Are Tyranids good?

[Noodlesocks]

They're easily my weakest faction so I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Feels like I'm constantly struggling for resources and despite being the squishy, swarmy faction, I find myself having a lot less units that I normally would with any other faction. Should I be ignoring biomass buildings and focusing on influence and malanthropes for biomass?

[Jey]

Have you read adozu's guide? It covers the basics.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

I kinda feel like nids in general gets seriously underpowered in games and I think part of that is just because of how different the faction dynamics are as opposed to many others, i.e. it's a swarming faction that can literally work by just spawning enough units to literally clog the gears, it is the definition of Soviet human waves and the originator of the zerg rush. And so of course partly because of that no developer trying to make a remotely singleplayer/skirmishy kind of game can go remotely near the way nids actually works, by like in BFGA2 for instance having ten tyranid ships for every 1 imperium. I also think it's funny just how stupid the imperium lore and fluff is, where they try and imply this stupidly big scale of it where "the hive world had so many trillions of people" but then having a mere 300 space marines holding the line against a planet worth of tyranids.

This is why I just cannot take the lore seriously half the time, it clearly sounds like a literally 1950's USSR tier telling of all the ignoble atrocities and incompetence of the Imperium, where McCragge if it had happened those 300 spesh mureens would've literally been crushed simply by that many tyranids sitting on them.

This is irritating just because tyranids actually are conceptually one of the neatest factions, which sadly Blizzard may have done better by losing the license and needing to make not-40k space marines instead so it was actually more realistic, interesting, and better done. Like I bought this game for the chance not just play 40k 4x but also doing it with tyranids (also having chaos is nice, and Tau and Necrons are a bonus). And realistically, you just can't render tyranids well in any game because it'd need to have snowballed a small amount into a huge Chinese Army style zergrush in very little time, because they ARE naturally squishy and weak--at first. I think the bigger ultralisk tier strains are supposed to be armored better than tanks but at end of the day they're still a really squishy and weak faction without the zergrush mechanics. So doing that well in any game gets unwieldy.

[Jey]

Originally posted by Red Star, Blood Moon:

I kinda feel like nids in general gets seriously underpowered in games

I don't know about "in games", but in Gladius that is not the case.
Tyranids are in the top factions.

[TemplarGR]

Tyranids are different. Keep in mind that in general you are not supposed to spam a lot of units with them, unless it is their multi-modeled T1 units, the various gaunt strains. Their monsters and their heavier infantry are more expensive and not that spammable. So if you went for more heavy units, it is normal to not have too many of them. Try to use reclaimation whenever possible when upgrading to more advanced units. Tyranids are very helped in that regard, instead of having early tier units costing upkeep or having them deleted like other factions do when they upgrade tiers, Tyranids can just reclaim the older units to speed up production of the more advanced units plus reclaim some biomass.

In terms of resources, in my opinion influence is far more important than biomass for Tyranids. That's not to say that you should neglect biomass production, but you should be focusing on having a nice influence production (for Tyranids, influence also incorporates energy, it is a combined resource). For early stages of the game, spamming unit buildings makes more sense since they do produce enough biomass anyway. I refrain from making pure-biomass buildings until later in the game.

Influence is used heavily in various Tyranid abilities, and you should also exploit it to get some more Tyranid heroes (and their equipment) out. Tyranid heroes are excellent, all 3 are powerful. Prime is an excellent 1-unit-army with the right equipment and can buff Warriors considerably, Tervigon can spam gaunts (and boost your economy through reclaiming them) and support them and is a nice healer, and Tyrant is the best way to get synapse and loyalty bonuses.... Having more than one Tyrants around as soon as possible is a good idea.

[Slappy White]

Carnifex spam works pretty great most of the time. Make everything and your research pro carnifex. Rush a second city, make multiple brood haunts and pump out upgraded Carnifex. support them with heroes and free termagants. 3 or 4 of them can smash a city pretty quick and pretty soon you can make tunnels with Trygons to bring the menace all over the map.