The galaxy is HUGE, we all know that. We also know that the Imperium and Chaos Marines use warp drives to get around. So, how does everyone else do it?

I'll make a list so that you super-duper awesome 40K savants can simply add to it and what-not. I've included what little I know/assume.

Eldar: Some gate-thingies.

Dark Eldar: The same as Shiney-White Eldar, but spookier?

Tyranids: Space farts? (A joke)

Necrons:

Tau: Warp drives?

Orks:

Anything else to add? Oh yeah, thanks!

Here is what I recall.

Eldar: Webway portals, which are a series of tunnels outside the normal universe where time and distance become a little confused. Eldar space vessels use solar radiation and galactic tides to zip about in normal space.

Dark Eldar: The same but they have a whole cityinside the webway!

Tyranids: No one knows....they obviously have some form of warp travel/ftl but noone knows how it operates other thanb the presence of a hive fleet disrupts the astronimicon

Necrons: Inertialess drives so they zip around at the speed of light.

Tau: Warp drives. They can only manage short range jumps using beacons transmitting into warp space.

Orks: Hitch rides on hulks, primitive warp drives, teleportas and sheer will get these guys about.

Tau: As far as I know the Tau vessels do not really fully enter the warp, but are accelerated through real space by skimming warp space (or the border inbetween)...

Luthor Harkon said:

Pretty much Warp-light.

Sweet and thanks. I was especially curious as to how the Necrons got around. From what little I've read it seemed as if they started on a planet and stayed there as opposed to flying around space and all. I wasn't aware that they had space travel.

I still think Tyranid space farts are cool...

Tyranid:

Some stowaway on spacehulks, mostly Genestealers.

The tyranid Hive Fleets do not use the warp as far a I understand, they move from planet to planet, eating and reproducing, not in a hurry to go anywhere except their next meal.
They don't need the warp because they are not out to conquer that and that planet or strategic point, they just move and consume...

Santiago said:

Tyranids utilise warp travel, and also use the mutations and heightened aggression brought on by warp exposure to their advantage.

If the nids didn't use warp travel they would never get anywhere. C'mon. It would take them tens of thousands of years to cross the galaxy and they would be a threat to no one.

I just pictured that steamroller scene from the first Austin Powers movie, but with the 'roller as a Tyranid and the screaming guard as well, an Imperial Guard.

I'm not well informed on fluff, but are Tyranids even aware of the Warp? I suppose they have Psyker-like powers so maybe they can detect the warp, but even so what do they do once they arive, chase demons around, travel to the shining beacon of Terra, have some unkown navigation instinct?

I kind of assumed it would be in their best interest to simply planet hop, spreading like weeds. As for being a threat to anyone, I imagine as soon as they encroach on a sector they are immediately a threat. Their only warp travel would be as accidental hitch hikers.

On a side note, what prevents Warp traveling races from simply mounting a direct attack on principal planets, like Terra (home of the God Emporer of Man), Mars (AdTech base) and Saturn (Library of Ordo Mallius)?

"Brother Captain, we have received word that Hive Fleet Really Really Humongous has departed the Octavian Sector and is headed for the nearest Imperial space."

"By the Emperor! Alas , we have a mere 900 years to prepare. We must assemble all our Battle Brothers to deal with this urgent threat."

Agent.0.Fortune said:

As Tyranids go, they seem to be strongly tied to the warp, but not in any conventional sense. Heck, there's been theories put forth that the hive mind is basically the equivalent to an alien chaos god, but that's mostly just fan-boy conjecture. Not much is known about how they see things; just that they come, eat, and leave. They do have method of interstellar navigation with is frighteningly similar to the Imperiums -they fallow beacons. When a gene stealer cult reaches critical mass, they or it's primarch (unconsciously?) send out a strong psychic beacon into the warp. When a Tyranid Hive Fleet catches the beacons scent, they make a bee-line for that world and the nom-nom begins.

As for warp travel, as mentioned above, the hive fleets would have to travel the warp else how the heck would they get anywhere in any kind of timely manner. It would take them thousands of years just to finally close in on a stealer beacon... plenty of time for the Imperium to purge the stealers and set up some kind of crazy trap or intercept for the hive. They would be no threat because the Imperium would always have years upon years to prepare for any invasion that will be arriving in several hundred to several thousand years.

Now, why can't someone (say Abbadon) just warp on over to Holy Terra and commit a little exterminates of his own? The deep and true reason is quite simple -because that would ruin everybody's fun. In the early days of 40k, I know that in order for a ship to translate to or from the warp, they had to be a good distance from the systems star (or any other major concentrations of extreme space warping mass) else it was almost guaranteed that perching the veil would go terribly wrong and they'd end up spat out somewhere 5,000,000,000 light-years from the milky-way or inside the systems star or some such. It was wonderfully summed up once as fallows:

Imagine real space is inside of a balloon, the warp is outside. The balloon's rubber skin is the veil separating the two and the ship is a long needle. Now, if the needle is perpendicular to the balloon's surface, it will pass though no problem. However, if the surface is curving away from the needle, the needle may penetrate or it may simply glide along the surface or even bounce off depending. Now, imagine that balloon has a deep dent in it like someone was pushing their finger into it's side really hard. This dent is a gravity well which all mass creates in the universe. The more mass something has, the more of a well it creates and a star creates a heck of a lot of gravity, like a finger pushed in really hard on that balloon. So, there's this dent in the balloon's (veil's/space's) surface. A needle moving perpendicular to the balloon's surface (exiting the warp) would not penetrate the sides of the dent in the balloon but, instead, would slide along it until it comes to the center of the dent at which time it would finally pierce the balloon. That center would be the center of the gravity well -in other words the dead center of hat ever mass was making the well, usually a star. So, because of these gravity wells, ships need to enter and exit the warp out beyond the edges of a system where space isn't as curved and warped by the systems star.

If ships are limited (unless incredibly suicidal) to entering and exiting the warp beyond the edges of a system, then the planets of said system would have time to set up blockades, defenses, etc. Likewise, warp-space is routinely scanned and monitored near planets that can afford/need to have such psykers and any invasion fleet would be known about some time in advance. Though this still doesn't explain why there haven't been more attempts on the Imperiums home system... perhaps too heavily defended with all kinds of insane defenses?

I'm by no means an expert in any of this... my knowledge is murky at best. This is just what I've been able to pick up here and there and may not be all that accurate. Take it how you will.

I imagine it's a matter of logistics and that the losses of attacking Terra would be far too much to make it worth it. As far as the Tyranid warping I was thinking they might "sail" along warp-winds by "latching" onto passing Things. It's 4 A.M. here so I'm going to be crap at explaining myself, but it's like they reach into the warp and dig into something that's lurking in there. They psychically guide whatever they've attached themselves to through said warp to their destination. This feels Tyranid-like to me and if you add in some Chaos-like side-effect that whips them into even more of a frenzy, it's even more sinister.

I don't have any links to back this up, but my understanding is fluffwise that the Tyrannid hivemind is so gargantuan that it manpulates the warp itself. This is why daemons do not bother the Nids in transit. The hivemind -- composed of binzillions of organisms with ONE COLLECTIVE SOUL -- is so powerful it simply is impenetrable to them. The same reason Nid fleets block out psychic activity.

bogi_khaosa said:

Where did you come across that?

Either way, Tyranids do generate an effect known as "the shadow in the warp", which blocks out psychic activity, and presumably facilitates easier warp travel also. Up close, some Tyranids generate a "psychic scream" which is a head wrecker for anyone attempting to use psychic powers in their vicinity.

I read it... somewhere...

Rapid-fire googling gives me the following. I can't vouch for the original source though.

THE SHADOW IN THE WARP In order to move from planet to planet, human spacecraft travel through an alternate dimension known as warpspace. Warpspace is the medium through which human Astrotelepaths send psychic messages enabling the million worlds of the hnperium to communicate with each other. The Tyranid hive fleet also moves through the warp. Normally any space-craft moving through the warp sets up vibrations which can be detected by a human Astropath, but the hive fleet is so unimaginably vast that it creates an impenetrable disturbance like a huge blocking shadow in the warp. This shadow is the dark, impenetrable will of the hive mind itself, before which the astral spirit of a puny psyker is about as safe as a candle in a hurricane.

Once the Tyranid hive fleet arrives, the shadow cast by the hive mind presents an impenetrable block which prevents Astropaths from sending or receiving telepathic messages, stops spacecraft entering the warp and forces spacecraft already in the warp wildly off-course. As the Tyranid hive fleet advances, the area of the Imperium swallowed up by it simply stops communicating, giving almost no clues as to what has happened.

http://www.electric-rain.net/w40kRPG/d20%20w40k/Tyranid/tyranid_history.htm

The Battlefleet Gothic supplement book: Armada has a wonderful secontion on the 'nids (as well as other xenos!)

'Imperial scientists believe that hive ships and their attendant drone ships have a deep connection to the Hive Mind-- the over-arching gestalt consciousness of the Tyrannic race. This pervasive psychic contact permeates the area around the hive fleet to such an extent that Warp space is distorted for light years around the fleet's position. Travel through the Warp becomes increasingly uncertain near the Tyrannic fleets and astrotelepathy exceptionally unreliable or completely useless. Many Astropaths have lost their minds in battle with the Tyranids, and entire squadrons have been crippled by dangerous Warp eddies. Thus, as the hive fleets advance, confusion and terror preccede them beneath the suffocating shadow they cast over the doomed worlds in their path.' (Armada - page 80)

Tyranid fleets are *massive* and relatively slow moving. However, due to the strange Warp shadow they cast they are also very hard to predict. Tyranids have no need to move fast truthfully.. once the Hive minds has set them on a direction they just go devouring everything in their path. They have no deadlines or timetables. They don't care if it takes them a thousand years to get to their heading. Such worries are not for creatures that live untold aeons.

Personally, I have always seen the Hive fleets as the decription given to the necromongers in chronicles of riddick. The great comet in the night sky that leaves only lifeless, barren worlds in its wake in an almost unstoppable tide of creatures.

*Edit*- the book, Warriors of Ultramar by Graham McNeill, is a good read about a planet beset by the 'nids. At least one Astropath goes wild under the force of the Hive mind in it!

Shadowkat said:

Moving sublight on a galactic scale when everybody else has FTL. takes "relatively slow moving" to a whole new level. They might as well not be moving at all.

You wouldn't have to fight them at all.

"Governor Hax, the Hive Fleet is on its way. ETA: about 1500 years in the future, sir."

"Alright. Prepare a time capsule triggered to open in 1000 years. It shall contain the following instructions for our remote descendents: 'URGENT URGENT! Your death is fast approaching. You have only 500 years left to move your main population centers out of the path of the enemy.'"

No matter how slow the hive fleets move or how little they care about time tables, they still have to move faster then the speed of light. Hive Fleet Leviathan first crashed on the scene in 997.M41 and in two years time attacked multiple worlds along a two pronged path making it from the eastern rim to within 15,000 ly of Holy Terra. Multiple planets in a discernible long path of destruction and within 15,000 ly of Holy Terra from the eastern rim of the galaxy in 2 years means they have to be moving faster then the speed of light. Their path was not two or less light-years in length.

There you go. Graver has won.

I never said that they didn't use some form of FTL travel, although I can't find a reference that actually states one way or the other.

I just stated that 'nids don't think in terms of human timelines. Where 50, 100, or 1000 years is long for a human, that isn't the same to a hive fleet.

So, 'nids in the warp. Check.

Shadowkat said:

The 'nid 4th ed codex states it I believe. And the 'nid 2nd ed codex, IIRC.

Shadowkat said:

Even if they don't care about time tables they still care about their next meal. A whole planet, no matter how big, is only going to "fill up" the hive fleet for so long. After that they better be able to get to the next system before they run out of energy. By conventional travel, even light speed travel, they would all starve before reaching the next old country buffet.