Quote: (Evil and Chaos @ 03 Jul. 2009, 13:22 )
I feel Zombocom's point here is very good, one must be wary of anthropomorphising the alien conciousness of the Tyranid Brood Creatures.
Why, cuz they'll bite us?  I must say I actually quite enjoy the way both yourself,
E&C, and
Zombo will parse other people's posts in the worst possible way; it makes me laugh every time I read it, it's like you're almost incapable of giving the benefit of the doubt.
It's a game, gentlemen, it's all made up, it's not elaborately and logically designed with an eye to detail and realism by the original writers, it's a collection of "cool concepts", that aren't always that plausible or well thought out; there really is *very* little text on the matter; and I'd love to see some of your references,
Zombo.
It's not an "emotional" feeling when the Synapse link is disrupted, it's that a lower end creature will feel, as in "experience the effects of", the loss of that link more significicantly the more closely connected to the Synapse the creature is.
The Tyranids appear to operate in a "hierarchical network", so that knocking out a lower tier node affects everything downstream of it, at least momentarily, but often catastrophically, until another node reconnects those lower tiers, and it's also implied that there are different "strengths" of these network connections.  Yet, some creatures can operate fairly well on their own, even without local Synapse support... yet, when top-tier organisms, Norn Queens or Hive Ships say, are taken out, it appears to affect all downstream creatures, even the "independents".
Doesn't it stand to reason that creatures more closely tied to a local Synapse creature (i.e., part of its swarm) would suffer more from the loss of said Synapse link than a creature that had been sent out without such a close Synapse link?
And, as an aside: from the Hive Tyrant in the Codex Tyranids:
"All Hive Tyrants are highly psychic, and their relationship to the Hive Mind is closer than even that of Tyranid Warriors"If I had been the one to write that here, I'm sure I would've been called out on thinking Tyranids had "relationship"s or could feel "closer" to one another.  *laugh*  The Hive Tyrant has been referred to as a "consort" before!  Does that mean the Tyranids have wedding ceremonies as well?
It's just using human words (the only words we got!) to describe an alien (made-up!) concept... a metaphor, as it were.  I really don't think anyone thought I meant that the lesser Tyranid creatures were crying and lonely when I said "feel the loss"... ÂÂ
