Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-79.134.161.49-20130225232452/@comment-76.24.162.67-20130303152032

P 2. My point being that while the Tyranids are incredibly effective at utilizing their material, the Imperium has a huge potential strategic resource advantage. And it has a second even greater advantage in that it can produce many resources required by it's organic population e.g. oxygen on it's ships, from inorganic processes. When an imperium ship needs more air it can just generate it using electrolysis or whatever utilizing elements that are literally floating around everywhere. The tyranids need to find and eat a whole, probably heavily defended planet.

So the Imperium has everything it needs at hand to be able to defeat waves of tyranid hive fleets from now until the heat death of the universe, they just have to know how to use it. Which of course they don't, being a authoritarian theocracy that gives thanksgiving prayers to their toasters when the bread comes out just right. I read some article in white dwarf about how it takes a forge world something like 300 years to build a single Imperial class ship because they have no idea how any of their stuff works. So for Tyranids vs. Imperium it comes down to a species with uses a small amount of material hypereffeciently vs. one that can use almost everything but is grossly ineffecient.