Artillery Battery (BTD6)

"Bombardment Ability: Unleashes a rapid fire attack in a slightly wider area. Main attack upgrades to 3 barrels for incredibly fast attacks."

- BTD6 description as of 27.0

Artillery Battery is the fourth upgrade of Path 2 for the Mortar Monkey in BTD6. It gains 4x attack speed and receives the Bombardment ability. Bombardment adds +15% blast radius and even further 4x attack speed for 8 seconds, with a cooldown of 60 seconds.

Upgrading its artillery from a single-barreled mortar cannon to become triple-barreled, it attacks 4x faster (rather than 3x like in previous versions), creating an attack every 0.27s. With the Bombardment ability active, it increases to every 0.0674s, almost the speed of a Super Monkey. Explosions deal extra damage to Ceramics (+3), Leads (+1), Fortified (+1), MOAB-class (+1), and stunned bloons (+2), and can also pop Black and Zebra Bloons, because Artillery Battery inherits properties from Heavy Shells.

It costs $4,675 on Easy, $5,500 on Medium, $5,940 on Hard, and $6,600 on Impoppable.

Appearance
Artillery Battery now features three black barrels on the Mortar, each barrel with two yellow stripes each. On the official artwork, the monkey operating the Mortar is angrily trying to push a button while jumping up.

Costs

 * Updated as of Version 29.4

Summary
Artillery Battery is a strong option for popping various bloon types throughout the mid-game. It has decent pierce, allowing it to be useful at moderately dense bloons, but at the same time it can deal good damage versus MOAB-class bloons. With the 2-4-0 crosspath, it can be an effective option at handling various non-camo bloon types. However, the majority of its high-damage potential often relies on intense Mortar micromanagement, making it more of a hassle compared to alternate options. The ability can be useful for a burst of damage when needed.

Tips

 * Use the 2-4-0 crosspath, for the greater damage. The 0-4-2 upgrade deals poor damage, and the decreased projectile deviation from Increased Accuracy generally isn't as worth compared to the larger blast radius from Bigger Blast.
 * Mortar micromanagement will optimize its performance greatly.
 * The ability is mostly useful for emergency purposes, otherwise treat it as if the ability did not exist, due to the long cooldown.
 * Striker Jones is recommended so that Artillery Battery can benefit from his Level 10+ Artillery Command ability, among other benefits.
 * Because Artillery Battery's ability is a self-buff classified as Charge, it is not recommended to be used for beating Lych, and is inefficient against Boss Bloons in general anyway.

Sounds
When activating Bombardment Ability:
 * [Charging]

Trivia

 * Until version 27.0, Artillery Battery was the only Path-2 Tier-4 tower without an ability.
 * Despite having 3 barrels, it has 4 times the attack speed of Heavy Shells.
 * The ability sound effect is exactly the same as Turbo Charge.
 * Artillery Battery's original upgrade description has a slight reference to the original Mortar Battery, specifically part about "triple the pain".