New Infested Enemy Suggestion

[iotimoline]

So I recently got around to building my Wyrm and while painting to match my Ember's colors it I came to the conclusion that it was an adorably ugly flying nudibranch thing that I wanted to hug.  More importantly, I also came to the realization that these flying quasi-organic robots would make a perfect addition to the Infested arsenal.

 

A small, fast flier with a weak blaster gun would provide the infested with both a 3rd dimension and a ranged combatant, complexifying their tactics without completely upending them and making them Another Shooty Group.  I'd envision them more as harassment enemies than proper threats, but they could nonetheless spice things up.  They could chase retreating Tenno down and shoot them from above while they're on boxes or while they're recharging shields.

 

They could either be free-spawning like other enemies or have a new Ancient type (Hive Ancient?) spawn them at intervals until death.

 

Lorewise, Sentinels are built with the same quasi-organic technology as the Warframes themselves, which is made in part of repurposed Infested nanocyte mass.  One merely needs to turn this around and have the nanocytes form Sentinel/Osprey-equivalent constructs.  While all the Infested to date are based on subsumed humans, they grow weird masses (the tumorfishbarnacles) wherever they inhabit, even on clearly inorganic substrate.  So it's unclear if Infested need organics to provide the 'brain' or if they're just repurposing what's already there.

[Westmin]

Interesting.  I like the idea of the hive ancient more than independent spawns.  While most players will target the ancient directly, it would prevent a random flyer from getting stuck on defense missions (like shield ospreys do sometimes), since the hive ancient would be the actual enemy.  Having a short range infested wouldn't be a bad addition though.

[se05239]

Flying infested has been suggested before, I think. Still, it would be a nice addition indeed.

[MJ12]

This game really needs flying enemies. There's a dearth of them despite how "classic shooter" they are, and they would make it harder to  cover-cheese enemies, which is always a good thing.

[CosyPigeon]

How about swarms of S#&$ty infested insects that rapidly fly up to you and start noming on you?