Dartling Gun (BTD4-BTD5)

"We've been continuing to add extra content to Bloons TD 4 for a couple of months now, a couple of really cool new tracks and now an all-new never before seen tower type. The Dartling Gun is unique among towers as it doesn't target Bloons at all, rather it follow the mouse and sprays darts wherever you point. This opens up some rather special tactical play."

- Bloons Tower Defense 4 – All-New Tower People, All-new. (Web Archive)

"Shoots darts like a machine gun, super fast but not very accurate. The Dartling Gun will shoot towards wherever your mouse is, so you control how effective it is!"

- Official description

The Dartling Gun is a tower that made its debut in Bloons TD 4 as the Dartling Gun and continued its appearance in Bloons TD5, Bloons TD Battles, Bloons Monkey City, and their mobile counterparts.

On November 26, 2020, a gameplay preview was posted of the Dartling Gunner in BTD6.

The Dartling Gunner has been released with the 22.0 update to BTD6.

The Dartling Gun shoots darts at wherever the player's mouse cursor is pointing. This and the Heli Pilot are the only towers to date that is controlled by the player's mouse moving. In Bloons TD 5, this tower costs $1000 on Easy, $1400 on Medium, $2090 on Hard and $9000 on Impoppable.

The Dartling Gun can be upgraded in many factors, such as attack speed and popping power. For example, it normally pops 1 bloon per dart, but when upgraded, it can pop 3 with Powerful Darts, 13 with the Laser Cannon, 100 with the Ray of Doom (infinite in Mobile/Steam), and has 40 popping power from the explosions from Hydra Rocket Pods or BADS.

Total Costs


Differences Between BTD5 Flash and BTD5 Mobile

 * Ray of Doom has infinite popping power as opposed to 100 bloons per frame.
 * Ray of Doom has a smaller hitbox.
 * Hydra Rocket Pods (and Bloon Area Denial System) missiles can be duplicated when under the influence of Monkey Fort or the M.I.B. Call to Arms ability.
 * Dartling Guns have a slower attack speed.

Update History (Bloons TD Battles Mobile)
In general, Dartling Gun is fairly balanced, but has been buffed via game updates as some upgrades have been buffed for balancing reasons.

Dartling is quite a versatile tower but is often very expensive to be reliable grouped bloon-popping power or MOAB-class-popping power. In Version 4.3.1, it was significantly buffed to be a much more reliable tower in the early-game, particularly against Grouped Reds. Later Dartling became drastically more used when people discovered the exploit with Hydra Rocket Pods and Monkey Fort, which can easily defend pretty much anything. Popular loadouts include Dartling-Farm-Village, Dartling-Farm-Ice, Dartling-Farm-Bomb, and Dartling-Village-Ice.

Quotes
"Dartling Gunners excel at rapid fire bloon destruction wherever you want it most, including camos. Powerful upgrades include: Depleted Bloontonium Darts, Laser Cannon, Ray of doom, Area Denial System."

- BMC Flash description

Trivia

 * The Dartling Gun is one of the two towers that had arrived later in BTD4, the other being the Spike Factory.
 * Ray of Doom is unaffected by speed and pierce buffs, meaning that the player should not waste the ability of M.I.B. Call to Arms or Overclock on Rays of Doom.
 * In BTD5, a single Ray of Doom can completely destroy a ZOMG all by itself on Space Truckin'.
 * In BTD5, filling all of Monkey Lane with 0/0 Dartling Guns can destroy a ZOMG NLL.
 * In BTD5, a single Dartling Gun upgraded with Faster Barrel Spin can destroy a ceramic all by itself on Monkey Lane.
 * In BTD5, each Hydra rocket pod can pop 40 bloons with its explosion.
 * In BTD5, Faster Barrel Spin increases the Dartling Gun's attack speed by exactly 75%, making two 1-0 Dartling Guns have more popping power than one 2-0 Dartling Gun for the same price.
 * In BTD5, the BADS ability shoots 5 waves of rockets, each of which target the nearest 100 bloons. This buff was made sometime in early 2012, originally it only shot one wave, which was quite underwhelming for its price.
 * It is one of the only 3 towers that have increased power when upgraded to the 4th tier of the right path than just obtaining an ability. The other towers being the Super Monkey (The Technological Terror has stronger plasma shooters than a Robo Monkey (Popping Power wise) and the Mortar (The Artillery Battery triples the firing rate of the mortar). In flash, the Glue Gunner has increased power when upgraded to the Glue Striker (All bloons are slowed to 30% instead of the normal 50%.)
 * This tower and Spike Factory is here in Bloons TD 4 Track Editor (now discontinued), albeit still have old version of BTD4.
 * In BTD4, there is no hotkey for the Dartling Gun. In BTD5, its hotkey is N.
 * Dartling Guns have a target priority system like any other tower in BTD4, but as the tower's aim is controlled by the cursor, the target priority system has no influence whatsoever.
 * In BTD4, the Dartling Gun is the one of the four towers that can pop a Camo Bloon without any upgrades, the other three being the Mortar Tower, Monkey Ace and the Spike Factory. It is guided by the player, however, and the Mortar Tower aims at a place determined by the user, and the Monkey Ace flies around and shoots randomly, and the Spike Factory throws spikes onto the road at a certain rate.
 * In BTD5, the Spike Factory, the Dartling Gun and the Ninja Monkey, a tower new to the Bloons TD series, are the only towers that don't need an upgrade to pop a Camo Bloon or damage a DDT in BMCM. The Monkey Ace now needs the Spy Plane upgrade and the Mortar Tower now needs the Signal Flare upgrade.
 * The Dartling Gun is based on the real-life gatling gun, even though it has nowhere near the fire rate, even with max fire rate.
 * In BTD 4 Expansion, the Dartling Gun's logo in the "shop" is a Dart Monkey along with the Spike Factory.
 * Only Tier 2 Dartling Guns have different colours for each path. However, Tiers 3 and 4 look different on either path but the guns are the same colour.
 * The width of the Dartling Gun increased dramatically from BTD4 to BTD5.
 * In BTD4 Dartling Gun has 3 barrels similarly to the real GAU-19 (3 Barrel Version).
 * In the Flash version of BTD5 it has 6 barrels similar to the real Minigun but in the mobile version, it has only four.
 * If the player wishes not to control the Dartling Gun, it is a good idea to put the cursor in the beginning of the track and exit the screen, since the player cannot aim outside the game screen. However, if they do this, they will have to use Hotkeys to control gameplay unless the player wants to keep setting the cursor and moving it off the screen.
 * The Tier 3 Dartling Ammo Dump allows the Dartling Gun to aim at a specific spot, which removes the burden of having the cursor remain in one place.
 * In the computer version, there is a way to aim anywhere on the game screen without the Dartlings following your cursor. Set the aiming point of the Dartlings, then Right click the screen.the system will ignore the game screen. The player can leave it after that. However, one disadvantage is that the player cannot place any towers when Dartlings are set. Despite this, it is very useful for going to another game while the player leaves the towers to fight by themselves.
 * It is one of the only towers not to have targeting priorities, due to the fact the cursor controls it.
 * It shares this with the Mortar Tower, Ice Tower, Spike Factory, the Banana Farm, 1/x, 2/x, and 3/x Monkey Villages and the Tack Shooter.
 * Two 4/2 Dartling Guns can outmatch a 4/2 Super Monkey if the latter has no sacrifices, though the two cost about the same.
 * The difference between BTD5 and BTD5 iOS's Dartling Gun's shooting method is when it starts to shoot.
 * BTD5's Dartling Gun shoots when bloons appear, it stops firing when no bloons appear in the middle of a round, or when a round ends.
 * BTD5 iOS's Dartling Gun shoots even when bloons stop appearing in the middle of a round compared to BTD5.
 * Try not to mix Banana Farms and Dartling Guns because collecting bananas from the farms may lead to Dartling Guns losing their focus on popping bloons. This can be alleviated with Monkey Bank or Banana Investments Advisory. Alternatively, the player could get the Tier 3 Dartling Ammo Dump, Tier 4 Al's Custom Chippers, or a Monkey Farmer.
 * The Dartling Gun and Mortar Monkey with the second path 4th upgrades wear the same hats as the Monkey Sub's tier 1 and 2 first upgrades.
 * The Dartling Gun in flash has a faster attack speed compared to its mobile counterpart.
 * If the player upgrades to the Laser Cannon and then adds Depleted Bloontonium Darts, the Dartling Gun gains the ability to pop any bloon type at an extremely high rate of fire.
 * The Dartling Gun is the only tower not featured in the DSi version.
 * In BTD5 Mobile, Ray of Dooms damage M.O.A.B. Class Bloons from a further distance than their hitboxes.