Ideas For Infested Enemies That Don't Incur High Development Costs?

[SulfuradoG]

We all are aware of the need for more invested variety. Just look at the Grineer and their variants; they have normal, frontier, arid, tusk, drekar and kuva, off the top of my head. The corpus have normal, terra and vapos. But the infested? none of that. They've remained the same since the mutalist enemies were added.

But! Before we start to offer high-brow solutions to the lack of infested enemies, before we start busting out notebook scrawlings of mutated aberrations of flesh that would look pretty cool in game, we need to keep in mind that for DE, making new enemies isn't easy nor free. Money, time and effort must be expended to conceptualize, model, animate, program, test, balance and finetune the enemy and it's performance. And after implementing it, they need to "earn" as much if not more than what was spent in the making of an enemy, or else it was a bad investment. (You can infer why DE prefers to add new frames instead of reworking old ones that people have already bought)

With that in mind, I believe the best way to approach solving the lack of invested enemies is by looking at what is already there (models, mechanics, concepts) and try to adapt it, repackage it into new enemies, with hopefully lower costs in programming, animating and modeling.

And so I make this thread, where I'll post some of my ideas, and hopefully interest you fellow players into coming up with more.

New Enemies

Fanged Charger: A recolored charger, with its normal blue armor darkened with grime, blood and infested growths. They replace chargers rarely at lower levels and more frequently at high level. They have 20% more hp than the charger, deal 25% more damage on attack, and they have a 75% change to proc slash on hit, meaning they can tick away at your health through shields. 

Bilious Charger: A charger with the greenish armor of a grineer seeker, with yellow eyes and tumorous, glowing growths on its underbelly. It has 80% more health than the charger and is slightly bigger, but moves 20% slower. On death, they spawn pools of acidic gunk (using the same pits of tar created by the tar mutalist, but recolored) that deal corrossive damage and can eat away armor. These guys would make defending against the infested a riskier affair, since you wouldn't want them to spawn acid right on top of the objective.

Spur Charger: A counterpart to the eximus units, this charger shares the model of the Bilious charger, but with orange armour, slightly crimson flesh and blood red growth. They have 100% more hp than a charger and move 25% slower. On hit, they have an increased chance to proc puncture, aka weakened. but the big thing about them is that on death, they spray nearby infested with energizing blood, giving them short but strong health regen and 50% faster melee attacks. Where in a group of enemies you'd focus down the eximus before dealing with the weaker units, with this enemy you'd want to do the opposite, killing the spur charger once there were less infested to benefit from the buff.

Robust charger: Because the infested lack tanks that don't buff other units. This is a big charger with white armour (think from a bombard) that has 200% more hp than a regular charger. Its gimmick/ability is that once its hp falls under 50%, it becomes invincible for a few seconds, increasing its ability to stay in the fight. Note that any leftover damage from a single attack that takes it down past 50%, is heavily reduced down to 20%, meaning that in order to one-hit kill this thing, you'd need to do three times its health in one go. Additionally, this enemy is resistant to staggers, knockdowns, and being ragdolled.

Ancient Shepherd: An ancient with dark gray flesh and bright blue tentacles, its coloration evocative of the overgrown plants in the orokin derelict. This ancient doesn't run and lost the ability to pull players in. Instead, this enemy has a ranged attack where it creates psychic, homing shards of energy and sends them slowly towards the player. It also has a second ability where it creates an energy orb and casts it forwards. This orb travels in a straight line and gives a movement speed buff and damage reduction to nearby infested, letting it buff the horde from afar.

Enemy Reworks

Electric crawler: I find it bothersome to tell these guys apart from the other crawlers. When lights change as often as they do, their different color becomes a non factor. How to change them? Give them a new helmet, preferably one from the newer corpus enemies, with more obvious tech to explain their electric attack. 

 

(more to come as I come up with it)

Edited June 11, 2019 by SulfuradoG
Added ancient shepherd

[Banelingline]

My own core idea is to take advantage of just how heavily loaded the Corpus and Grineer are on a very small number of models to streamline conversions. Not necessarily introducing transformation animations, though this could be done for the Crewman and Lancer models due to their ubiquity, but rather making it so that there's direct texture mapping of the map's non-Infested models to base Infested on. Cut up/stretch out the models, then fill with Infested junk as needed to cover warped mess and as desired to give aesthetics.

Then, with this key workflow bit handled, have a Corpus, Grineer and Pure version of each basic Infested unit, as well as a Grineer and Pure alternative to the Mutalists as new units, likely starting with Pure Infested to be spawned by Boilers and encountered on Derelicts (and Mercury/Eris?). Then local variations for Invasions are "templated" onto the local forces, so during Plague Star you clearly see that the Infested present were Tusk units and an Outbreak on Jupiter gives you visually-distinct Vapos-based Infested.

Four new models for the first "phase" of adding Pure Infested as a fully-staffed faction, one for the Leaper, one for the Charger, one to replace the Mutalist Moa and one to replace the Mutalist Osprey, with the Crawler being a maimed version of one of these new models. Charger can be adjusted from Helminth Charger model to distinguish and better fit aesthetics of existing pure Infested, model to replace Mutalist Moa could be based directly on Infested parts of the Mutalist Moa instead of being made from scratch. Mutalist Osprey could be replaced by a variant of Crawler or Leaper that's more "bursty" and easier to avoid, retaining the Mutalists as a more serious threat than the "raw" Infested.

Corpus would only need to replace the Charger with a model based on their existing units, but could also replace Ancients, Boilers and Broodmothers with Corpus-based models. Perhaps a Mutalist Bursa model in replacement of the Broodmother? Still, four models to make to fill out the Infestation roster as entirely local, able to draw from all existing "typical" Corpus models for stuff to edit for some future-proofing automation. Grineer, meanwhile, need replacements for the Mutalists (two models), "pure" Infested (three more, though technically optional), Crawler and Leaper (another new model and variation thereof), having fewer useful models to work with as a starting point (the Corpus Proxies are all over the place, and Grineer have, like, three line infantry models. Lancer, Butcher and Heavy Gunner).

Ideally, they'd borrow the statistics of the base unit universally, using generics where needed. Armor for Grineer-based Infested, shields for Corpus infested, bloated and/or rapidly-regenerating raw health for "pure" Infested, with more-elite base units resulting in more powerful Infested. Perhaps add a corpse-converting Infested that acts similarly to the Amalgam Alkonost, only by drawing in the corpses of enemies to make reskinned Infested with the statistics of more elite units than normal. Such as a Charger with the bulk of a Heavy Bombard Arctic Eximus as its starting point.

Yes, it is much more work than your suggestion, but it's the bootstrapping to the treatment the other two factions have gotten. By having variant model skeletons as the basis, having Infested draw from the assets of the local faction becomes much more doable, and the idea of just cutting up, stretching and layering onto existing models to make Infested versions, instead of the heavier asset alteration of the current design process, means that it could be systematized to automatically do it to the local version of the base model, while allowing for the conversion of most any unit with the same skeleton in-mission. More exotic accessories are likely to lead to manual fixing, but this is still better than manually doing all of it every time.

[Klomster]

I've been thinking of the idea that infested units are a bit interesting when it comes to lore.
For example, the charger is/was a lancer. The leaper was a corpus crewman. Etc etc.
Why are these always in large quantities on every infested mission? Since right now i'm fighting on let's say a grineer ship. Why so many infested corpus guys?

Did they just happen to be in a massive fight, ever single time?
Does the infested ship around armies of infested in ships and plan out exchange programs to mix and match their forces to have a great mix at all times?

It just feels slightly odd that there's always a mix of infested.
So a fun and not super intensive (sure it's a bunch of modelling, but only that) suggestion is that the infested get themed for the tileset one is at.
If i am at a corpus place, the infested are corpus themed.
Am i at a grineer ship`? Grineer themed.
What i'm suggesting is 3 infested themes. Corpus, grineer and mixed. Mixed is just as it is now, random and there was obviously a three way battle sometime or the infested reinforced or something.
Corpus theme. Leapers, osprey and moa styled infested and all the others i've forgotten who are corpus themed. The charger would need a model, could be a swollen corpus tech or something, with the helmet on the front forming a mouth or something. I dunno, modellers should go wild. And just make all the infested have a corpus variant.
Grineer theme. I think it's obvious what i'm after here. For example instead of a leaper being a deformed corpus crewman, it could be a deformed roller ball. They jump at their foes already and thematically would fit. Perhaps growing legs or being mixed with a lancer or something.
And the infested moas would be some grineer variant.
My point is, the themes would only be differences in models, the actual stats and animations and skeletons would be the same. Basically a new skin for a bunch of the infested units.
Since animation and rigging is not needed (or at least not to the same extent) a whole lot of work can be skipped since there isn't any actual new units.

I know it's a bit simple, but i'm a sucker for lore and i find it a bit odd that there's always a perfect mix of grineer and corpus infested in every mission they show up. Even if it's a grineer stronghold with no corpus for miles. Not even the same planet. But all the leapers are infested corpus..... wuuut?
It's a silly request and more fun than anything.

As for a new enemy, i suggest a thing with the same style as an ancient, but with 4 legs and two arms with swords or blade arms like preying mantis.
It should stop and scream, then charge in with a knockdown attack which sends people flying. It should also have a leap similar to leapers which it can do to catch up to fools who run away.

[SulfuradoG]

The worst part about current infested is how the spawn pods from boilers and whatever somehow spawn infested grineer and corpus units. How? where do the helmets, boots and armor come from?

Edited June 16, 2019 by SulfuradoG