Suggestion: Secondary Ending

[ThirteenEra]

The title isnt totally accurate, but i couldnt come up with a better way to word it.

Right now the game ends upon reaching Rocket Defense. However, what if we upped the ante a bit - this is heavily inspired by "final missions" of certain games etc. Here is what i have in mind:

Game proceeds normally until Rocket Defense. After Rocket Defense is finished, you get new research for (temporary name: Mind Beacon). Finishing this research allows you to make a building of same name and place it in the world - think big, like 10x10 or something. Placing this building triggers max evolution in biters, and effectively aggroes all of them onto you. Your new objective is to survive the attack of every single biter around you while waiting for the Beacon to charge. Unpowering beacon stops the charging, while removing or destroying it cancels the charging completely. The point is that you will be facing unfair odds that are overwhelming your defenses, overrunning first your "outer" satellites (mining outposts, etc), then sieging your main base, and finally rushing towards the beacon - while you are doing whatever you can to outlast them, and simply to survive until the "charging" finishes, allowing you to take control of the biters (aka win the game).

Not only will this allow for a "true" ending, where you can actually lose as opposed to "just taking a long time" that happens currently, but also will give you that sense of "Oh shit, everything is crumbling around me", while you're desperately trying to block off the biters and counting down the charging process second by second.

Thoughts?

[xnmo]

The Rocket Defense is merely a placeholder. The devs have said so on multiple occasions and it is obvious if you look at the lack of a graphic when you place it that end game and post game content is going to be completely revamped.

Personally I'm not too hot about the way rocket defense works or your suggestion, I think it feels shoehorned in and a little gamey. Factorio is about factories not base or tower defense. Biters are not sentient like the Zerg nor are they some planet consuming menace. Until the devs add some kind of darker backstory to them they are merely native fauna so it doesn't make any sense for them to bumrush you just because you plopped down a building. Considering how rocket defense is currently kind of bugged (Biters don't really do much when you build it) and due to the way your defenses and the enemy works I don't see how it could be that much of a challenge anyways outside of scripted events.

So yeah, maybe as a campaign mission, but not for freeplay.