the tyranids mod and tau mod are completely compatible with each other, and when new official base game patch drops, i will update both mods at the same time.
UPDATE 6: v1.06 compatibility patch release, plus Angels of Death DLC play instructions
official 1.06 patch just came out for base game today, so you have to download this small v1.06b compatibility patch, even if you don't buy the Angels of Death DLC.
for the new Angels of Death DLC campaign, the unit avail files are located in Armageddon/Content/BloodAngels/Data directory. you need to manually attach the 3000 numbers unit IDs to 3 files, from "availBA1.whdat" all the way to "availBA3.whdat". then tyranids and tau will show up under steel legion faction in game.
if you have already downloaded the previous versions of this mod, you only need to download the small v1.06b patch. and install over old files. ( overwrite everything ). if you are new to this mod, you need to download both the big main file AND this small v1.06b patch file. install the big main file first , then install v1.06b patch over that. detailed install instruction at the bottom of this post.
note:
this patch update takes care of both this tyranid mod and the tau mod, you only need to install one of them ( either the patch here or in the tau thread ). they are the same patch files.
old updates:
update 5:Vulcan's Wrath DLC compatibility patch release
this patch is to make this mod compatible with the Vulcan's Wrath DLC. for the new dlc campaign, the unit avail files located in Armageddon/Content/Salamanders/Data directory. you need to manually attach the 3000 numbers unit IDs to 7 files, from "availSAL1.whdat" all the way to "availSAL7.whdat". then tyranids and tau will show up under steel legion faction in game.
update 4: v1.05a compatibility patch release
this patch is to make this mod compatible with the newly released official base game v1.05 patch.
update 3: v1.04a compatibility patch release
this patch is to make this mod compatible with the newly released official base game v1.04 patch.
notes:
1. the dev made some changes to the game in a sense that you now have to manually attach the unit id list of 2001 to 2070 to "availMP.whdat" and "availMPlimit.whdat" files located in Armageddon/data folder IN ORDER TO PLAY AS TYRANIDS ATTACHED TO ORK IN MULTIPLAYER. before the patch, you didn't have to do anything.
2. the base game now has death sound when a unit dies. but unfortunately, this is a hard coded feature and the death sounds are tied to factions. since we can not have custom factions yet, we can not mod this without deleting base game death sounds. we will have to turn off the death sound all together in order not to break immersion when playing tyranids. it's easy to do , just rename the 2 folders that contain the death sound , "Death" "Destruction" in Armageddon/Audio. and if you want to reactive the death sound again, just change the name of those 2 folders back. no need to backup or delete those sounds files.
update 2: v1.03a release
Finally, the entire tyranids army is fully complete!!
from now on, there will just be balance patches, bug fixes and general maintenance to be compatible with new base game patch release. also from now on, the release version number will be the same as official base game version number. for example, now the official game version is 1.03, so our mod version is 1.03a, if new tyranids mod update is out it will be 1.03b and c and d , so on so forth.
in this release of the tyranids full faction addon mod, there are 13 unique units, with 17 variants/units. so now total full army variants count is at 70.
genestealers (2 variants), raveners, genestealers with broodlord, venomthrope, spore mines, genestealer hybrids (2 variants), hive guards , maleceptor, mawloc, tyrannocyte ( 2 VERSIONS of the same unit, explanations below ) , toxicrene , sporocyst (2 variants), and mucolid spores cluster.
some notes about this latest release:
1. venomthrope and toxicrene graphics have been completely reworked. SPECIAL TREAT: toxicrene now has 6 directional facings as opposed to the ususal 4!!
this model is simply too awesome not to have 6 facings. i have updated the tyranids graphics thread already, you guys can check out all the new units and all old reworked units there. 2. mawloc and trygon ( and prime v ) now have new tunneling movement sound. also since mawloc is a deepstrike unit, i give it 10 movement points with hover move and classified as infantry so it can go into and thru cities.
3. regarding tyrannocyte, these are 2 versions of the same unit, not 2 variants. the landed one is the transport, and the airborne one is the close air support. as i described in the nids stats crunching thread, basically it's another house rule, the landed tyrannocyte transport has a req cost, and attached to the infantry. the airborne version has no cost.after the transport landed, it can take fire and return fire as usual for that turn. but the next turn, you have to disembark your infantry, and your infantry unit can NOT use your tyrannocyte as transport again after that. instead to simulate the landed tyrannocyte flying into the air to become a close air support unit, we deploy the 0 cost airborne tyrannocyte unit to the same location, then you use this airborne tyrannocyte as an air support unit as if it was the same unit that just delivered the infantry troops.
i tried to give the landed tyrannocyte unit massive number of range to simulate deepstrike, but the problem is that when playing against AI, AI's turn is slowed down to a crawl, it couldn't process. so i had to reduce the movement points down to 12, ( that's a good sweet spot, ai was behaving normal again ) . the follow up airborne version's movement is set to 10. BUT ONE MORE IMPORTANT THING: after tyrannocyte goes airborne, you can NOT use the 10 movement points it has, that's for it to quickly follow the transport to get to the front. the true movement speed for airborne tyrannocyte is only 1. after it goes airborne and becomes a close air support flyer, you can only move 1 hex per turn for this unit. do not cheat!!
units like tyrannocyte is mostly for fun playing against AI. in an online multiplayer however, you and your opponent need to agree on whether you want to use this unit or not, because it can be easily abused by a cheater !
4. i classified toxicrene as an infantry unit so that it can take full cover, to sort of simulate that it has shroud.
5. sporocyst is an immobile artillery unit. you can buy it under artillery unit section, but once deployed it can not move. ( movement point is set to 0). it packs a punch, but it's only good for defensive assignment or close support when on maps like "jungle warfare" in which the orks deployment zones are very close to the front.
6. balance change: per dayta's suggestion, i increased the req cost of all those "leadership" units that i gave " heroic " trait to. the bump is roughly 125-200 depends on toughness of the unit. the tougher the unit the more of the cost increase. 6 units ( and their variants ) are affected by this: warriors, shrikes, zoanthrope, GS broodlord, tryon prime and tervigon.
7. bug fix: fixed a visual bug in which tyrannofex would fire it's main cannon from the tip of it's tail for some directional facings.
if you guys encounter any more similar graphic bugs, let me know here in this thread. thanks!! 
update 1: v0.2 release
in this v0.2 release of the tyranids full faction addon mod, there are 12 unique units, with 19 variants/units. so now total variants count is at 53.
flying tyrant (5 variants), shrikes (3 variants), gargoyles, skyslashers , ripper swarm, harpy, hive crone, harridan, dimachaeron, tervigon( 2 variants ), haruspex and tyrannofex. there will be 1 more release to complete this nids army list! yay!!!
after that there will just be balance patches and general maintenance. some notes about some of those new units:
1. flying tyrant, tyrannofex and exocrine ( again
) unit graphics sprites ( all directions ) have been completely reworked! now they all have consistent color and look much better. harridan only has 2 facings, i still need north facing photos of this unit, see nids unit graphics thread for photo request. 2. not all nids flyers are classified as aircraft. as a matter of fact, only harpy and hive crone are aircraft, ( have evasion bonus ) . flying tyrant, shrikes, gargoyles, skyslashers are all infantry with hover move, they can fly across river AND take full cover bonus from terrain, but have no evasion bonus. harridan is a flying titan.
so all in all, tyranids air force can be a lot more useful than the "air farce" that all other factions get . 
3. there are 2 variants of tervigon. one variant with termagaunts fleshborer 7 shots as it's third weapon, the other one without fleshborers, but more stinger salvo shots ( 6 as opposed to 3 ) . the first variant is to simulate spawned termagaunts per turn.
i also have a house rule suggestion regarding tervigon, basically only termagaunts can replenish strength in the middle of a battle by standing beside a tevigon, all other units from both sides can not. they can only reinforce by deploy new units at deploy zone and leg it all the way to the front. so a badly mauled termagaunts unit can stand beside a tervigon, replenish strength for 1 turn. since tervigon is a synapse creature and has heroic trait, it can fully repair that mauled termagaunt unit's morale to full next turn. this simulates that the tervigon spawned a new termagaunt unit next turn. of course this kind of house rule can only be enforced by players themselves, so up to you guys if you want to use it. that's why we have 2 variants of tervigons, one with hard built in termagaunts and one without, give you guys the freedom.
first v0.1 release
in this first release of the tyranids full faction addon mod, there are 15 unique units, with total 34 variants/units.
you can play the tyranids on both the side of imperium and the orks. i have attached the units to both factions. yes, that means that you can even play tyranids vs tyranids in multiplayer.
in this version 0.1, the following units are included: termagaunts (2 variants) , zoanthrope, hormagaunts, warriors (4 variants), pyrovore, biovore, hierodule(2 variants), hierophant (2 variants ), exocrine, trygon (2 variants), carnifex( 5 variants) , swarmlord, lictor, regular land tyrant ( 5 variants ), land tyrant with tyrant guards( 5 variants ). with all new weapons effects and sound effects. it's a full faction addon. ( with more units coming of course )a few notes about some of the units and nids faction mechanics in general:
1. exocrine's north facing unit graphics sprite has been reworked, now it looks much better!
2. i gave all synapse creatures heroic trait. leadership only restores a small amount, the way i see it, a unit is either in the synapse coverage or not, with heroic trait, there is no uneven restoration of moral ( that simulates synapse coverage ). if this proves to be too overpowered, we can always tweak it later.
3. i gave lictor camo trait, it doesn't show up in unit card, but it works, ( tested online in hotseat games against myself ). just put 1 hex between lictor and an enemy unit, that enemy unit won't see it. so lictor can actually function like a recon/ assassination unit now like in the lore.
4. swarmlord is a unique tyrant unit. you can only have 1 on the battlefield at all times. so do not cheat!
however, you can buy another after it dies. in lore, it can be resurrected by the hive. 5. there will be no separate tyrant guards unit, i merged tyrant guards into tyrant to make them a new unit with stats supplied by dayta, there are 5 variants of it.
credits:
very special thanks to forum members dayta and xadie, dayta for the hard stats crunching, and xadie for broad stroke stats suggestions. without their help, this project would have been delayed for probably months. very special thanks to the great devs of the awesome Armageddon base game, without the base game, we won't be able to play as tyranids.
also thanks to Relic for their awesome graphics and sound assets from dawn of war 2, numerous people on the internet for posting photos of their beautifully painted models. various people on this forum for answering my questions, GHEPP and caveman, to name a few. and general encouragement and support from numerous people in this very forum. Thank you all!
oh almost forgot, GW for their awesomely crafted universe. Install Instructions: please read carefully:
with this mod, the only files that are overwritten are 4 .whdat files: Armageddon/data/weapons.whdat, Armageddon/data/unittypes.whdat, Armageddon/Graphics/attack.whdat, Armageddon/Audio/Move/move.whdat. so before you do anything, BACKUP THESE 4 FILES!! and if you want to uninstall this mod ( why would you ?
) , just restore those 4 files. all tyranids sound and graphics files are new additions, they do not overwrite anything. so you don't have to worry about them.
after you backup those 4 files, 2 simple steps to install this mod:
STEP 1: extract the zip file you downloaded into the Armageddon base directory, OVERWRITE everything.
STEP 2: in order to make the nids units available in steel legion and ork faction in both multiplayer and singleplayer campaign, you have do this extra simple step. i didn't do it for you guys.
go to the Armageddon base diretory, now you will see a text file called "units avail list". open this file, you will see a long vertical list of numbers starting from 2001 to 2070 then from 3001 to 3070. these are unit ID numbers for nids units attached to the ork faction and steel legion faction respectively.
to play tyranids attached to both ork and imperium side in multiplayer, you need to copy and paste that list of numbers from 2001 to 3070 into "availMP.whdat" and "availMPlimit.whdat" files located in Armageddon/data folder. DONE ! now you can play as tyranids attached to both sides.
for vanilla singleplayer campaign, you do the same thing, except you need to copy and paste the list of 3001 to 3070 into each and every one of those avail.whdat files in the Armageddon/data folder. avail1.whdat all the way to avail8.whdat. DONE! now you can play as tyranids on the imperium side through the entire campaign, against orks.
for Vulcan's Wrath dlc campaign, the unit avail files are in a different location. now they are located in Armageddon/Content/Salamanders/Data directory. you need to manually attach the 3000 numbers unit IDs to 7 files, from "availSAL1.whdat" all the way to "availSAL7.whdat". DONE! now you can play as tyranids on the imperium side through the entire dlc campaign, against orks.
for Angels of Death dlc campaign, the unit avail files are located in Armageddon/Content/BloodAngels/Data directory. you need to manually attach the 3000 numbers unit IDs to 3 files, from "availBA1.whdat" all the way to "availBA3.whdat". DONE! now you can play as tyranids on the imperium side through the entire dlc campaign, against orks.
ONE LAST THING: if you like to modify some of the stats of the nids unit using the editor or if you like to keep your own mods that's tied to the those 4 .whdat files while playing the tyranids mod, you need to merge the data entries from tyranids mods into your own versions of those 4 .whdat files. i have written detailed instructions in POST 2, along with some warnings. please read that carefully, i won't take up more space in this first post.
as usual, new updates of this mod will be posted at the top of this post.
Download link for the latest patch v1.06b, compatible with official 1.06 base game patch plus Angels of Death dlc campaign. this patch update takes care of both this tyranid mod and the tau mod, you only need to install one of them ( either the patch here or in the tau thread ). they are the same patch files:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e096u5125nrj0 ... b.zip?dl=0
Download link for the main file ( graphics and sound assets, full army 70 variants ): https://mega.co.nz/#!SUxmTY4C!Gy8jAHPCG ... VdFb78neuU
feel free to report any bugs, post your impressions, suggestions and feedbacks in this thread, all feedbacks are welcome! and most importantly, have fun!
