Apache Prime

"The Apache Prime leaves most Bloons wishing they'd never been inflated."

- In-game description

 is the final upgrade on Path 1 for the Heli Pilot in Bloons TD 6. The Apache Dartship's dart-firing weapons now shoot powerful lasers and plasma. The base Quad Dart projectiles are replaced with lasers that deal 6 damage with 23 pierce, and its already deadly frontal machine gun becomes a rapid-fire plasma cannon that deals 5 damage with 11 pierce. Each of the Heli's 4 homing missiles still deals 2 damage with 40 pierce, but they now also deal an additional 15 damage to MOAB-class bloons. The plasma machine gun cannot pop Purples, the rockets cannot pop Blacks, and the lasers pop neither Purples nor Leads.

It costs $38,250 on Easy, $45,000 on Medium, $48,600 on Hard, and $54,000 on Impoppable.

Summary
The Apache Prime is an excellent late-game tower that features in many games that run to Round 100 due to its sheer power against most types of rounds. Its shortcomings are usually solved by adding support towers. Its largest weakness on paper is in fact DDTs, since its rockets (and since 25.0, its lasers as well) cannot damage them, and since DDTs tend to be spaced apart and move very quickly, the Apache Prime cannot fully utilize its pierce against groups of them. In practice, its largest weakness is simply affording it, as its predecessor the Apache Dartship can struggle against many mid-late rounds on harder maps or without a properly planned strategy. It is recommended to micromange the Apache Prime to good positions if the player is able to/need to.

Compared to other Tier 5 upgrades of a similar price, the Apache Prime actually benefits greatly from Striker Jones as a way to save money by not requiring a MIB to counter its poor DDT-popping, and Jones's stuns can help clump up DDTs if needed. The Apache Prime tends to benefit better from an Overclock than Alch buffs, given its high attack speed and multitude of different attacks. This is unlike other expensive high-DPS towers, such as Sky Shredder and Bloon Exclusion Zone, which both synergize very well with Alch buffs.

Tips

 * Overclock is a premier partner of Apache Prime, as it greatly increases its power and consistency and is cost-efficient.
 * Although Apache Prime struggles little against MOAB-class and Super Ceramics, Bloon Sabotage and MOAB Glue are both very good choices for slowing down bloons, especially on shorter maps. In addition, these upgrades can also be useful to help on non-DDT rounds where the Apache Prime just does not have enough time to pop bloons on certain tracks.
 * Bigger Jets does help remedy the Apache Prime's issue of failing to catch up with Super Ceramics, but it loses out on popping power compared to Faster Firing.
 * If the player cannot micro the Apache Prime, leaving it on Pursuit still allows it to do its job, although it will not be a truly optimized use of the Apache Prime.
 * A 3-0-2 Sun Avatar (with Knockback and Ultravision) can be used as a partner for Apache Prime. It helps to avoid the awkward midgame Apache Dartship can have while continuing to support Prime for DDTs, which is its largest weakness.
 * Apache Prime performs the best on single-path maps. It also takes advantage of maps where there is hindered placement or tracks with decent length due to its global range, such as High Finance, Infernal or Geared.
 * See Apache Dartship for more strategies during the process of affording Apache Prime.

Trivia

 * In the upgrade artwork, the Apache Prime appears to be deploying flares in the angel formation, made famous by the AC130 gunship (otherwise known as the Spectre).
 * In Version 1.6 of the game, there used to be a glitch that caused the Apache Prime to be extremely powerful, firing its frontal plasma cannon at roughly five times the speed. All its projectiles seemingly did double damage as well. The cause of this glitch is unknown, as it only triggered on certain devices.
 * Due to its decent early and high late game power, the Apache Prime has been used in a variety of 2 Tower CHIMPS, most notably being paired with Archmage, Pre-Emptive Strike, Wizard Lord Phoenix and Prince of Darkness. In addition, Apache Prime benefits disproportionately from long length maps due to its global range.
 * The above 2 Tower CHIMPS are frequently considered some of the easiest to execute on Logs.