Supply Drop (BTD6)

"Supply Drop ability: Drops a crate full of cash. Regular attack also damages Lead Bloons and increases Shrapnel popping power."

- BTD6 description

Supply Drop is the fourth upgrade on Path 2 for the Sniper Monkey in Bloons TD 6. Like the BTD5 counterpart, the Sniper gains an ability to call for a crate worth cash. Each crate produces $1200 when collected, with a cooldown of 90 seconds between each crate, and a max of 3 ability activations per Sniper per round. This upgrade also allows the Sniper's bullets to pop Lead Bloons, even if the Full Metal Jacket upgrade hasn't been purchased. In addition, shrapnel now pops up to 6 bloons per shot instead of just 3.

Compared to its BTD5 counterpart, it has a much cheaper price and is on a different path than Semi-Automatic. Therefore, uses improved Bouncing Bullet attacks instead of simply triple speed.

It costs $6,120 on Easy, $7,200 on Medium, $7,775 on Hard, and $8,640 on Impoppable.

Appearance
The monkey now replaces its camper-style hat into a black-and-brown wig, the black-colored parts being rather coarse and wide whereas the light brown fibres are fine and thin. It carries a supplies backpack with a remote aerial on the bag, with a traditional black-colored wired landline telephone (at least in the upgrade portrait it does). The sniper barrel turns black all over. When the ability is activated, the Sniper fires a harmless signal flare to signal a support role Operation: Dart Storm. The crate will then fly down with a white parachute towards the ground somewhere near the Sniper.

With crosspathing, the color of the brown fibres turn into different colors according to their corresponding crosspath color schemes. Full Metal Jacket turns the fibres red, while Large Calibre turns them purple. Likewise, fibre color becomes grey with Fast Firing, while the color of the fibres becomes orange with Even Faster Firing.

Like many Snipers, the Supply Drop shares similar idle animations. When idle, it may sometimes reload the rifle, chugging out bullet shells off in the process.

Summary
Supply Drop takes a similar role in BTD5, providing income based on time. However, there are many more viable forms of income generation that take less micromanagement, making Supply Drop one of the weaker income generation options in the game. It is not outclassed by the other income options present in BTD6, however. The highlights of Supply Drop Snipers are their innate camo detection, all having full-map range, possessing accurate grouped popping power, and having the highest income per footprint ratio in the absence of Banana Farms.

Tips

 * Out of all income-based towers, Supply Drop has the highest income per footprint ratio outside of high-sacrifice Monkeyopolis and Farm-supported Jungle's Bounty Druids. This makes them the best options to pair with Monkey City, and they additionally benefit hugely from Monkey Town's income-per-pop generation.
 * Depending on the purpose of this upgrade, Supply Drop may be crosspathed or not depending on the need. If using Supply Drops just to farm money, the best Supply Drop crosspath would be 0-4-0, as this minimizes its damage to stall rounds for longer. If extra damage is a necessity, upgrade a few to 2-4-0 and/or 0-4-2.
 * Try intentionally de-optimizing Line of Sight for some Supply Drop Snipers in order to increase stalling of the round.
 * Because there is now only a maximum of 3 uses of the Supply Drop ability per Sniper per round, it should take a maximum of 180 seconds to reach the income-generating cap. In most cases, there should be little worry to reaching the ability use limits.
 * Although cash cannot be earned on CHIMPS, it is possible to activate the Supply Drop ability on any game mode. Doing so will temporarily stop the Sniper from attacking for around ~1.0s. This can sometimes be used to deliberately de-sync Sniper attacks.

Sounds
When activating Supply Drop Ability:
 * [Jet flyby]

When collecting cash from the Cash Crate:
 * [Cash sound]

Trivia

 * Supply Drop costs a lot less in BTD6 compared to BTD5. It is also no longer the only types of towers with time-based income generation, as other towers like Jungle's Bounty and Support Chinook have a very similar functionality.
 * In BTD6, Supply Drop has always been more expensive than Maim MOAB by upgrade price alone regardless of updates. In BTD5, Maim MOAB's corresponding Cripple MOAB upgrade (before becoming a Tier 5 in BTD6) was always more expensive than Supply Drop in the same game, no matter if the "price" is in terms of total tower costs or by upgrade prices alone.
 * Between when Supply Drop's price was dropped to $7200 and when Maim MOAB's price was dropped to $5000, Supply Drop's total price was more expensive than Maim MOAB's total price.