Randomly Generated Minibosses.

[Innocent_Flower]

Thinking of good experiences from other games such as Half Life or Halo: Warframe could really use an enemy that's somewhere between Heavies and a boss. I don't mean Lynx or Void-Vor who apears in a mission one time with mesages. I don't mean stalkers. I mean Guys who are big enough to feel like they're equal the average tenno yet small enough to not have a name and appear a few times in a single mission. Think commissioned Officers, Large War machines and overgrown infested. 

 

I'm thinking that DE could randomize their weapons/powers from pre-set lists. 

Example for corpus: 

Primary weapon: Dera-style gun/ Supra style gun/ Railgun/ Anti-Moa gun/Fusion Moa style gun/Raptor gun. 
Movement ability: Leap/Dash/Strafe
Secondary Weapon: Glaxion/Missiles/Penta

Defensive Ability: Snowglobe/shieldboost/nulifier/Heal.

Optional Ability: Shockwave stomp/Blast stomp/Elemental stomp/Elemental Wave
Optional Ability: Deploy osprey/Deploy Mines/Deploy turrets

 

 

Corpus then randomly put those abilities into one: 

- Unspecified jackal model

- Unspecified Hyena model
- Unspecified Raptor 
- Unspecified Riot-shield Moa

 

 

 

Grineer:

 Grineer Jackal  (the grineer, after all, do buy from the corpus, and jackals are seen in grineer ships) It might be good to change some things to better reflect the grineer. Be It different colours, Changing some items around (Ignis rather than glaxion, Napalm rather than anti-moa gun, Sawblades, Scorpion grapples..So on and so forth) 

Dargyns (Think of the way Floaty-hek worked)
Officers:

 

Grineer Casting Officer: Marelok/Stug/grinlok/acrid/gremlins/DualVipers.

Telleport/Jetpack/dash.

Grenades/orbitalStrikes/swarm missiles/Tesla

 

Grineer Melee Officer: Manticore/Brokk

 Ironskin/Invisibility/Speed

 Leap/ashTeleport

Shockwave/Elemental wave/Charge. 

 

Grineer Supporting Officer: Hek/Gorgon/Ogris/Vulkar/Shield+Kraken

Clone/SoTD/Heal

 Seekers/Grenades/tesla/Drahks

 Elemental Damage Buff/ArmourBuff/SpeedBuff. 

Casting officer: Eviscerator model
Melee Officer: Bombardier model.
Supporting Officer: Bombardier, Heavy female or oversized medium unit. 
They all wear commander hats. 

 

Infested

Juggernaut (Who's coming) 
Mutalists of larger Machines. 
Grander versions of anything really. Grab anything infested. Make him bigger. Give it random selection from a few sets of abilities. I mean look at phorid; He's just a big charger with missiles

Corrupted: Everythng previously mentioned. Except Dargyns. You wouldn't put them in a void tower, even if the ceiling is that high

 

 

All the art assets are currently there. It'd just take a good bit of messing around with the code. 

[MechaTails]

Id rather have minibosses be their own kind of Heavy Unit that spawns rarely in certain tilesets, maybe 10% chance. Check the Heavy Hellion idea.

They could use devastating weapons, like Opticor and Drakgoon.

Maybe toss in a random aura for kicks.

[Cobalt313]

Don't Eximi technically work like this?

 

Other possibility: certain Defense missions have a mini-boss as the final wave.

[Innocent_Flower]

Don't Eximi technically work like this?

 

 

Not at all. Eximus are "random common character with a preset ability set" The ability being far more important than the character underneath. 

[(XBOX)Grihaly]

 

Thinking of good experiences from other games such as Half Life or Halo: Warframe could really use an enemy that's somewhere between Heavies and a boss.

 

Unless you're including scarabs, I can't think of one instance in the Halo saga that had a 'mini boss'...and I've played through all of them numerous times.

[Innocent_Flower]

Unless you're including scarabs, I can't think of one instance in the Halo saga that had a 'mini boss'...and I've played through all of them numerous times.

Hunters

Brute chieftains. 

Arguably Gold elites. 

Arguably vehicles when you weren't in one. 

Guilty spark/regret/Tartarus. They were very short fights even if they were unique. 

 

I just really liked the design of hammer Chiefs and Hunters. They were great. 

[(XBOX)Grihaly]

Hunters

Brute chieftains. 

Arguably Gold elites. 

Arguably vehicles when you weren't in one. 

Guilty spark/regret/Tartarus. They were very short fights even if they were unique. 

 

I just really liked the design of hammer Chiefs and Hunters. They were great. 

Heavies

Heavies

Not necessarily heavies, just high ranking, still not 'mini bosses'

 Vehicles can be hijacked

Those were actual boss fights

[Innocent_Flower]

Nah man, Technical defenition means nothing when something doesn't fit within it. In Halo It generaly takes longer to kill a hunter pair than it is to kill Guilty spark/regret (depending on difficulty) In halo: A scarab is a boss. There's a long sequence of things you need to do to kill it. Normal brutes are heavy units: so A brute chieftan is a heavy above a heavy- A miniboss. The hammer and the hunter have

-Weakspots/Invulnerability at some times/places

- Hard hitting but With clear warning before each attack. 

 

I'm not advocating Glowing points that are the only parts that can take damage: because they clearly don't work for Hek,Vor,Lephantis or krill. But  Hunters/Chief with hammer is precisely what we need in terms of difficulty: More difficulty than a heavy, but It takes less than two minutes to kill one. 

 

Half-life also does pretty damn well with the antlion guard, The helicopters, the striders and the gunships. (though having to use a special weapon  might not work in warframe)  

[(XBOX)Grihaly]

I still wouldn't consider the chieftains to be mini bosses.

 

And the scarabs aren't real bosses, they can be killed in seconds if done right, and bosses are usually named.