This mod is obsolete. CybranM's Armoured Biters supports Factorio 2.1 as of 2.1.0 and includes everything this fork added. This version just depends on it, so updating will install the original, and then you can remove this mod. In my testing, Snappers in existing saves and your settings carry over. Everything below is kept as it was when this was still a fork.
Armoured Biters
This mod adds a new type of enemy to the game called Snappers (which don't replace regular biters), they're a bit slower but have more health and resistance than regular biters. Unlike regular biters, snappers have laser resistance to make building late game defences a bit more interesting.
They spawn at the same pollution levels as regular biters at regular biter nests, for example if the biter nest can spawn a medium biter it can also spawn a medium snapper.
Note that the option to enable armoured biter nest works best when creating a new world as they wont spawn in regular biter nests with the option enabled.
YouTube video showing the biters in action
Features

- Five new enemies: Small - Medium - Large - Behemoth - Leviathan (not pictured)
- New nest for the biters, disabled by default
- Settings to tweak spawn-rate, health and resistances
- Both normal and high sprite detail settings (the pngs are also optimized)
- Settings to change the snappers colour

Credits
Veden - Was instrumental to making this mod, helped a ton
Linver - Created the settings to change snapper stats
MFerrari - Created custom spawner logic and leviathan unit
Streaming/videos of this mod are allowed.
This is an unofficial 2.1 compat fork — feel free to post issues with the 2.1 port itself in this mod's discussion tab. For balance/design feedback on Armoured Biters generally, please use the original mod's page instead.