Tyranids

The great devourers have arrived in the Battlefleet Gothic arena, and they are even more different to the other typical factions than the Necrons.

PROS:

* Unmatched boarding actions
* Regenerating crew and ammo
* Vicious short-range abilities
* Ramming without self-damage
* Everything starts stealthed and immune to asteroid fields

CONS:

* Difficult to control ships
* Limited standard weapons

## General Overview

The Tyranids are definitely focused in short-range combat and are very effective in this arena. They have some of the best boarding troops found anywhere and are capable of inflicting ruinous damage on enemy ship crews; some ship types have forward jaws that let them not only receive no damage when they ram an enemy ship, they inflict much more damage over time as a ram is continued; several ships have forward tentacles that can either smash into a ship for heavy damage (possibly knocking it into others for further damage) or pulling it in close. Instead of All Ahead Full their ships have a dash move that gives a brief turn-and-burst of movement without revealing them. They also have one infinite-use ability that regenerates ammo charges for their various abilities at the cost of 3 crew, and a second infinite-use ability that completely restores their entire crew capacity within their current Crew Stage. An alternate option for a fleet build which can make their sometimes questionable weapons quite powerful: a tier 1 tech upgrade for them makes their Bio-Plasma and Pyro-Acid weapons fire twice as fast while a ship is inside a gas cloud or asteroid field (and their ships are immune to damage from the latter by default). On top of this several of their Escort ships have such weapons of a caliber more often found on larger vessels. This can make an Escort-heavy Tyranid fleet ambushing from a gas cloud or asteroid field put out some quite surprising firepower, especially in the Campaign if you are able to keep several of the Escorts alive long enough to get high experience levels.

On the other hand, Tyranid ships in general can be difficult to control. Without using the dash move, Tyranid ships can be very slow to move and turn. Also, in most cases their standard weapons cannot be manually targeted to a specific ship; they will always target the closest enemy to them, whether or not you consider a different enemy ship to be more important. Their standard weapons also have lower than average damage output in general without significant upgrades.

Their dash move, Rush, also has slightly questionable aim. If a Tyranid ship has an existing move order but is then ordered to Rush in even a slightly different direction, the Tyranid unit will dash forward but will simultaneously still try to move in the direction of its standard move order, making it end up rushing somewhere between the two directions. This can make aiming rams difficult, and there is a further complication; ships with the Claws equipment that prevents self damage from a ram have to hit within a very narrow head-on angle. If their aim is off even a little bit so they contact the enemy ship more on their "shoulder", *the Tyranid ship will still take full damage even though it has Claws!* So while a swarm of Tyranid ships rushing en-masse towards a fleet can cause catastrophic damage, it takes definite skill to do so without receiving serious damage in return.

In the Campaign the Tyranids also function very differently to the other factions in multiple ways:

* Tyranids have no known established written or spoken language. Therefore, all Campaign storyline dialogue is done via intercepted enemy communications, which is an interesting and effective twist to comply with canon.
* Tyranid-controlled systems do not typically give constant-production mines, with rare exceptions. Instead, when a system comes under your control a 3-turn counter starts. Once 3 turns have passed you get a massive one-time burst of resources from corresponding planets in the system, and those planets become Devoured.
* Your very beginning, turn 1 fleet and resources are NOT enough to attack ANYONE. You absolutely must wait 3 turns for a resource burst from your 2 initial systems before you can do anything, though it is recommended to build at least 1 shipyard in one of the systems so you have construction points ready when you get the resources.
* You are only allowed to build 1 system structure in any system, unlike the other factions that could have mines, turrets and a station all in 1 place. Tyranids also have no stationary defense structures like turrets or stations.
* The Tyranids do not have a single primary campaign hero under your control which will make you lose the game the instant his ship is destroyed. Their fleet commanders also don't have fleet-wide passive boosts other than the one provided by tech research Synaptic Control which makes their subordinate ships immune to morale loss, so the loss of a fleet commander is not as serious as with other factions. They also have a stronger than usual set of upgrades available through Tech Research and a number of key abilities built into the line ships themselves by default. This, combined with one of their system buildings allowing for the instant complete regeneration of the entire hull and crew of every ship in that system after 1 turn and their massive resource bursts from devouring systems allows the Tyranids to be a much more "clumsy brute force" faction and makes all Tyranid ships semi-expendable, even Fleet Commanders. Expect to take losses regularly, but it won't affect you as much as other factions.
* With the Synaptic Control ability available to prevent morale loss to your fleet ships and the somewhat lackluster active abilities available to Tyranid commanders, it is not unheard of to have the Flagship of a Tyranid fleet to be the absolute cheapest Light Cruiser you can buy (allowing you to get Synaptic Control with the largest possible array of subordinate ships on the field) and then in combat just leave them off in a corner at your starting zone Stealthed, so that their Synaptic Control is preserved as much as possible. Without it, Tyranid ships can have their morale broken quite quickly.