Biter Matriarch, or one massive creature

[FelixMordou]

Hello Factorio Forums. I just recently finished my first game, and I found defending the rocket defense to be too easy. There's always adding more enemies to the final waves of bad guys, but I don't think that would actually be a real test of my defenses. What I think would be a real challenge is a final boss, of sorts.

What am I getting at? The Biter Matriarch.

The biters appear to be a hive-mind, but we never really see where they come from. So here's the gist of the idea.

Player builds Rocket Defenses, and starts the ship landing.

Five minutes into defending, the Big Bad Boss attacks.

It's a giant worm, or a massive biter.

Something that can cause a lot of damage, and possibly destroy/bypass walls simply by being.

It's the mother of all biters. The Biter Matriarch.

A true test of one's strategic set-up, she's the hardest challenge in the game. Massive health, good defenses, could one-shot an unarmored player, and is very, very angry.

You've killed many of her children. The signal from that thing you just built is really making her mad. Enough is enough, and she rises from the depths of Biter Prime. It's time to eat you and everything you've ever made.

Here's the other thing though. Unless you attack her directly, she will only target the rocket defense. Upon destroying it, she goes back to her hole, and rests once more. Leaving you, and the wreck of your factory behind to rebuild.

It's all just an idea, and could probably be refined. If anybody has anything to add, or change, please do so!

[ssilk]

Can somebody make a deeper lookup, if this isn't already discussed. A search for "boss" or so doesn't bring results, but I think we had already such a theme.

I tend to see that more like in the book/film "Ender's game": The matriarch controls the others somehow (pheromones? https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=3440 ), but itself it is weak and there are many of it. It's just the massive number of biters, which are dangerous.

[FelixMordou]

Can somebody make a deeper lookup, if this isn't already discussed. A search for "boss" or so doesn't bring results, but I think we had already such a theme.

I tend to see that more like in the book/film "Ender's game": The matriarch controls the others somehow (pheromones? https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=3440 ), but itself it is weak and there are many of it. It's just the massive number of biters, which are dangerous.

I did a pretty thorough look through the forums for bosses, and other such subjects, but I didn't find anything.

I like your idea, a lot. I really want to see something that actually challenges the player's defenses, and maybe a biter swarm protecting a matriarch would be a much better test than one giant monster.

[saykhia]

+1 for this.

Should have an appropriately epic entrance too. The spawn animation of Starcraft 2's Nydus Worms come to mind.

[DaveMcW]

There are a couple unresolved plot points in the story.

1. Why did the player crash-land?
2. Why can't we build a machine that flies higher than a hover-bot?

The answer to both could be: because the end boss patrols the air!

I imagine a giant, FLYING biter matriarch that spawns 10 minutes away and approaches the rocket defense as the timer ticks down. She drops spawners and worms as she moves, destroying the buildings directly under her to make room. And none of your defenses can hurt her.

When she is almost on top of the rocket defense, it activates and shoots her down in an epic ending scene.