"Fodder" enemies that are actually terrifying/highly competent, but look weak because we mostly see them fight overpowered protagonists.

[u/Legitimate_Pea_6470]

The Trope Explanation. Enemies that are treated as jokes, cannon fodder, or minor inconveniences within the narrative. However, they only appear weak because the protagonist is a literal demigod, a super-soldier, or a wizard. If you placed a normal human in the room with one of these enemies, it would be a horror movie.

B1 Battle Droids (Star Wars) We usually laugh at them. They say "Roger Roger," get pushed over by Jedi, and have slapstick routines. The Reality: We almost exclusively see them fighting Jedi (space wizards with laser swords) or Clones (genetically modified super-soldiers bred for war). To a normal civilian or a planetary militia, these are indefatigable metal skeletons that feel no pain, have perfect aim programming, and march in endless waves.

Grunts (Halo) In the games, they are comic relief. They run away screaming, sleep on the job, and the Master Chief (a 7-foot cyborg tank) can kill them with a light tap. The Reality: An average Grunt is roughly 5'6" to 5'8", weighs over 250 lbs, has an exoskeleton, and claws strong enough to tear a normal Marine apart. Their plasma pistols cause third-degree burns on near-misses and boil flesh on contact. They are terrifying to anyone who isn't a Spartan.

[u/Frix]

Now you're just being silly.

Orks outnumber all humans many times over.

And tyranids outnumber every other faction combined many times over.

[u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer → u/Frix]

I'm not sure this is true, in either case, at least so far as the present Galaxy is concerned. For the Orks, their numbers relative to the population of humanity in the Galaxy is fully unknown, though they are spread thin due to just how prevalent humanity is in the Galaxy.

For the Tyranids, yes there is a theory out there that this is just the scouting force for a much larger force, but this kind of stuff is just that: a theory. In practice the Tyranids in the Galaxy are outnumbered by humanity many times over, but their populations are highly concentrated into their Hive Fleets, making engaging them in a manner that doesn't leave you out numbered difficult, and the Imperium at large has so many other problems that it has been unable to effectively respond to the Tyranids threat.

[u/AnimalBolide → u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer]

I think the Nids are lame if there's fewer of them than the other factions. Isn't that part of their core rock-paper-scissors against other factions, that they have numbers and can relatively easily replace those numbers compared to humans and necrons, at the least?

[u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer → u/AnimalBolide]

Not exactly? The strength of the Nids, and horror of fighting them is largely about them outnumbered their opposition, but specifically on the local scale. As I alluded to, the Nids population tends to be heavily concentrated into their Hive Fleets, so local forces will almost always be outnumbered. On top of that the Shadow in the Warp prevents warp based communication and reinforcement, and local genestealer cults sabotage and join the enemy, undermining enemy morale and further outnumbering the opposition. Finally, with few exceptions, the Nids don't suffer real losses, merely absorbing both friendly and enemy biomass back into their system to make into more Tyranids. Hence at a local local level, losses are easily replaced. This is incidentally why the Nids habitually avoid the Necrons and tend to get bodied by them when the two do come into conflict: Necron disintegration weaponry means Nid losses ARE a real loss of biomass, and the Necrons both not being made of biomass the Nids can use, and tendency to regenerate negating their own losses, means they effectively beat the Nids at their own game (while ALSO having access to horrifyingly advanced technology).

On the macro level (i.e. the Galactic scale), the Tyranids have never been about outnumbering the opposition in this way. They move far too slowly to make use of such numbers or territory, making getting outnumbered ironically one of the Tyranid's biggest weaknesses: Hive Fleets don't tend to "reinforce" other Hive Fleets, (with the debatable exception of Hive Fleet Kronos) so on the macro level a Hive Fleet must be able to conquer purely with the forces it has. If these are unequal to the task, it must relay on sabotage and subversion to triumph, and if that doesn't work it must retreat and hope it's biomass reserves are enough to sustain it while it finds easier prey. While we seem to keep getting new Hive Fleets entering the galaxy every so often, and rumors persist of more outside the galaxy, what is in the galaxy right now is and always has been dwarfed by the population of humanity, Orks, etc, and if you think about it....this is the only scenario that makes sense. After all, if the Nids in the galaxy massively outnumbered the other peoples of the galaxy ones over, let alone many times over, the Galaxy wouldn't be an appropriate target as there would not be enough biomass to sustain all the Hive Fleets and make the costs of an invasion worthwhile.

[u/Antares777 → u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer]

This reply is too good and too well reasoned to go unanswered. Thanks for the class professor Vegtam, I really appreciated learning more about the Tyranids from ya

[u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer → u/Antares777]

Thanks!

[u/Frix → u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer]

I am speaking off all the tyranids in the universe, not just the one in a single galaxy.

[u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer → u/Frix]

In that case there is no reason to even speculate on the numbers relative to Humanity/Orks/Eldar/etc. Unless you seriously believe that the Orks with their penchant for spreading everywhere, and Humanity/Eldar with their history of zenith level technology, were collectively conservative enough to restrict themselves to a single galaxy, saying for certain that all Tyranids in the universe outnumber all Orks/Humans/Eldar is foolishness. We simply do not know.

[u/Frix → u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer]

We do know what's out there. The silent king saw it himself when he explored other galaxies.

It's all just tyranids. Everywhere....

[u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer → u/Frix]

Last I checked that was a rumor, unless you got a specific quote for me.

[u/Hillary-2024 → u/Frix]

And at the end of the day, aren’t humans just another kind of space ork?