1. Make it a Stargate-type portal, to be opened and closed, the source gate under the surface on the homeworld. The pieces have to be taken to the target planet and assembled, and the local forces simply think it's a bomb of some sort.

2. What the hell? How do you have a freezing tectonically active planet? The only way this would work is if the tectonics were wonky due to teh planet dying somehow, and even then the heat dissipation wouldn't last long enough to a species to evolve into a symbiotic relationship with teh vents. If you opened a massive gash in the crust of a planet at teh bottom of an ocean, assuming we are talking about water, the water would cool the core, massive venting everywhere as the water evaporated, which would THEN lead to the planetoid freezing.

3. Make surface interaction a sacrifice... something like the species has to have it's shell removed completely for the interface, or have massive holes punched into it, thereby significantly weakening it's structural integrity.

>>4038802
You're wrong on No2 - see Europa.

Dear OP: Just use handwavium, your ideas are completely crazy in their complete ignorance of science.

why would a nautilus-like species create a harness that only had 4 legs?

>>4038822
Yea, but tectonically active is different from wrecked with tectonic activity...

Not going to troll, gonna take my ownage in stride.

Well played, universe.

>>4038802
1. Sorry, I am afraid that it will not work that way. It's partially a weapon of mass destruction, partially a form of terraforming. It's a part of every colony ship the race has.
I'm just asking how that kind of device would function.

2. Generally, around the equator, the temperature is that of an English summer. Beyond that, it quickly reaches those of the artic and then even lower around the poles. Earth's oceans are riddled with volcanic vents, so why couldn't a different planet be? Anyway, the main problem is with the biological process, so I would enjoy comments on that.

3. That's a possibility I would rather avoid - how would you fit a harness to the creature, including the shell?

>>4038822
So, educate me. Tell me where they are impossible and where they could be made possible.

1) I'm not sure how to do this beyond complete BS or melting the ice caps the old-fashioned way.

2) Most volcanic vent species rely upon breaking down different chemicals than carbon dioxide. Also, Carbon dioxide is a molecule, not a single atom as you possibly believe. It is much easier to break apart molecules, but it still requires some energy input. Such a process might be workable somehow, but it seems awfully under-researched and naive.

3. Walking water tanks. Far more amusing, and if this is an aquatic species, it'd not breathe air.

On a sidenote, I wonder how likely a wholly-aquatic species is to develop spacefaring technology, given the lack of fire or most metallurgical processes we know of in an aquatic environment. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a stupid assumption to make that we're the only way things can work, but we are the only example we have.

>>4038848
At least four legs.

There are lifeforms on Earth that live, survive and thrive near, around and almost INSIDE volcanic undersea vents. They don't breathe oxygen - I forgot what they breathe, actually.

I'm just saying that, life forms around what's possible. If there's no oxygen (which WE breathe 'cos it's easily available, 'cos it burns good and 'cos it's what our ancestors did), then Life'll breathe something else, and damn the consequences.

>>4038922
...BUT THE FUTURE REFUSED TO CHANGE

>>4038931

D:

>>4038922
>There are lifeforms on Earth that live, survive and thrive near, around and almost INSIDE volcanic undersea vents. They don't breathe oxygen - I forgot what they breathe, actually.

They don't "breathe" per se. They actually subsist almost entirely on a combination of the bacteria that thrives around the vents and a mix of chemicals and minerals that comes out of the vents themselves.

1. Make huge comets out of ice with an exterior rock shell, bombard planet with them, ????, profit.

2. Biological nuclear fission? As in, they'd have specialized organelles containing like, uranium, that they'd use for energy supply like mitochondria/chloroplasts? Might work, but the mutation rate would be very high unless they'd evolve some kind of defense mechanism to that...

3. Creature floats in an aquarium with viewscreen, operates walker with tentacles.

>>4038908
1. I suppose bombardment of ice caps with atomic weaponry could work.
2. God. I forgot. You're right. That was incredibly stupid of me. Anyway, it still does need some energy input. Would it be possible for a body to produce the appropriate amount of energy for this? Thank you for constructive criticism.
3. Their vehicles are tanks. Their fleshy bits are covered with a synthetic material filled with water, probably with a device to oxygenate it using the air. This doesn't need so much thinking. I am willing to handwave that quite easily. Still, I would prefer a walker-setup applied to them.

>>4038949
1. That's another possibility. Thanks.
2. I'll go with what the person I responded to above said for this. Nuclear fission probably isn't needed for this.
3. Like I said, those are vehicles.

Thanks for the comments and the insults so far, folks. Keep it coming.

>>4039031
Go look up deep ocean volcanic vent species and the bacteria they subsist on, as >>4038946 mentioned. There's a good start for what these creatures would be doing to survive in such an environment. I think it involves the breakdown of sulfur compounds/

I forget what in a body might provide the energy to break up carbon dioxide. I think plants do it as part of photosynthesis, or otherwise use absorbed light photons in chlorophyll to provide energy to get part of their processes running. But...a deep-ocean species is unlikely to get enough sunlight.

Actually, a deep-ocean species may not have eyes at all, or if it does, its eyes would be very large, or it might have bioluminescent aspects.

>>4039079
Got the eyes covered.
They're a deep ocean species who revolve around finding sources of heat for survival - also for finding food.
So, I think it makes sense for their eyes to detect infrared.

Anyway, I'll begin more research on this. Thanks for all of your advice.

1.on a planet like earth, that won't work. There's not enough hydrogen left to make that amount of water.

2.you..you do know that plants change carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon all the time right? No fission needed. Also, methane and hydrogen sulfide are the most common gases to seep from volcanic vents, and if it's surrounded by water, then an ecosystem can take place. This is actually a pretty easy thing to look up and decipher for a campaign.

>>4039213
1. I thought that - so I was wondering if there would be another method. Perhaps if a payload of hydrogen was brought along with it? Would it be possible then?
2. I realized it in this thread. I made a seriously stupid mistake - I've spent so much time reading up on nuclear physics I forgot most of the chemistry I know outside of that.

3. Your best bet would likely be some kind of density changing gel like material that the creature cements itself in.

Imagine cracking something like this open sticking the creature inside then filling the rest in with some nasty thick slimy crap.

>>4039318
All I am asking is for how you would attempt some sort of walker-harness to a nautilus. Is that too much to ask?

>>4039079
All living organisms on earth get their energy from the processes of adding or removing phosphates to ADP (Adenosine Di-Phosphate) and ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate) respectively.

Their are two main methods of getting energy without using oxygen on Earth. One is through the breaking down and building up of lactic acids to form sugars. And the other is to use Carbon dioxide in photosynthesis.

>>4038922
>>4039079
if memory serves me right
The sulfur process(I forgot about how it works,read about it loooooong ago when I didnt know about teh webz)Is actually simpler than processing oxygen and other gasses,and also and older process.
In fact the whole breathing thing is actually a whole extra step that is utilized by anything with lungs,gills or relevant organs.

I may be wrong though,this is some info that I scraped from the bottom of the barrel in my head.

Would make for good fluff considering that you organisms live near vents.
Heck....make them dependent on the heat and minerals from the vents and make their life support systems a machine that keeps thier tank at scalding heat levels and the water saturated with the same stuff the vents spew.

The devices would be portable vents,that were used long ago to venture further away from thier homes and the might even build these to enlarge the underwater Ice caverns to sustain cities.
That or drill holes into mineral deposits close to volcanic activity.

And have pipelines that are directly plugged into a vent that sustain near surface subterranean ponds with a thick sheet of ice as a roof.
The doorways to the surface use the heat as a method of opening and closing the ground/ice level bulkheads,that work by switching the heat off thereby letting the water insantly freeze,and switching them on again to melt a sufficiently large hole.

Part of the pipes may even be used as to and fro rapid transport networks.(because you will have to have a pipe going back down to keep the pressure from building up due to water constantly pumping in all the time)

Here's why I came up with the concept of the volcanic vent stuff.

I wanted this to be a very warlike, very ceremonial society. A form of showing disrespect to a creature would be inhale or ingest its ashes after death. I wanted fire and flames to be very symbolic. So, since they're a deep ocean race, I thought their only relation to fire would be with the volcanic vents. Volcanic vents means lots of dangerous chemicals, so I thought they should adapt to them. So that's where all of this came from.

So, how else could a rather large intelligent nautilus survive around volcanoes? You've came up with a variety of ideas here, but I am wondering which is the best.

Assuming the fact that the nautilus(nautiloids?) are highly dexterous with their tentacles,maybe they manipulate a group of four segmented/jointed/hinged levers(each lever has exactly the same amount of segments/joints/hinges as the leg it controls)

I am imagining that its like a small model of the real one and the actual one mimicking the movement of its lever.

Each lever protrudes from the roof and moves the relevant leg in the exact same motion(they will probably get in the way, maybe the creature has a system that feeds visual data directly to the eyes rather than a window being int front)The system will also have to provide data for things like ballance.
I'd go with something that plugs into the brain if you have a technologically advanced race,this would make the walker a direct extension of the body,or make it so that only the dection array directly feeds into the senses and the control scheme the aforementiones series of levers.

Oh yes and include other movement mimicking levers for stuff like arms that have weapons or tools on them.

Considering the multiple tentacled grabbing configuration and the fact that a nautilus should know how to use these grabbing tools properly(if weakly) it should be possible

>>4039569
Since they're rather advanced, I was thinking of more of a neural interface - a wire going from the harness to a nerve behind the eye.

>>4039558
I was actually thinking in terms of them actually NEEDING the heat and minerals and not even bothering with oxygen(due to the sulphur based process thingy)
They are aliens after all,who says they need oxygen,heck whos to say they even HAVE oxygen?

Plus like I mentioned in>>4039444 it would work well if they required heat.Wich wouldnt interfere too much with dwelling above water since the need walkers with life support anyhoo.

The extra stored heat from a life support system may even function as a good weapon/ice clearing system/portable defrosting system by venting stored heat on stuff

>>4039624
That works quite well. Thermal weaponry is what they rely on...

... So now I am getting more ideas. Perhaps the excess heat is used as weaponry.

>>4039597
I kind of like the wires to the brain feeding only the sense and the controls being manual,but thats just me and it is your story after all.

On another note,your thread has fascinated me and I am also good at making stuff up,so ill be here for the next three or so hours to help build some more fluff if you need into your story(i dont know crap about the whole dice system so dont expext me to be of much help on game mechanics)
You may call me brain(old nickname I had In school)

>>4039681
I suppose I better spill the beans.

Recently, some guy has been making a "Kae'Moda Republic" race for 40K. He's been making a lot of mistakes with fluff and with rules and has made people hate 40K homebrew.
I'm trying to show him how to make a proper 40K homebrew race with all the grimdark that it needs.

So yes. This is a 40K race.

In b4 people laugh at me for trying to get scientific reasoning for a 40K race.

>>4039681
So what are we going to tonight brain?

>>4039701
ha ha wut

you fucking fail worse than he does, and I hate that prick

>>4039744
See, that's why I didn't mention what universe this species was intended for.

So, any more comments or any more help from anyone or shall we let this thread die once and for all?

>>4039701
Meh I hold no prejudice.
Not sure If ill be GRIMDARK enough but I can be logically creative,not sure how god I am on a scale of 1 to 10 though,Ill let others be the judge.

WHO NEEDS LOGIC?!!! I AM FIRING MY MINI MISSILES FROM A GUN AT UNDEAD ROBOTS,DEMONICALLY WARPED ABERRATIONS,ANGRY MUSHROOMS,BLUE BUTT FOR A FOREHEAD COMMUNISTS AND OTHER THINGS WITH TOO MANY POINTY ENDS

>>4039758
NOT ON MY WATCH
Give something to think about

>>4039788
Just keep up what you're saying so far. I've got the society in my mind but give me your ideas for technology and biology and I will be sure to note them down.

I don't know about specific scientific stuff per se, but I'm decent and making science-sounding fictional stuff, which I think is more what you're looking for, unless you're playing with a physicist and a biologist in the party.

1. Reverse-electrolysis. Hydrogen and oxygen naturally combine to form water, the process simply takes too long for what you want, so super-speed it up. The bomb carries two huge tanks of compressed gas: one of hydrogen, on oxygen. When "detonated", the two gases are thrown together, applying the necessary energy to force the chemical change as quickly as possible. The only structural problem with this idea is that unless the bomb is absolutely gigantic, it won't be able to contain the water while still producing, and will either need to be vented or will rupture the structure of the bomb prematurely. The bomb would have to be capable of carrying a little less than the entire mass of water it will produce, such that once it reaches its maximum capacity and the last water is made, it explodes, releasing the torrent.

2. It sounds good. Like I said, you don't really need actual scientific fact, just good fictional explanation. I'd go with that idea, assuming these organisms also take in other chemicals/nutrients for those biological processes.

3. Is the creature sapient, and if so, intelligent enough to work a device such as a walker-bot? If this is true, strapping it down in front of controls (straps/controls that its already existent appendages can work) and let it do the work. If this is some mad-man's evil plot to make these creatures walk on land and wreak havoc, then a neural interface will need to be installed, connecting directly to the brain similarly to its existent nerves and muscles.

>>4039836
Well are we working with a literal nautilus like body build or should we have extra stuff?
Im thinking arms and legs should be completely skipped because those wouldn't let them be alien enough and would bring up a sort of "Frankenstein complex" making them unlikeable and less fascinating,plus 40k doesnt really need more humanoids

i think the most important question here is, what would make their army unique?

>>4039887
I'll explain that when the time comes. I'll try my best to make them unique.
>>4039879
Nautilus the size of a gorilla. Tentacles about as long as a standard human, ninety-six of them, all dextrous. Eyes that function in infrared. That's the details there.

A bomb that makes water rather than simply transports it. WEEELLLLLL...it would need to be made near a nebula or a very hydrogen rich planet/moon/asteroid/etc etc. Compact the hydrogen, and then release it in a fuel air bomb. Bam! instant water! however, to create the amount that you need, you'd need it to be enormous.

Alternatively, you could make a weapon that's similar to a planet cracker-esque ship, and have it latch onto a planet, and have it break down the unneeded parts of the planets (ie. trees, local denizens) in a complicated and SCIENCE! process to form hydrogen and oxygen. From there, it uses the hydrogen and oxygen as fuel, and it's "waste" is water.

It's possible, just look up underwater volcanic vents like the another anons have suggested.

Enjoy number 3

Im thinking that since the live underwater an have no fire or strong limbs with wich to forge,they instead grow thier components(plates and complex bits) by like crystals by holding them over drilled vents that link up to metallic underground deposits.
This may have been thier original method before drilled vents were invented,yeilding only weak soft mineral stone tools.
They afterwards started building more technologies based on this process,and adding other things like compressing the formed items or cooling them down with water vented from near surface caverns.
As a note of culture maybe the had old quarrels about who had to leave when a vent got particularly crowded beyond the capacity of life forms it can sustain(this was later solved by drilling new vents but left some remaining but left some old habits that were passed on to offspring)

>>4039868
This bomb would have to be unfeasibly gigantic. Just have them transport water from elsewhere to not look utterly ridiculous. You need something like 2 million tons of water to raise water level globally on a noticeable scale.

>>4039943
Dawwwww, it looks like it has a big bushy mustache!

Also, let me explain what the bomb is needed for.

Octopus-shaped colony ship. Dozens of arms, all connected by webbing. Each arm is covered in tens of thousands of pods. In the end, each colony ship has millions of passengers in stasis. It's that massive.
When in travel, the arms are spread out and the webbing acts as solar sails. It travels at approximately half the speed of light, with an AI guiding the ship.
The head of the 'octopus' in a gigantic bomb. When descending through the target planet's atmosphere, the arms of the colony ship fold back behind it and the pods are torn off, their shape allowing them to descend slowly. The head descends towards the planet's surface, hits and explodes. Gigantic tsunami spreads in an expanding circle over the globe and by the time the pods land, that area is already covered in water and the planet is ripe for colonization - any existing resistance ready to be wiped out.

>>4039943
oh! alternatively you could carpet bomb the planet with these water bombs!

...My god, it's a planet sized waterballoon fight.

>>4040014
That brings some fuckawesome imagery in my head like a movie playing in my brain with baritone orchestral notes on an alien sounding tune with resonating glass sounds and some large drums.

>>4039969
That's an idea I had - I was thinking for the race to use carbon as its primary material rather than the metals. Of course, not just the atom carbon, but all sorts of different carbon molecules with different formations.

Well, >>4038822 here, I realize my response was pretty lazy, so I'll have a go at redeeming it.

1. The simple way of doing it is by accelerating global warming. The amount of water locked up in ice is insane. Other ways of doing it would include portals.

2. Your suggested process is crazy, because separating Carbon from two Oxygens requires energy. However, you could (maybe) have an organism that has a symbiotic relationship with a sulphurous bacterium, so the energy gleamed from sulphur compounds could be used in a similar way as light is in photosynthesis. The problem about volcanic vents is the amount of sustenance gained from metabolizing sulphur is minimal, because (IIRC) the bacteria have to spend half their energy actively transporting sulphuric acid out of their insides against a diffusion gradient. However, you could just hand-wavium this away.

3: Any way you fancy, I mean, how do you fit a harness on anything? It's really up to your artistic licence, since there are billions of feasible ways to fit a harness to a underwater tentacle-snail.

>>4038731
1) Have something combine all of the oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere. If you don't want it to kill everything, simply make your alien species breath nitrogen...

>>4040095
I suppose I could handwave a higher energy output and use that to support the seperation of carbon and oxygen.

>>4040014
Im thinking about drilling vents as a main feature for placing colonial cities as soon as the planet has been sufficiently flooded.(plus youd need some water heating systems)

Considering that you just let a massive mclargehuge tsunami loose I would reccomend that cities pace themselves under large built up aerodynamic (hydrodynamic?)shells or make the buildings as such because you most certainly have very strong currents flowing before the brand new mass of water settles down enough to safely swim outside

I am also thinking that they should have developed some very efficient cooling technologies,for ensuring that vent heated cites arent too hot to live in(there has to be a biological straining the limit from too much even for extremophiles)This technology works well in a very hot environment and works even better in a room temperature environment(lol freezethrower)

Maybe the have a large amount of weaponry based on temperature change.

And since they are good at drilling new vents they are probably also excellent mining specialists havin no trouble finding mineral deposits and squeezing them for all theyre worth.

Also..
Floodin a completely different planet with water is gonna have a supermetric boobton of water pollution,These guys will have to be very good at filtering water to suitable Ph levels and bearable conditions,this means very powerful filtration systems Or completely contained cites

Heck maybe a city is a Giant ice crystal with a hot core supported by a giant structure covered with temperature relocation arrays,Plus ittl feel like home for them.

>>4040131
Protip: There's almost nill hydrogen in earth-size planet's atmospheres. Also, the 'bang' would probably send all the atmosphere's gas flying out of orbit.

Could I suggest that it might not be such a great idea to do technology-oriented sci-fi if you have no idea whatsoever about science? There are some great 'low-science' sci-fi books - notably Vernor Vinges 'Realtime', which is hard sci-fi, but has a single technology which is the axis around which all the changes rotate.

ITT: We pretend to be evolutionary biologists.

>>4040165
As the OP, I was thinking that this fuckhuge bomb could contain a huge amount of highly compressed hydrogen.

>>4040165
Well I was suggesting for half my comments that we skip the whole breathe oxygen thing and make them dependent on a high temperature sulfurous compound process for breathing(which is useful if you evolved on a planet too cold to survive and were forced to live near hydrothermal vents for the entire period of development)

>>4040186

To write sci-fi you can have very little idea about real science. In fact, many authors have no real science backgrounds and just make stuff up that sounds plausible. That's why sci-fi is Science FICTION.

>>4040186
I'm not aiming for hard-sci-fi.

I would just enjoy a decent idea of how this would work. I am willing to handwave some of it. For the rest, I read up on it or come to you guys for help.

Nuclear fission? WTF? If there's no oxygen at the vents then just make them either (1) use another gas for chemical processes or (2) seperate oxygen from the water molecules around them. This isn't to sat nuclear fission isn't entirely unlikely, it would just be inefficient when compared to the previously mentiooned processes. Life don't like da ineffieciency. Plus, we have organisms on Earth that thrive around vents using chemosynthesis of sulfur-based compounds. No need to sciencify anything there, it's already done for hyuu.

As for the hydration bomb, you could have it cause a spontaneous combination of hyrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, but this process relies on a certain atmospheric composition (hydrogen & oxygen heavy) and would almost certainly require a massive, directed amount of energy on a global scale. Again, not entirely impossible but somewhat improbable.

For the striders you could have the Nautilus sit in a kind of cockpit that cushions and supports the shell, somewhat like a C-shaped seat. The tentacles could then reach upward to manipulate the controls. Alternatively, since this IS an aquatic organism, you could just have them suspended in a fluid-filled cockpit.

>>4040186
You mean people use genuine scientific plausibility to make awesome stories?

Wow I learn something new each day.

>>4040203
>To write really bad sci-fi you can have very little idea about real science.

Fixed.

Given, some authors write very good sci-fi books without a serious amount of science knowledge, but they usually focus on social conflict rather than SCIENCE. If you're going to focus on SCIENCE, but have no idea, you're going to end up mis-using vocab, getting things back to front, and generally pissing off the reader.

If you're planning on describing how something would work, DON'T. The reader doesn't want to know, the reader doesn't care, and the reader is contemptuous of your techno-babble. Example: 'The X48 plasma rifle* works because of the incredible amount of energy released in the splitting of O2** into gluon resistant free radicals.***"
*Annoying, technical designations are always annoying.
**Crazy, wrong science is also always annoying.
***Technobabble adds nothing but a sense that the writer is bullshitting you.
And the entire sentence is totally irrelevant to the description of something that essentially renders people to chunks of meat. Your reader neither cares nor needs to know how something happens. They only want to know that this something is awesome.

>>4040215
Dear god...

Firstly, you cannot substitute any old 'gas' for oxygen. OXYGEN IS THE BEST DAMN OXIDIZER. If you DON'T have oxygen, you're going anaerobic, or if you do find a decent oxidizer to replace oxygen, you're not going to get aerobic ATP yields. And can we stop this 'separate oxygen from the water' stuff? Negroes please? IT'S SO INSANELY DUMB IT MAKES MY HEAD HURT. Either use good science, or use awesome science. There is no inbetween.

Seriously, either claim it runs on the energy of the dying souls of intergalactic star ghasts, or read about five decent books on Sulphur vent bacteria and understand every damn word.

>>4038731
Or you could just go Deadlands and say "They have magic rocks and demons tell them how to build impossible machines".

>>4040247
This is why one does not say that the rifle will blow you to shreds if it misfires.
(as an example)

Instead have some guy be paranoid and recall how a friend of his got a rifle like I mentioned above that misfired and they had to walk half a mile to find his top half.
????
PLOT DEVICE

Later in the story the character purposely jams his rifle and gives it to a guy holding someone at gunpoint,the hostage taker doesnt stay true to his promise of not shooting anyone and plans on shooting the character with the rifle he just handed him,and BAM,instant lolwow

>>4040247
The massive hordes of Star Trek nerds who masturbate to the horrendously INCORRECT science beg to differ.

>>4040298
Well that was my point. Apparently the OP has no knowledge of sulphur vent ecology, so I tried to come up with a substitute, no matter how silly it seemed. Is spereating oxygen from water molecules any more silly than biological nuclear fission?

1) Only way this could work is some sort of teleportation thing and it really would not be practical as a weapon. It takes too much in terms of resources and energy to be good for that.

2) Why has nobody pointed out that since carbon dioxide literally means carbon+{two oxygen} or CO2 there is absolutely no need for nuclear fission since all you have to do is remove the carbon and there are plenty of chemical reactions that can do that.

3) Some sort of exo-suit that completely encloses them and then has legs on it. Alternatively: anti-grav harness.

Oh, and for anyone who wants to know the race's history in short:

They became intelligent, they developed and they expanded to other planets in their systems, terraforming the ones that they could and making them inhabitable for them using hydration bombs. Even then, over-population occured. Unable to fit their species in their system, they developed these gargantuan colony ships in the hundreds and sent them off. As they lack warp technology but they are otherwised very advanced, they travel at around half the speed of light, with estimated arrivals varying from a decade to several thousand years after identifying hundreds of thousands of viable planets. These colony ships were constantly being made but after the number past around the two thousand mark, the Imperium arrived sometime in the M32. Attempts of Imperial takeover failed miserably, even Space Marines failing to do anything - they were fighting the creatures in their own envionment and they numbered millions and used weapons and tactics they never saw.
So, they simply blew their planets up. An entire system, rendered dead and useless. The Imperium moved on, crossing off another extinct species on their list.
Once in a while, there were a few strange cases. Blackships would pass by to find planets suddenly flooded, their population drowned by apparent global warming. Strange meteorites could be seem by some astronomers, drifting throughout space.
Sometimes the Imperium fought back and survived the attacking aliens, not knowing what they were - they were a classified race thought to be butchered long ago.
They're not a major threat and I never intended them to be. Just a dead race that doesn't even know they're meant to be extinct, looking to spread and colonize the galaxy.

>>4040370
It has been pointed out. Many times. I've learned my science lesson.

>>4040393
manly tears

>>4040343
Yeah, it is. You're doing a process that requires energy, then saying that you can gain energy from it. If your logic worked, so would perpetual motion machines. At least nuclear fission involves loads of crazy shit that isn't taught at high school chem.

Oh, and if huge quantities of hydrogen are needed for hydration bombs, they siphoned it from the system's gas giants, which have the traditional hydrogen-helium composition.

Picture bizarrely related?

>>4040481
Never seen it before, sorry.

>>4038731
You don't need no "fission" to take CO2 and turn it into some C and some O2. Plants fucking do this. You just need a molecule that emulates the effect of chlorophyll, but uses some other energy source. Perhaps it uses a heat differential, so the xenofucks glide along at the thermocline borders, harnessing the icy cold water on one side of their shells against the warmer water on the other side.

>>4038848
Why not 4 legs? If you figure two tentacles per leg, that still leaves a good number free for casting, brain sucking, etc.

Okay, I have an idea for the 'Water bomb'. It's along the same lines as the stargate idea from earlier, but more practical as a weapon.

You fire the device from orbit like a missile. (Size depends upon the technology level of this race and how small they can make things) Once it enters the atmosphere, the warhead separates into lots of small flying drones. These drones enter into a massive circular formation (I'm thinking many miles in diameter, perhaps hundreds). They then open a huge, round wormhole/portal/whatever inside this circle using some kind of energy beam projected from each drone into it's closed neighbors.

This portal then links up with a matching device on the ocean floor of a water planet.

Tadah. You just dumped several thousand cubic miles of water on top of your enemy, with the rest of the ocean close behind.

Also, what name should these creatures have? A race of giant, intelligent nautiluses that revolves around thermal weaponry.

>>4040496
>I read the OP and responded
HURRRR

>>4040535
But now THAT planet has a lot less water and its ecosystem is completely fucked.

>>4040585
Thermahentai

>>4040585
Duh.

Call them the Verne.

>>4040615
YES.

>>4040604

Indeed. If you can install the other device on an enemy planet then I'd call that 'two birds with one stone'.

If you can't, then some slower method of creating large amounts of water could be employed on an uninhabited planet.

I just don't see a way of spontaneously generating large amounts of water without stripping away the atmosphere of the planet to such a degree that it becomes uninhabitable.

>>4040615
>>4040626
Very well. A tribute to Jules Verne.

I give you the Verne.

>>4040645
How big would a sphere have to be to contain an amount of INCREDIBLY HIGHLY compressed hydrogen and oxygen that is enough to raise a Earth-sized planet's sea level by several metres?

I don't see these guys as being the types to move about on big, bulky machine legs.

I'm seeing something more along the lines of a spider or millipede. Lots of thin, spindly legs.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'd be tempted to dispose of legs entirely and go for armoured anti-gravity suits for travel over land.

>>4040676
Sorry to weeaboo this pretty cool thread up but is anyone else picture Tachikomas?

>>4040665

I imagine it would have to be very large indeed.

Plus, massive amounts of compressed oxygen and hydrogen + a single enemy missile. Well, you get the idea.

>>4040676
This makes me think of necron builder scarabs for some reason

>>4040716

Similar to what I had in mind.

>>4040715
A single missile versus an entire fleet of automated guardians, not to mention a field of heat surrounding the 'head' of the colony ship likely to melt the missile before it even touches the hull. Every colony ship comes with a fleet of smaller vessels and incredible defenses.

got an idea like this somewhat

>>4040991

Good for you! Now you have a weapon capable of destroying any planet at any time.

You just made a nasty wrong turn into 'Horribly overpowered fan-wank race' territory.

1 - A device like that couldn't function on a massive scale. Maybe a "freeze bomb" where the liquid (vast quantaties of it) is flash frozen in an explosion, creating a huge block of brittle ice. Problem is after the ice melts then its just normal liquid.

2. (assuming you're writing hard SF) Don't write hard SF unless you understand 80 percent of your subject thoroughly enough to infer the last 20 percent.

3. I'm going to assume those tentacle things are strong and articulated, like fingers or some similar appendage. Make a mechanical walker with rotational joints that the being is placed in and opperates its complex controls with the tentacles.

Yeah, just stop writing. Your ideas are pretty horrible. Hard SF isn't for you. If you need to as fucking 4CHAN for help then you just need to stop.

>>4041034
Not really.
I just made it take more than a single missile to cripple a colony ship.

Now, it's a capable BFG fleet. The way you put it made it seem like anything could destroy it. The way I put it made it seem like nothing could destroy it. The way I want to make it seem is like it matches an Imperial force of a similar size.

>>4041064
It's not hard sci-fi at all. Besides, this is a project by someone from 4chan, for 4chan.

>>4041064

>2. (assuming you're writing hard SF) Don't write hard SF unless you understand 80 percent of your subject thoroughly enough to infer the last 20 percent.

I don't think this is true. Iain M Banks writes what is essentially hard sci-fi and he knows next to nothing about real science.

I suppose you could make 1 work using super-advanced tech.. but it will be pretty far out.

Idea 1: The bomb contains mass compressed right to the edge of becoming a singularity that is rapidly converted into water by the machinery of the "bomb". As it converts the evaporating nutorinum it ejects -massive- amounts of steam, the shock wave of the steam front is strong enough to rival a large atomic bomb and it takes months for the weather to settle.

Option 2 is basically option 1, but rather then carrying the mass it opens a gate to a dimension with a massively higher energy state then ours. As the energy pours into our universe, it's converted into mass.. in this case, water.

fuck legs, go with fishbowls on tracks

>>4041064
>1 - A device like that couldn't function on a massive scale. Maybe a "freeze bomb" where the liquid (vast quantaties of it) is flash frozen in an explosion, creating a huge block of brittle ice. Problem is after the ice melts then its just normal liquid.
ICE NINE UP IN THIS MOTHERFUCKER

>>4041001
Fine. Two choices for transport for the Verne.

1. A rather primitive anti-grav generator.
2. Image. This is the general idea I have had for a while, except legs would have many more joints than I have included.

>>4038802
On point 2, its pretty easy, just have a gas giant's gravity move the plates, leading to COLD PLANT having geologic activity

1. Ahead ships place Solar Sail reflectors over the planets icecaps, others collect ice asteroids for further orbital bombardment. Also highly compressed hydrogen bombs turn the atmospheric oxygen into water
2. To complex, but yeah thats pretty much a setting ala Jupiter's moon Europa. Perhaps a cold-fusion mollusc which gains warmth from an internal plasma fusion
3. A full shell harness with two gyroscopic wheels, one on every side like a monowheel for highspeed movement. These wheels can fold up in spiderlike legs. (Think of a combination of the wheel droids & vulture droids from Star Wars)

1. The bomb creates a chemical reaction of some sort that forces all the hydrogen and oxygen in a certain area cubed (1000km maybe?) to bond together, forming water.

2. The creature would need an incredibly strong shell or container to hold in the large amount of fission needed. I suggest that the creature simply force another element to bond with the carbon and force the oxygen off of it. I would suggest bonding it with Sulfur to create Carbon Disulfide (CS^2) as sulfur would be abundant around volcanoes. This would require some ahnd waving as to the exact way this works, but it would basically force the carbon off the oxygen and onto the sulfur.

3. Add a cockpit full of water with legs and arms attached to it. Use your imagination. If you don't want a cockpit, attach it directly to the shell using a ring.

>>4041064
Meh im having fun.
Scrawled pic to describe landing DA BOMB,made da ship up noice and fazt an didn moind da teknikulties

Options for FLOODAN:

* Dissociation bomb that melts creatures into their component structures (rquires copious handwavium).

* Melt ice caps.

* Collect the tears of all the sad, sad 3.5e fans and all the sad, sad 4e fans into a big glass ball, then hit a planet with it.

>>4041225
I imagined it with a more spherical, bulbous head. LIke an octopus.
Rather than squashing into the earth, I imagined a massive explosion of light, then a sudden wave of heat, steam and water spreading out from the landing zone, spreading over the entire planet and causing massive turbulence.
Still, thank you very much for the artwork.

>>>Collect the tears of all the sad, sad 3.5e fans and all the sad, sad 4e fans into a big glass ball, then hit a planet with it.

WERE NOT TRYING TO DESTROY THE MULTIVERSE DAMN YOU!!!

Imma go sleep

>>4041331
G'night.

Take it from someone who's at least taken a college course in Earth Science. All they have to do to raise the ocean by several meters is heat up the depths somehow. Thermal expansion alone will flood the coasts. If you want more drastic sea-level rise, just detonate actual bombs over several important ice sheets (namely, WAIS and Greenland's).

>>4041357
By ice sheets I mean glaciers on the land, not the floating ice sheets.

Let me check this one more time.

Is anyone here but me for a chemical reaction taking place in which hydrogen and oxygen are converted into water, flooding the planet that way? Of course, you need a lot of both elements but it's a question.

Also:
>>4041189
What method of transport do you guys prefer?

>>4041516
Anti-gravity, all the way.

>>4041496
Yes, me. Here:
>>4041209
There's a lot of both in the atmosphere, depending on the planet as well.

>>4041516
Honestly? They should move by swimming. Normally, this would be problematic against a land-based enemy, but not so much when you have the technology to take the ocean along with you.

Also, along the same line - if you really want a weapon that can raise water levels, why not just do things the sneaky way and handwave away some explanation with the Warp?

>>4041643
Even if you raise the water level by several metres, there are still areas where there will be land.
Where there is land, surface resistance can be planned. Surface resistance only exists to be brutally crushed.

Also, while the Verne are as Warp-capable as humanity, they understand little about the Warp. Verne psykers, or "Philosophers" are taken as aides to the Basileis but other than that, the Warp has little incluence in the society of the Verne.

Oh, and by the way, the units of the army have a Greek hierarchy.

>>4041643
You know considering that this is 40k
What kind relationship would they have with the warp?
Maybe they have some immunity because they're alien brains don't do emotions the same way and instead their make up simply translates it as a bunch of gibberish that makes things malfunction and must therefore be expunged?

>>4041643
Antigrav tech would work quite well really.
If they were swimming all the time in the water then why not swim above it too rather than bothering with new things like learning how to walk?
Then again walking might have been thier only option before the invented anti grav tech so they may still have walkers

I remember using the hydrobomb idea for one of my own RP races. I didn't seriously consider how it'd work beyond >>4041209 though. I just thought of it as an alchemical energy wave that SOMEHOW produced hydrogen from thin air and catalyzed its reaction with oxygen. Hey, hydrogen's the simplest atom, right? One proton and one electron. How hard could it be to technobabble into existence?

>>4041826
Eldar, Orks, even Tyranids all contribute to the Warp. These guys do. They've got their own psykers.

I decided not to make them special flowers in terms of the Warp.

>>4041996
I guess I will stick with the hydrogen-oxygen bomb then.

Wait wait wait.

What the fuck are their weapons and how do they hold them?

>>4042076
>Tyranids contribute to the Warp
Well if you consider doing to it what they do to planets then yeah.

>>4042290
Close combat weapons are primarily various claws covering the tip of the tentacles. The nobility use mainly lances. They're used to fight each other and piercing the shells of one another. Usually several tentacles wrapped around each one, as each individual tentacle is quite weak - this is reflected in the rules.
I was thinking perhaps a ranged weapon held in their hyponome, controlled and used by muscular action within it. However, I am imagining this and it looks pretty retarded
Another idea was perhaps something mounted on the harness. Excess heat ejected via a funnel or something along those lines.

>>4042342
Still, Tyranids have a presence in the Warp, also known as the Hive Mind.

>>4042395
Hyponome is that odd tube in the image, right? Why couldn't you fit a weapon in there?

>>4042625
Stick an AK-47 up your arse. See what that feels like.

I think what you need to do here is to rework these guys into this canon 40k race. Look at these Thyrrus, from Xenology. They're even referred to as Squiddies.