Monkey Ace (BTD6)

"Flies above the ground shooting volleys of high-pierce darts."

- In-game description

Monkey Ace is a Military-class tower in Bloons TD 6. The tower retains its name and role from the Bloons TD 4 and Bloons TD 5 Generation, with significant additions. It did not receive any teasers prior to release, but it was first shown when the game was available to select YouTubers several days before BTD6's official release date.

At base, the Monkey Ace fires 8 darts in a circle around itself. These darts, with no upgrades or Monkey Knowledge, deal 1 damage and have 5 pierce. It creates volleys of these darts every 1.68s. A Monkey Ace will fly around in a fixed pattern around its runway, generally speaking, and its flight pattern can be adjusted based on target priority. It has various upgrades that can benefit from its height advantage, including anti-MOAB missiles, tightly packed bombs, nukes, and rapid-fire alternating darts and bombs.

It costs $680 on Easy, $800 on Medium, $865 on Hard, and $960 on Impoppable by default.

Description
The Monkey Ace makes a return in BTD6. Just like in BTD5, it has a landing pad that takes up space. It's got a number of new changes, especially splitting several of the most popular upgrades in its predecessor game into different upgrades, most notably being the Operation: Dart Storm becoming a Tier-4 upgrade of Path 1 instead of the Tier-3 upgrade of Path 2. Another change is that when the tower is placed, it will briefly take off from its runway first.

The first path generally increases the numbers of darts sent out. Rapid Fire gives the Monkey Ace a 33% attack speed boost, and Lots More Darts increases the amount of darts fired from 8 to 12. Fighter Plane increases flight speed, as well as a new projectile: a missile that targets and does extra damage to MOAB-Class Bloons. Operation: Dart Storm returns from BTD5, shooting 16 darts per attack cycle at double speed. The final upgrade, Sky Shredder, doubles the amount of darts fired to 32, as well as redoubling attack speed and being able to pop all bloon types.

The second path generally primarily centers around bomb damage. Exploding Pineapple drops Pineapples onto the track, which explode after 3 seconds. Spy Plane gives the Ace camo detection, and Bomber Ace has the Ace dropping a line of 4 bombs regularly on the track, with each bomb doing 3 damage. Ground Zero also returns, dropping a large bomb onto the track as its ability, dealing 700 damage to up to 1000 bloons, and increasing bomb damage to 10. Tsar Bomba further increases the ability's power, dealing 3000 damage to up to 5000 bloons, and stunning any surviving bloons. Bomber Ace's bombs can now damage all bloon types, including Blacks, Zebras, and DDTs.

The third path generally deals with efficient projectile distribution. Sharper Darts increases the Ace's dart pierce to 8, and Centered Path adds a new targeting option for maximum map coverage. Neva-Miss Targeting adds weak seeking to the darts, allowing them to pop more bloons. Spectre swaps out darts for a constant stream of darts and bombs, with high pierce and attack power. Flying Fortress attacks faster, shoots 3 streams of attacks with different priorities, and, like Sky Shredder, can pop all bloon types.

Target Priorities/Flight Paths
As the Monkey Ace does not directly aim at Bloons, its targeting priorities are replaced by flight patterns centered around the runway (Centered Path and subsequent upgrades are the exceptions to this). By default, its set target priority is Circle. If target option is changed partway through the Monkey Ace's flight, the Ace will attempt to fly promptly from its old target priority to its new target priority. The Monkey Ace will fly in a clockwise direction by default and counterclockwise with Reverse Flight toggled.

The following are a list of target priorities that a Monkey Ace can use:


 * Circle: Flight pattern becomes a circular path around the runway.
 * Figure Infinite: Flight pattern becomes the shape of the infinite symbol (∞). As the Monkey Ace flies, it will pass its runway during its flight, specifically at each half of the whole flight path.
 * Figure Eight: Flight pattern becomes the shape of the number 8. As the Monkey Ace flies, it will pass its runway during its flight, specifically at each half of the whole flight path.
 * Centered Path: Flight path becomes a large circular path, centered around the center of the map by default. The center of the flight path can be changed manually. Can be accessed by purchasing the Centered Path upgrade, and once upgraded the Ace defaults to this target priority.
 * Wingmonkey: Instead of a fixed flight path, the Monkey Ace will attempt to fly as close to the path as possible, similarly to an Aircraft Carrier Plane. Available only via the Wingmonkey MK.
 * Reverse Flight: Shown by an icon of a reverse aircraft, the Ace will reverse direction of flight. Unlike other target priorities such as Change Hands, there is a cooldown of 5 seconds before being able to reverse flight direction again. It can be coupled with all flight options except Wingmonkey.

Main dart attacks are produced in a zone-like attack centered from where the Ace was at the time of deployment. Certain Monkey Ace upgrades have different target priorities, and therefore interact with targeting in different ways. Flight pattern remains unchanged with its alternate attacks.


 * Fighter Plane's anti-MOAB missiles will only target blimps, and they will target Close relative to the aircraft.
 * Exploding Pineapple's pineapples are spawned at the location where the Ace was at the time of deployment.
 * Bomber Ace's bomb arrays always land on nearby bloon track.
 * Ground Zero and Tsar Bomba abilities affect the whole screen, and target Close relative to its runway for purposes of calculating pierce consumption.
 * Spectre rapid dart-and-bomb attacks target First relative to the aircraft.
 * Flying Fortress's three rapid dart-and-bomb attacks target First, Last, and Close relative to the aircraft.

Total Costs


Monkey Knowledge
This section displays Monkey Knowledge that has effects on Monkey Ace and its changes when compared to one by default:


 * AirforceUpgradesIcon.png Airforce Upgrades: All Monkey Aces get +1 pierce.
 * Base pierce increased from 5 → 6.
 * EliteMilitaryTrainingIcon.png Elite Military Training: All Military Monkeys get a one-off +1000 XP and earn XP in-game 5% faster permanently.
 * AcceleratedAerodartsIcon.png Accelerated Aerodarts: Darts from Monkey Aces fly faster.
 * Darts fly 50% faster.
 * TargetedPineapplesIcon.png Targeted Pineapples: Pineapples are only dropped near tracks.
 * GunCoolantIcon.png Gun Coolant: Monkey Aces attack 10% faster.
 * WingmonkeyIcon.png Wingmonkey: Grants all Monkey Aces with a new target priority that allows it to fly around the screen like the planes from the Aircraft Carrier.
 * AeronauticSubsidyIcon.png Aeronautic Subsidy: Reduces the cost of all Monkey Ace Tier 5 Upgrades by 10%.
 * Cost reduced from $40,000, $35,000, $100,000 to $36,000, $31,500, $90,000 on Medium difficulty for Path 1, Path 2, Path 3, respectively.
 * MilitaryConscriptionIcon.png Military Conscription: First military tower costs only ⅔ of the original cost.
 * Monkey Ace base cost from $680, $800, $865, and $960 → $455, $535, $580, and $645 on Easy, Medium, Hard, and Impoppable, respectively.
 * AdvancedLogisticsIcon.png Advanced Logistics: All Military Monkeys base costs reduced by 5%.
 * Monkey Ace base cost from $680, $800, $865, and $960 → $645, $760, $820, and $910 on Easy, Medium, Hard, and Impoppable, respectively.
 * If Military Conscription is also enabled, the final cost will be $420, $495, $535, and $595.
 * MonkeyEducationIcon.png Monkey Education: All Monkeys XP earn rate increased by 8%.
 * BetterSellDealsIcon.png Better Sell Deals: All Monkeys sell for 5% more.
 * Increases sell potency from 70% to 75%.
 * VeteranMonkeyTrainingIcon.png Veteran Monkey Training: All Monkeys reload time reduced by 3%.
 * GlobalAbilityCooldownsIcon.png Global Ability Cooldowns: All Ability cooldowns for all Monkeys reduced by 3%.

Version History
Note: Due to the volatility of seeking changing unknowingly throughout updates, seeking changes may not be properly reflected here. This affects all Top Path Monkey Ace and Neva-Miss Targeting.

Sounds
When placing a Monkey Ace:


 * [Biplane engine]
 * [Biplane engine]

When activating Ground Zero or Tsar Bomba Ability:


 * [Explosion]

Trivia

 * This is the only tower in which all 3 of its tier 4 upgrades in BTD6 were present in BTD5.
 * Even though the Operation: Dart Storm did not fire missiles and Ground Zero did not drop bomb arrays originally, all three names and the main characteristics are retained.
 * All Monkey Aces with Tier 4 or above upgrades lack a visible pilot.