War queen

Occurence

You can summon a hostile War queen with a mechanitor and a mechband antenna, and destroys the antenna. Therefore, each summon requires 50 Steel, 4 Components for the antenna, and Standard Mechtech already researched. However, war queens are not exclusive to summoning, as strong enough mechanoid raids may feature one or even multiple.

When summoned, it will be accompanied by other mechanoids. The amount of other mechanoids depends on how many times you have summoned a War queen before, but is independent of wealth, time, or colony progress. They will crash down in a ship after a random amount of time ranging from a few in game hours to days. They will not attack immediately, but will instead act like a raid and "prepare" before launching their assault.

Summoning:

1x War queen with heavy shield unit, 5x pikeman, 2x scyther
1x War queen with heavy shield unit, 7x militor, 2x centipede (burner)
1x War queen with heavy shield unit, 5x pikeman, 2x tesseron, 3x tunneler
2x War queen with heavy shield unit, 8x militor, 4x lancer, 2x centipede (burner)
2x War queen with heavy shield unit, 5x pikeman, 5x lancer, 3x legionary, 3x centipede (burner)
2x War queen with heavy shield unit, 14x scyther, 4x centipede (burner), 1x centurion
2x War queen with heavy shield unit, 8x centipede (burner), 18x scorcher
3x War queen with heavy shield unit, 6x scyther, 6x lancer, 3x legionary, 8x centipede (burner), 1x centurion

Like the other mechanoid bosses, after being summoned 8 times, the next summon will be the same as wave 3. The wave count is per playthrough, not per colony or map. If the war queen is summoned once on one map, summoning another on a second map will bring the second wave. The Archonexus colony reset does reset this progression.

Summary

As mechanoids, every war queen is immune to fire, Flame and Heat damage, and temperature extremes, despite having Comfortable Temperatures defined. They have 100% Toxic Resistance and Toxic Environment Resistance, making them immune to toxic buildup, rot stink and other toxic effects. They do not need to eat, rest, and have no mood. They will be stunned by EMP attacks for a time proportional to the EMP damage inflicted and will "adapt" and rendered immune to further EMP strikes for 2,200 ticks (36.67 secs). War queens have a 70% EMP resistance, meaning they are stunned for 70% less time.

Defeating a hostile War queen rewards the player with a Powerfocus chip. Studying one is required to research High Mechtech, and they can also be used to create various mechanitor gear.

Combat

Equipped with a charge blaster turret.
Spawns war urchins; the queen can make up to 3 war urchins at a time. Each war urchin costs 25 steel to make. The war queen generates with 600 steel.
- This steel is not recovered upon killing the queen or shredding her at a Machining table
May come with an energy shield. 300 HP, recharges at a 0.5 rate.
MeleeDoorDamageFactor = 1.5

When used by the player, creating an urchin has a 15 second cooldown.

As an ally

The War queen is an ultra-heavy mechanoid. It requires 600 Steel, 300 Plasteel, 3 Advanced components, 1 Nano structuring chip, 1 High subcore and takes up 5 bandwidth from a mechanitor. It recharges at a large mech recharger and creates 25 wastepacks whenever the recharger's waste meter fills.

Analysis

As an enemy

Despite their description in a Biotech preview, rushing the war queen is generally not the best strategy. The war queen will only begin to deploy urchins when she is within range of an enemy, so it can be advantageous to let her come to you. Furthermore, the war queen can only build a finite number of urchins, so it is quite viable to hunker down and win a battle of attrition. Aiming for the queen can help, but you'll need to use EMP and rush it down very quickly, lest the swarm takes you out. Letting all the urchins be deployed allows for more steel to be recovered, as they can be shredded after, but any remaining steel inside the queen is lost.

The real threat isn't so much the war queen as the escorts she spawns with. The first summon comes with 5(!!) pikemen, and later fights only get harder. Pikemen in particular can snipe from a long range, making it extra difficult to interrupt the constant flow of war urchins. You might want to construct a close quarter combat arena in order to counter this.

Health

Body part	Health
Head	130
Skull	130
Brain	52
Nose	52
Neck	130
Jaw	104
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	52
Ear (left, right)	52
Body	208
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	78
Lung^[2] (left, right)	78
Liver^[2]	104
Heart^[2]	78
Spine^[2]	130
Stomach^[2]	104
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	156
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	104