimmermit was marginally effective at best and the additional weight caused undue wear and tear on the drivetrain and suspension of the tank. In essence those tanks were knocked out without the allies firing a shot.

[acehilator]

Offtopic, but... no

The only use of Zimmerit was as a defensive measure against magnetic AT mines, acting as a spacer so an attached mine wouldn't adhere to the tank.

Not sure about Russia, but both Germany and the USA used concrete armor in various ways. Germany mostly as additional protection of very thin armoured parts as proofing against AT rifles, which worked. USA tried reinforcing frontal armor of Shermans, which did not work... no difference against regular AT gun shells, and drastially decreased protection against Panzerschrecks, the german bazooka.

[yoritomo]

I'd like to respond to that, but we are way off topic as is.

The only thing I'll add to this conversation now is crystal bone swords. Picture how cool that would look in your head. Oh, and diamond spitting devourers.

[beetlejuice]

Jul 16, 2020 23:08:31 GMT yoritomo said:

I'd like to respond to that, but we are way off topic as is.

Such a mod thing to say. Here I was learning cool history facts. Kudos on your self restraint!

And I’m getting more ’ardcoat for my boneswords.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Is the bioship the focus of the campaign or is it the hive fleet? If it's the hive fleet, then the bioship could be consumed for parts. Maybe make it a limited resource for retooling or replacing losses. If the bioship is the focus of the campaign, it could be a tower defense style campaign where ground forces try to attack and disable parts of it.

Who are the antagonists in the campaign? I feel like they could also be a source of biomass. Another thing to consider is that ygmral or other hive fleet forces could have been left behind. If that's the case, they could be converted to biomass or added as new forces.

For the game effects of the stone, I feel like there are tons of options. It could be some sort of trade off system, where you gain a feel no pain or some bonus to saves in exchange for loss of movement or some other negative. It could be a level up system where you start getting more buffs for more stone used. It could also be a form of evolution or technology tree. If the evolution route, then I think it would be roll on a d66 table for upgrades, but the longer the campaign goes on the hive fleet could discard options or force certain options for upgrades. I could also see doing roll your own hive fleet and having it so the traits change as the hive fleet incorporates more stone.

For the composition of the stone, you could also consider if the stone is corrupted by the warp or is blackstone or some special material. If so the benefits could change.

All in all, it sounds like a really interesting idea for a campaign. Definitely post how it goes!

[dranzyl]

Yeah biomass can be anything that tyranids can use to be honest. They take away water and atmosphere too when they consume a planet. Plus they use unique flora and bacteria to gather nutrients and materials from everywhere (including the ground) which are then themselves harvested.

You could say that instead of carbon your fleet uses cilicate (for pseudoscientific reasons, silica is the second most likely element to support complicated life) and not really change anything in the army composition.

Or change the fluff that the world is only half consumed to begin with. May create interesting last grab scenarios.

Or use more 'feeder' organisms in your army with the reasoning that the fleet has a high priority on quick recycling of expended biomass (such as projectile weapons).

[afewveiws]

I like the crystal carapace idea. Diamond would be unusable but a quartz based material could be effective for both armour and weapons. Im going to limit ranged options i use though due to the game mechanics im tring to use.

The fully harvested planet creates a scinerio for the nids where they have to get creative to function and get back to space.
This puts them on the defensive and thier ultimate goal is to build another small fleet to make it to a bio rich planet to start again... nids being nids. The now crystal supplament should allow it to stretch its biomass twice as far and by downgradeing to smaller ships it could potentially be sneaky and have better chance of takei g on smaller patrols.

The imperium forces that are infestigating will need to find the nids and destroy them before the get off the rock. The catch is they dont know whats there they where just sent to patrol the area and a sanctioned psycher caught a wiff of the shadow and is now useless as that usually goes and so have no comunication so they are just going to answer the problem as is the imperium way...

Environment rules:
Zero atmosphere so pressurized suits are required. Failed saves that dont kill the model could still die to suffaction-an imperium model that is missing a wound rolls at the end of each round and dies on a 1.

All battles will be fought in nid dug tunnels in the beginning.

I want to provide a nerf to the stats of the nids to represent the struggle they are having to make it through but also to give the imperium player a chance considering he will have to attack a nid hive on thier turf.

So with the crystal as a carpace replacement would you reduce toughness, sv, or both on monsters? Could also reduse speed for smaller buggs. Stealers i was going to force them to take extended carpace. Gaunts would lose bounding leap and have a 6" move instead of 8"... and the perk for the nids would be a reduction in points for alot of things. 30-50% cheaper models if taking the nerfs.

When talking about weapons.... crystals can hold a sharp edge but can break easily... game wise i dont think this would be a super relavent diferense though. Some guns would have different rules like hiveguard guns useing crystal ammo wouldnt be changing directions and flying around corners but line of sight shots would be still applicable. Also shock-gun would be efficient due to no expenditure of biomass when fired...

For the bioship points ... i think someone said 5-digits!... well then lets start at 10,000 and then say half of the ship was destroyed in space and 1,000 of it it designated to the spawning pool and related peices while 2,000 of it is occupied in large biotitan like mawlocks that tunnel around collecting useable minerals for the crytal supplament material.

So that will leave 2,000 pts for this fleet to make defenses. With a 50% reduction to most of what is avalable it could hold out for quite awhile and through attrition would gain more actual biomass to use. No available charecters for the nids in this.

Thats the skeleton so far of the rules i intend to use. With the addition of a time scale mechanic and limited to a patrol at first for the imperium.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

I'd say that the nids can recoup losses via digested biomass (make it on a 2+ for infantry). They could also eat enemy infantry on a 2+ per wound killed as well. You could make it that that only happens if they win as the imperium might burn things if they win.

The crystal could give a benefit as well (+ to tough, a feel no pain, -1 to hit via camouflage, forcing an enemy to reroll hits or wounds of a 6, allowing reroll saves of a 1, etc). Move should be limited though. I'd also say that it could function like extended carapace, so a +1 to save but at some sort of loss to the unit.

[afewveiws]

Well the crystal shouldnt give any buff, if it was better then the nids standard food then it would already be used. I have to assume that regular nid carpace is better then a crystal shell. Remember that what ever is going to be used would have to be dissolved in a biologically produced acid, diamond isnt an option. Quartz should be and so would silicates... though i feel like sand is something that nids typically harvest during a standard planet stripping... might be wrong though.

Toughness is a reflection of how hard you have to hit them and Sv represent the durability of your armour. So maybe a higher toughness and a weeker sv or maybe same toughness with a weeker sv. Wieght should definatly be higher so redused movement on alot of things is already in the works but gaunts and stealers sized things wont notice the differnce much. Slightly less armour wont change a t-shirt sv and stealers depend on speed more then armour and will likely only have minimal plating just to complete thier body structure.

I'll work on a list of stat changes per unit so its easier to see what im thinking and then we can tweek some numbers.

[yoritomo]

I wouldn’t go out of my way to change stats. For the most part they are balanced enough regardless of what you think things are made of. If you must do something to reflect the crystal armor then switch out a stat on the bracket chart with armor. I would suggest the movement stat myself. So when they start off they have the usual 3+ save, but as they take damage and parts of the crystal get blown away it becomes a 4+ save, then a 5+ save. And because they get lighter as the crystal gets blown away it offsets the movement penalty for being hurt.

If you think about what you are trying to do logically, the best place to get resources from a stripped planet is subsurface deposits. If you only go down to the bedrock then there is plenty of oil, coal, natural gas, underground reservoirs, etc... All that is bio mass that tyranids can use. Is it enough to start a hive fleet? No, but it might be enough to get a ship into orbit.

Going with this a bit further, your story should be that the Imperials come across what they believe to be a dead hive ship on a dead world. However, when the start to investigate they find a vast Tyranid mining operation. The crystal on their carapace is a byproduct of all the digging they’ve been doing.

In game terms this can be expressed by having battles in giant caverns or tight tunnels. Maybe bring back the old night fighting rules to represent you’re fighting underground. Things like that.