[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Xd00999 [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] ROBERTO jh I have an idea. The Flood at their height is directly related to the Forerunners at their height. In this battle, both sides are at their height. [url]http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/forerunner-feat-thread.236388/[/url] We already know a lot about their raw firepower, but the shear industrial capacity of the Forerunners alone is overwhelming, nearly impossible to grasp. According to this, fleets of system-destroying warships could be produced within seconds, and lead by hyper intelligent beings with no souls (AIs). How would an AI interact with Chaos if it has no soul? Anyways, the Flood defeated these people. This is what I'm always talking about by the Flood being mathematically impossible to defeat after a certain point in their growth short of divine intervention or mass suicide. According to the OP, everyone is at their peak, which means this is the Flood as they were right before getting Halo'd, a galaxy-conquering, unstoppable swarm with full access to all of the resources the Forerunners had. Any race, other than the 'Crons, 'Nids and many of the Chaos types would be eatable. The extreme density with which the races of 40K live together--be them humans, or Orks--and especially in places such as hive worlds, would only accelerate the wild-fire spread of the Flood. At the height of their power, the Flood alone could possibly handle all of the non-'Nid organic races, shearly out of mathematical probability. And that is provided the 'Nids can't be infected. Where the Flood is concerned, the incredible size and power of 40K would backfire. Everything else is up to everyone else.[/quote] Chaos can, and has, corrupted machinery. A STC has no soul, not even a machine spirit, yet it was still corrupted by Chaos. It was also shown that a soul is not necesarilly required to earn the Gods' favour. While the Tau do have souls, they are incredibly weak. Even so, Khorne can still grant the power, such as in the case of Kias who was aided by Khorne. In addition, the STC in question was capable of producing a combat ready Man of Iron (think Terminators) every few seconds which in turn were corrupted by Chaos. The STC was buried deep underground with no obvious supplies yet it is still able to produce an army in minutes. The Imperium being at its height had thousands and thousands of these STCs. Actually, compared to other worlds, Hive Worlds are not the standard world. For every trillions strong hive world, there is a few agri-worlds populated by a few million lonely farmers. In addition the stronger the Flood gets the stronger Chaos becomes too. Every Flood form we have seen was in a state of decay and the Flood itself is a plague. Nurgle feeds off the Flood. The likelyhood of the Flood taking all other races is debatable because they can go where the Flood can not. Can the Flood enter the Webway? Can the Flood navigate the warp? [/quote] Which is why I was saying the Flood wouldn't be effective against the Chaos gods, though I somehow doubt the God of Pleassure would get much out of the Flood. And the AI vs. Chaos thing was a legitimate question. Anyways, the Flood would be able to navigate it, since they assimilate all of their victim's traits. But let's say they can't: Forerunner slipspace is far more accurate in that it reliably lands you in the proper century and location, and is far safer, seeing as it is not actively trying to kill you. Plus it isn't limited by the likes of the Astrominican, like the Imperium is. It isn't a perfect situation, but it is a very favorable one--for the Flood. My post, btw, ignores the 4 Gods on purpose, seeing as the only thing that could conceivably destroy them would be the Precursors, or Halo, maybe. The material 40K verse would have a significantly more difficult time with the Flood than maybe even the 'Nids, mainly because the Flood is both an infection and super-powerful galactic horde and the 'Nids are just alien locusts. Both have similar bio-evolution capabilities and are superb adapters, but the Flood turn everything you throw at them back at you ten-fold--technology, knowledge, soldiers, etc.--which is why any universe that has a larger, more powerful population would get swamped faster once the Flood reach the Gravemind stage. Like a dense forest in a forest fire. The Forerunner Flood at their prime far exceeded the required tipping point in their evolution. Everything else in the Haloverse just adds insult to fatality; the Forerunners alone are a galaxy-class insult, squared up with their equals Ancient Man. This is not to say it'd be an easy fight, or even one sided, but the simple mathematical advantage the Flood give is too great to be overcome, perhaps even alone, regardless of the other factions. [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] AJF1177 [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] And Im Here Too [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] ROBERTO jh Anyways, the Flood defeated these people.[/quote] To be fair they won through a massive numerical advantage, the Forerunners being unprepared and unequipped to fight anything like the Flood, and apparently they didn't realize what exactly they were up against until it was too late. [quote]This is what I'm always talking about by the Flood being mathematically impossible to defeat after a certain point in their growth short of divine intervention or mass suicide.[/quote] That's pushing it quite a lot, but yeah, they're pretty tough in numbers. I wouldn't say they're some kind of invincible universe-ending fungal zombie war machine stomping over absolutely everything though.[/quote]Virus bombs would devastate the flood since it destroys everything biological.[/quote] Forcing stars to go supernova I think would be more effective, but that still didn't stop them. And yes you're right And I'm Here Too, but the reason the Forerunners lost in the first place was [i]because[/i] the Flood had evolved to reach that tipping point, the point of no return, before the Forerunners properly realized what was going on. To be sure, a small outbreak like the Halo trilogy outbreak could be reasonably destroyed with precision obliteration. But switch the technology that the Flood has available to them from Covies to Forerunner, or WH40K, and you suddenly have a beast that much more dangerous. After that, everything snowballs. Ships are sent to clense a planet, the force is infected, the Flood have more resources, the allies have less, and so on so forth. Every battle with the Flood, if you'll notice, has always ended with either complete, total obliteration of everything, including allied forces, or the Flood consuming everything. Either outcome results in catastrophic losses for the allied forces. The Flood don't have much to worry about because anything that dies can also be recycled into the Flood's resources to build progressively more powerful creatures, even dead Flood, so losses are of little to no concern. While you, on the other hand, just keep dying and not coming back while you fight an exponentially stronger enemy with every fight. [Edited on 10.01.2012 4:58 PM PDT]