[Gnaeus Conlitor]

Tau don't use Warp Travel. They don't believe in the supernatural. They think Warp Drives are simply very advanced technology the naive fools. As for what they use instead I think it's a tachyon based system.

[Kallidor]

The Tau do use Warp travel; Codex: Tau Empire page 6.

The Narvhal is believed to use gravimetric forces to create a 'compressed-space transit corridor'; Codex Tyrnaids page 19. It also says that this manipulation can cause a prey planet to suffer tidal waves, earthquakes and other natural disasters so perhaps that also explains why the Tyranids leave worlds almost falling apart.

[Tullio]

I still maintain that the Hive Mind is not the perfect predator.

Consider what the goal of a predator is. It is not to kill and eat at every opportunity, in as genocidal a way as possible. In ecological terms, it is to kill and eat enough to confortably survive. A predator that kills too much of it's prey is just setting itself up for disaster later on.

The question therefore is - what does the Hive Mind know of ecology? Sure it can rip apart DNA and put it together again in any pattern it chooses, but does it know why that DNA is as it is? Or how it continues to exist in relation to other DNA? There's a possibility that the Hive Mind has found a very efficient way of wiping out all other life before it realises that it's long-term survival would be better suited to finding an equilibrium.

If the Hive Mind is a perfect anything, it is adaptor. It adapts to situations with speed and intelligence to an end of slaughter and consumption, albeit safe in the knowledge that no matter how many individuals are killed, there are always more than enough to finish the job (Is it me, or is the sheer numbers strategic approach actually quite an unsophisticated strategy?)

Tullio

[Kallidor]

The Tyranids are often equated to a locust swarm that simply consumes all in its path. The problem for the Tyranids is that unlike a predator, which kills, consumes and is then sated for a time, the Tyranids are never sated. As already stated Kryptman was able to use this against the Tyranids by starving the fleets to death but that doesn't really work long term, killing yourself to kill your enemy isn't a victory.

Then again we also know that the Tyranids can cross the distances between galaxies so in universal terms eating an entire galaxy isn't a problem, by the time they get back to it life will have started again. It's only the same pattern adopted by humans; use up an area then move on to the next before coming back to the first area which will hopefully have recovered. You could also equte it to a virus which then lies dormant. Then there's the notion that the 'Nids are runing from something in which case their behaviour is probably altered, they consume and consume, merely trying to put as much distance between themselves and the other.

[Gnaeus Conlitor]

That's yet another myth integrity screw up! How can Tau enter the Warp? They have no psykers to navigate with. Having said that it is amusing that the Tau's psychotically rationalist philosophy isn't challenged even when daemons are quite clearly chewing on the hull. "No there's no such thing as daemons don't be silly. Those are mere halucin....." (gets head bitten off by a warp beast.)

[DapperAnarchist]

They use a "skim drive" that propels them into the still dangerous, but not daemon-infested "upper" regions of the warp, which Imperial ships crash through barely noticing. It's much slower, but still provides FTL.

[Kaled]

They have no psykers to navigate with.

You don't need psykers in order to navigate warp space; it's possible to make (fairly short) calculated warp jumps - which is what the Tau do (although as DA says, they don't go as 'deep' into the warp as Imperial ships).

[Kallidor]

Tau's psychotically rationalist philosophy isn't challenged even when daemons are quite clearly chewing on the hull.

Whilst the Tau have had to fend off daemonic attacks, since the Tau themselves have almost no warp presence then daemons will have a hard time even seeing them so the Tau probably don't have such a bad view of warp entities, nor are their minds disturbed by the warp thanks to their near immunity to it. The reactions of other species to the warp and daemons are probably seen by the Tau how a human might see people with phobias of the ocean and sharks when they suffer from neither.

[Gnaeus Conlitor]

Ah I see thanks for clarifying that and sorry for derailing the thread.