The Galaxy is Flood, Not Food

[Zoolimar]

As an example, lets say they built a battleship using this small forge world that's about six kilometers in length. On the smaller side of battleships as far as the Imperium is concerned, but it uses that space a lot more efficiently. Lose anything like beds, bathrooms, mess halls, cargo space for stuff like food, basic amenities, probably don't even need human-sized corridors for most of the ship which would help against boarders that aren't squats or ratlings. As a result, you get a very compact warship, probably deadlier than anything of similar length assuming similar weapon capabilities.

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You are really overestimating how much space and resources people take from the main ships systems. Even with Imperium's inefficiencies in design. At best the ship is like 2-5% heavier and maybe spends around 1% of its energy generation on all the life support and everything else related to the crew. And I'm not sure it's even a whole 1 percent considering the kinds of energies 40k ships make use of. Anti-gravity and the like are not actually related to the crew, that's just a happy coincidence that people benefit from it, it's main function is keeping the physical integrity of the ship.

Also corridors are not actually wasted spaces. Properly done, especially with adamantium used as main armour and bearing frame material, they act as whipple shields and dispersers for impacts and explosions. Basically a ship made without corridors will go down faster than the one with properly designed internal spaces made to channel explosions over larger areas. Crew will die in the process but that's a sacrifice Imperium is willing to make.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Will tide be able to build slipspace drives? A FTL method thats reliable (except for the reconciliation thing) that doesn't rely on the warp is a massive game changer and it looks like the Forerunners had fast galactic slipspace drives that could easily transport 50 km long fortress class ships.

Also, will Tide be able to communicate and control his other keymind/subordinate graveminds via non-warp FTL communication? If so thats another massive advantage compared to almost every other faction in WH40K except for the Necrons. It would allow for FTL sensors (Tide could build smaller drones with standard light speed sensors, but with a keymind to relay that information via FTL would mean FTL sensors for highly accurate fire control. Torpedoes could also be made with FTL sensors for longer range firing while boarding torpedoes would be even more effective.

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On the subject of slipspace drives, my original answer was a firm no, since Tide does not have access to any tech besides Precursor. However, as time has gone on and I've learned more about the Flood and Precursors while researching for this story, I'm not so sure the Precursors wouldn't be able to utilize slipspace. So, to answer your question, MAYBE. I'm not sure yet if I will have slipspace play a role in this story or if I will keep using the Neural Physics methods.

As for Mind form communication, its all instantaneous. The Mind forms aren't actually communicating with one another, they're each connected to the higher dimension where the Flood's transsentient mind resides. This is why the Flood is able to remember things even if all its Mind forms are destroyed, because its mind isn't actually being affected by the destruction of a gravemind or similar mind form.

Jackson answered that in a earlier post, i asked if they would have access to unsc. covenent and forerunner tech, jackson said no, they would only get precursor tech, and that does NOT include slipspace tech, as far as i know.

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Also jackson mentiones that slipspace might or not exist but that such thing would have to be researched from scratch by tide

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Ah, i did not know THAT, thanks foe letting me know!

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I'm less sure of that 'research from scratch' thing now than I was before.

EDIT: I will reiterate that Tide only has Precursor techbase though. He doesn't have forerunner or covenant or unsc or anyone else to draw from.

Ahh but remember, before the necrons went to sleep they destroyed all their weapons over a certain power threshold.

Which really puts the War in Heaven to scale because the fucking Celestial Orrery was given the pass and deemed not to powerful to be left intact.

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To be fair, I think the Orrery wasn't destroyed because messing with it is known to have the possible consequence of galactic-scale annihilation.

 

[Drunk Hierophant]

To be fair, I think the Orrery wasn't destroyed because messing with it is known to have the possible consequence of galactic-scale annihilation.

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Given how the C'tan aren't just very powerful 'living' beings but embodiments of universal constants/physical phenomena I can very well see the Orrery being built around a Shard of an unmentioned C'tan with some kind of Galaxy related portfolio, with that explaining how it's use has unpredictable consequences (otherwise stupid given how common and natural supernovae are).

 

[AmbiguousAngle]

A serious question for anything happening out of that particular star system is what the interaction with the warp would be. I mean, a gravemind itself out there would totally be seen, as would most flood creatures. Corruption is a real risk.

But what if you filled a ship with spores? Fill the engines with just enough fuel, point it at a planet that can support life, and let it race off? Would spores count as life? Would they by more like a virus? Would a warp creature see anything as they whizz by? I mean, the warp is bullshit, but doesn't it usually lean toward intelligent targets?

 

[Zoolimar]

But what if you filled a ship with spores? Fill the engines with just enough fuel, point it at a planet that can support life, and let it race off? Would spores count as life? Would they by more like a virus? Would a warp creature see anything as they whizz by? I mean, the warp is bullshit, but doesn't it usually lean toward intelligent targets?

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If you actually put the ship in Warp? Without Gellar fields they would corrupt even metal itself. That's how you get possessed ships like the ones Chaos Warbands use.

 

[AmbiguousAngle]

If you actually put the ship in Warp? Without Gellar fields they would corrupt even metal itself. That's how you get possessed ships like the ones Chaos Warbands use.

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Not that I doubt you, but now I'm deeply disappointed there aren't Majora's Mask moons in the setting. Sure, let's have possessed ships, but not take things to their natural extreme. Yeah, there's the eye of terror and all, but that always super-vague.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I will point out for the efficiency discussion that Ad Mech ships explicitly don't have the dumb cathedrals, but are otherwise identical to regular IoM ships.

Rogue Trader IIRC has a hull mod that takes limited capacity that does the opposite and is explicitly extra gaudy.

IIRC Rogue Trade also has prison cells that are explicitly exterior decoration, and if you lose void shields and take a hit, everyone inside just dies. I might be misremembering though.

All that said, IoM ships are by no means peak efficiency. In fact there are also interior maze hullmods that take up more space to fill it with dead ends and fortified positions to fight boarders.

There are the meme macrocannons loaded by rope and slaves pushing too.

All in all, the best bet to improve IoM ship efficiency is to ditch the Imperial design doctrine entirely and go Tau. Instead of massive macro broadsides, make vastly more compact ships with the same tech but a few forward facing guns.

It's not like Lance or Macrocannon turrets are even unusual or anything. You might lose overall damage output and have less frontal armor and less interior space for troop transport, but you'll also have a far lower price and construction time and more speed and maneuverability.

Lower front armor also doesn't matter much because lances go through it anyway. You can also literally copy the Tau after contacting them and buy their fancy shielding that explicitly boosts front armor, so you free up mass and space for even more frontal firepower.

In the end I guess you'd end up with more of an Eldar doctrine ship, if with a much more blocky and metal aesthetic. And proper shields instead of the 'pray you don't get hit' holofields.

 

[Zoolimar]

All in all, the best bet to improve IoM ship efficiency is to ditch the Imperial design doctrine entirely and go Tau. Instead of massive macro broadsides, make vastly more compact ships with the same tech but a few forward facing guns.

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You can just go to much more efficient Crusade era designs. Sadly Imperium has very few that are still in service - most are on Chaos side.
Crusade era mostly goes for beam weaponry If I remember right with kinetics working as close in weapons for finishing off opponents. And has way better automation and internal layouts.

 

[vIsitor]

In any case, Imperium ships incorporate some bafflingly inefficient design choices. Like refueling reactors having a 100% mortality rate because the (highly radioactive) spent fuel rods are replaced by hand, or the reloading of macrocannons and torpedo launchers being carried out by slave work gangs literally hoisting them with ropes. Some of it can perhaps be blamed on technological decline and the Imperium using its abundance of human labor as a stopgap, but I suspect that it is mainly because they are maliciously designed to inflict cruelty on as many people as possible.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

You can just go to much more efficient Crusade era designs. Sadly Imperium has very few that are still in service - most are on Chaos side.
Crusade era mostly goes for beam weaponry If I remember right with kinetics working as close in weapons for finishing off opponents. And has way better automation and internal layouts.

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The Chaos ships are basically the same as IoM but with different aesthetics. They're mostly still broadside sluggers.

 

[Jackson Fox]

The Chaos ships are basically the same as IoM but with different aesthetics. They're mostly still broadside sluggers.

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'Different aesthetics' is doing some really heavy lifting. Given those 'aesthetics' can be giant living eyeballs and tentacles capable of ripping apart hulls, I think Chaos ships are a bit more than just basically the same. Underneath all the Chaos Corruption though, yeah, they're more streamlined designs. Though a lot of Crusade era ships were more than a little ostentatious. Look at any of the Custodes stuff for starters, there's enough gold on one of those battleships to make El Dorado seem impoverished.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

'Different aesthetics' is doing some really heavy lifting. Given those 'aesthetics' can be giant living eyeballs and tentacles capable of ripping apart hulls, I think Chaos ships are a bit more than just basically the same. Underneath all the Chaos Corruption though, yeah, they're more streamlined designs. Though a lot of Crusade era ships were more than a little ostentatious. Look at any of the Custodes stuff for starters, there's enough gold on one of those battleships to make El Dorado seem impoverished.

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The tentacles don't give any ramming advantage that I'm aware of, not like the Imperial armored prows or the Tyranid's actual combat tentacles used as weapons.

But, like, the Chaos ships are mostly just early Imperial ships. There are more 270 degree turrets than current Imperial standard, but many of them absolutely still will just slap giant broadsides onto ships and call it a job well done.

The Tau and Eldar end up with much more space efficient in large part because they bypass that redundancy and bloat by focusing on the frontal arc firepower, cutting the power, space, and weight requirements to a third and letting the rest of the design get cut down proportionally.

If you want to make the biggest fleet possible, you'd much rather have forwards focused ships rather than ones splitting the same reactor power 3 ways and requiring 3 times the guns.

 

[CaramelTheMoo]

If you want to make the biggest fleet possible, you'd much rather have forwards focused ships rather than ones splitting the same reactor power 3 ways and requiring 3 times the guns.

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Broadsiding looks cool tho. Plus, another thinh to do is just swarm them under with strike craft

 

[SCDMR Aramatha]

Cool, despite not having slipspace FTL, Tide will still be able to have a massive advantage with INSTANT communications. as far as Jackson has indicated those instant comms could contact each other from across the galaxy. That is a gigantic advantage because it means Tide will be able to know and react to a situation far faster than any other faction bar the Necrons or perhaps Tyranids.

Also, will Tide's instant communication also apply to his keyminds in warp? If so then boom, every Gravemind or keymind in realspace is an astronomicon to any others in the warp completely nullifying warp storms and other warp shenanigans.

On another note, I hope Tide will design his own vessels, namely they should be far smaller than normal crewed ships with tiny hallways to make it immune to boarding and also have good superfiring gun layouts to allow the majority of a Tide ship's weapons to bear on target broadside or forward or even at the ventral and lateral aspects.

 

[Mr. Cloak]

I would go as far as to say it wouldn't be boardable in the traditional sense. If properly built it would better be described as a space capable Flood form with cybernetic augmentations rather than a crewed voidship.

It'd be like trying to board a whale or infiltrate the inside of an elephant, and that's exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.

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Worse than trying to board a whale- it would be like trying to board a whale that shape-shifted weapons to fight on your level if you even managed to get IN, and if your seals were not perfect it will consume your flesh just by proximity.

 

[CaramelTheMoo]

Worse than trying to board a whale- it would be like trying to board a whale that shape-shifted weapons to fight on your level if you even managed to get IN, and if your seals were not perfect it will consume your flesh just by proximity.

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So...like boarding the nids, got it

 

[Jackson Fox]

Worse than trying to board a whale- it would be like trying to board a whale that shape-shifted weapons to fight on your level if you even managed to get IN, and if your seals were not perfect it will consume your flesh just by proximity.

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"We've entered the enemy ship's liver! Hold on, we're now surrounded by ogryn-sized monsters that just tore a tank in half with its bare hands."

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Cool, despite not having slipspace FTL, Tide will still be able to have a massive advantage with INSTANT communications. as far as Jackson has indicated those instant comms could contact each other from across the galaxy. That is a gigantic advantage because it means Tide will be able to know and react to a situation far faster than any other faction bar the Necrons or perhaps Tyranids.

Also, will Tide's instant communication also apply to his keyminds in warp? If so then boom, every Gravemind or keymind in realspace is an astronomicon to any others in the warp completely nullifying warp storms and other warp shenanigans.

On another note, I hope Tide will design his own vessels, namely they should be far smaller than normal crewed ships with tiny hallways to make it immune to boarding and also have good superfiring gun layouts to allow the majority of a Tide ship's weapons to bear on target broadside or forward or even at the ventral and lateral aspects.

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It would probably work in the warp, but also be completely useless.

Tide: *Reads Starship 1 as being 1 AU away from Starship 2 in the warp*

Starship 1: *Moves 1 AU farther in the warp*

Tide: *Reads Starship 1 as being 0.3 AU away from Starship 2 in the warp*

Proprioception is much less useful in non-euclidean, shifting space.

Broadsiding looks cool tho. Plus, another thinh to do is just swarm them under with strike craft

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More, leaner ships can cover each other better and are much better able to strategically maneuver as well.

 

[Mr. Cloak]

So...like boarding the nids, got it

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A bit, but if the nids could recycle their non-burned biomass with remarkable efficiency.
Plus the whole problem of boarding a ship where all the nonartificial spaces are filled with flood biomass.

"We've entered the enemy ship's liver! Hold on, we're now surrounded by ogryn-sized monsters that just tore a tank in half with its bare hands."

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This.
Frankly the only way you could 'board' a flood ship is if the ship itself wanted you onboard.
More likely the boarding torpedo would be jettesoned filled with flood, and broadcasting a distress call.

 

[vIsitor]

This.
Frankly the only way you could 'board' a flood ship is if the ship itself wanted you onboard.
More likely the boarding torpedo would be jettesoned filled with flood, and broadcasting a distress call.

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Just think of the level Cortana in Halo 3; High Charity, completely overgrown with Flood 'fungal' growth.

 

[AmbiguousAngle]

Now I'm showing my inner nerd here, but the one thing that bugs me when it comes to flood-like creatures in any setting, is the fact that a few days in everything in caked in weird biological growth. Like.. where does it come from? If you took the biomass of everyone in a ship, and all the supplies, and all the mold and everything, would it cover the walls of a single floor?

I get that the flood are basically magic, with the nearly-instantaneous conversions that make biology and physics weep in the corner. But they can't create stuff from nothing. At least until they hit some sort of galaxy wide reality writing you win phase.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Now I'm showing my inner nerd here, but the one thing that bugs me when it comes to flood-like creatures in any setting, is the fact that a few days in everything in caked in weird biological growth. Like.. where does it come from? If you took the biomass of everyone in a ship, and all the supplies, and all the mold and everything, would it cover the walls of a single floor?

I get that the flood are basically magic, with the nearly-instantaneous conversions that make biology and physics weep in the corner. But they can't create stuff from nothing. At least until they hit some sort of galaxy wide reality writing you win phase.

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Tide: Weird how I can do magic without the warp.

*Runs into Necrons deploying a C'tan shard*

Tide: Oh god it's jamming all my magic!

 

[Strunkriidiisk]

Now I'm showing my inner nerd here, but the one thing that bugs me when it comes to flood-like creatures in any setting, is the fact that a few days in everything in caked in weird biological growth. Like.. where does it come from? If you took the biomass of everyone in a ship, and all the supplies, and all the mold and everything, would it cover the walls of a single floor?

I get that the flood are basically magic, with the nearly-instantaneous conversions that make biology and physics weep in the corner. But they can't create stuff from nothing. At least until they hit some sort of galaxy wide reality writing you win phase.

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Well, with the example of the Flood in Halo 3 it's probably that the Floodified High Charity is a mixture of the Gravemind and all of the biomass of Covenant individuals that weren't fit to use as foot soldiers - i.e. San'Shyuum, Unggoy, and Lekgolo.

 

[Mr. Cloak]

Now I'm showing my inner nerd here, but the one thing that bugs me when it comes to flood-like creatures in any setting, is the fact that a few days in everything in caked in weird biological growth. Like.. where does it come from? If you took the biomass of everyone in a ship, and all the supplies, and all the mold and everything, would it cover the walls of a single floor?

I get that the flood are basically magic, with the nearly-instantaneous conversions that make biology and physics weep in the corner. But they can't create stuff from nothing. At least until they hit some sort of galaxy wide reality writing you win phase.

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Depends on how quickly the flood can coopt photosynthetic/radiosynthetic/thermosynthetic/chemosynthetic processes, to turn carbon, water and some collectable energy into sugars, then convert to biological matter.
Or metabolize huge amounts of sewage. Hives have HUGE sewage outflows.
Then the only limiting factor is how quickly the Flood can disperse waste heat, and given how quickly they can consume an organism, they can vent heat with more efficiency than any other form of life than I have ever seen.

The Flood in late-stage planetary infection would probably be more than able to form 'plant'-like structures, to collect ambient materials and digest them into biomass, not unlike the Orks. Frankly, if the Flood!SI knew that he was being id'd as the Panacea, he should form little 'flowers' that can grow in debris and spread the 'healing dust'. The Flood's color scheme is perfect for this- dark green leaves, and little red tendrils that puff out small bits of flood spores (not moving, just there. Growing in the edges of the world).

 

[lazyrobot87]

My biggest issue with the more recent halo games. My greatest peeve with Halo Wars 2 was that they had the Flood, but it wasn't a playable faction.

Halo Infinite having Flood Spartan skins is fine, but I wish we got more lore and campaigns for them. I think I would have preferred the return of the Flood as the story for Halo Infinite over the whole thing with the Endless. Maybe something connected to Awakening the Nightmare from Halo Wars 2 since the Banished are involved? Or have Cortana sacrifice herself to stop the Flood, who are revealed to have been the reason she went crazy cuz of Logic Plague.

I might just have to write an alternative story for Halo Infinite, huh...

EDIT: I should add, my greatest wish is a Halo game with playable Spartan, Elite, and Flood combat or pure form. And I mean more than just a cool looking skin for the Flood, but actual Flood abilities. Just multiplayer would be fine, but if they ever did that for a campaign, maybe where a Spartan got infected by the Flood and is sent on playable missions by the Gravemind, who is talking with the Spartan throughout the missions almost like a twisted version of Chief and Cortana, I would give 343 all of my money to get that.

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Hey Jackson. Just saw this post and wanted to tell you if you have halo wars 2 on your computer you can download the halo wars 2 unit mod and play as a flood faction. Or if you wanna play the old overhaul mod on halo wars 1 you can just get steam for that.