Support Chinook (BTDB2)

"Abilities: Drops lives and cash crates, or can pick up and redeploy most Monkey types."

- In-game description Support Chinook is the fourth upgrade of Path 2 for the Heli Pilot in Bloons TD Battles 2. It has two abilities: Supply Crate and Redeploy. Supply Crate simultaneously drops a cash crate worth $4000 and a life crate worth 15 lives. Redeploy allows redeployment of most towers on any valid location.

It costs $7,500. Buying a Heli Pilot and upgrading it to a Support Chinook costs a total of $12,150.

Appearance
The helicopter is upgraded to a Support Chinook, with a similar appearance to its BTD6 counterpart aside from minor graphics changes.

Abilities
The Support Chinook has two different abilities available. One of these abilities givies $4000 cash and 15 lives, while the other ability can reposition most types of towers to a different location.

Supply Crate Ability
Support Chinook's Crate Ability Spawns a single crate on a 60 second cooldown with an initial cooldown of 20 seconds.

The crate will give $4,000 and 15 lives. Lives can go above maximum and there appears to be no upper limit. Since the cost of a Support Chinook is $11,650 it will take 2 minutes and 15 seconds for the Supply Crate ability to pay back the full cost of the Support Chinook plus $350.

Redeploy Ability
Chinook's Redeploy Ability allows the Chinook to pick up almost any tower and reposition them to another location. Cooldown of 60 (?) seconds.

Strategy
Getting an early support chinook can be very powerful. Its cash output over time is significantly better than a Supply Drop Sniper Monkey but it does not provide much offence at all. Its downdraft ability (which you are forced to take to get Support Chinook) can be very helpful but it will do almost nothing vs MOAB class bloons regardless of which path you take. It also takes up too much space scale in the same way which Supply Drop Sniper Monkey can except on certain very open maps.

Its ability to restore lost lives can be game deciding if the game is expected to go to round 40 and you are not at max life already. However, having over 150 lives does not win against Round 40 if your opponent is at full lives or more.

When compared to Supply Drop and Jungle's Bounty, the other two income-based abilities, Support Chinook has the highest cost-efficiency among the three, but occupies huge space per unit. Chinooks also have the option for life regeneration and tower pickup, as well as blowback for pushing away Ceramics and other bloons.

Tips

 * Chinooks don't necessarily need crosspaths, given that their main purpose is its abilities, but if needed 0-4-2 is generally better because it's cheaper and has a stronger blowback, often superior over automatic movement and twice the number of weak darts.
 * [1.0.5] Comparison with eco: The total cost of a Support Chinook is 11,650, and it provides $4000 cash every 60 seconds. Investing $11,650 in pink grouped bloon eco instead provides approximately 430 eco, or 4300 cash every 60 seconds. This calculation can be changed by many factors, including discounts from Monkey Villages, eco boosts from Monkey Town or its upgrades, and changes to ability cooldowns from towers like Energizer. Also, the tower itself has utility, and can be sold for a large chunk of cash.