This is a very good idea to add a totally new type of challenge to the game, but unneccessary big and powerful new beings as normal enemies could cause some issue in the whole Factory building and managements part of game

I would suggest turning Dragons into Arena like boss fight as a standalone minigame in Factorio
Imagine a structure in which by activating it You will have to face a boss (here a dragon) and defeat it with provided weapons and equipment. by doing so you could unlock some Technologies or it could be the prerequisite to passing certain parts of the game.

if you would like to hear more of this idea, send me a friend request on discord and we will talk more about it. ecologia

apparently there's no confirmations when posting discussions on factorio forums lol

Hi! Thanks for your suggestion.

The goal of this mod is to introduce a new enemy that is ~1.5-2x stronger than the Behemoths (which are by the way still no match to a simple flamethrower/laser array). Yes the dragon is a bit stronger, but still one single turret with uranium ammo wins it from one dragon.

I have no intent to turn this mod into an arena mod. If such a mod arises it is always possible to add the dragons there via dependency ofcourse!