Spike Factory

"Generates piles of road spikes around the track automatically. Leftover spikes disappear at the end of each round."

- Bloons Tower Defense 4 Description

"Generates piles of road spikes on bits of nearby track. Each pile can pop 5 bloons, and unused spikes disappear at end of each round."

- Bloons Tower Defense 5 Description

The Spike Factory is a special tower that, once placed, produces Road Spikes on the track that pop bloons and disappear at the end of each round. Its special ability, Spike Storm, is capable of popping large amounts of bloons, destroying even MOABs and BFBs easily. Like the Dartling Gun, the Spike Factory was not included in the original edition of the game. The tower was released on September 8th, 2011. It costs $595 on Easy, $700 on Medium, and $755 on Hard. On March 15, 2012, it was added to Bloons TD 5 as an update. The Spike Factory is capable of popping camo bloons without any upgrades. In BTD5, it initially costs $700 (Easy), $825 (Medium) or $890 (Hard).

Bloons Tower Defense 4
Before being upgraded, the Spike Factory shoots out clumps of five tacks at a rate of one shot nearly every three seconds (per second if fast-forwarded). These clumps always land in corners and disappear at the end of each round. If the spike factory is not placed in range of a corner, then the spike factory will act as if it is not in range of the track at all, and shoot spikes randomly in all directions. This tower will shoot randomly in its range and will not aim for bloons.

Increased Production
Description:

Makes the factory produce spikes much faster.

This costs 595 on Easy, 700 on Medium and 755 on Hard, making it cost itself.

Bigger Stacks
Description:

The factory creates double size spike stacks.

This costs 510 on easy, 600 on medium and 650 on hard.

White Hot Spikes
Description:

White hot spikes can pop frozen and lead bloons.

This costs 295 on easy, 350 on medium and 380 on hard. The tower turns purple.

Spike Storm
Description:

Every 15 seconds the factory generates a storm of short-lived spikes, filling up the entire track. The tower turns red.

This costs 5950 on easy, 7000 on medium and 7560 on hard.

Bloons Tower Defense 5
Before being upgraded, the Spike Factory shoots out clumps of five tacks at a rate of one shot in approximately 2.29 seconds (per second if fast-forwarded) or 80 frames. These clumps last until they are used up or the spikes time out (they will do this after a long time or when a round ends). This tower is always able to detect Camo Bloons. However, it will never lay down spikes in between rounds. In addition, all spikes created will disappear once the current round ends, and if a single Spike Factory creates too many piles, the ones on the bottom will disappear in the order they were created, meaning that there is a maximum number of pikes that a single tower may have created at any time. With the correct upgrades, the Spike Factory can be quite a versatile tower, as it can be upgraded to combat Lead Bloons, frozen Bloons, and deal extra damage to Ceramic Bloons/MOAB-class bloons, whilst not being overly dependent on a Monkey Village's benefits in order to combat these Bloon types.



Path 1 Upgrades
This path's upgrades are good for a defensive Spike Factory, placed at the end of the track to destroy any Bloons that have managed to sneak past your defense.

Bigger Stacks
Cost: $595 (Easy), $700 (Medium), $755 (Hard), $840 (Impoppable) Description: Generates larger piles of Spikes per shot.

Statistics: Popping power of spikes increases to 10.

White Hot Spikes
Cost: $765 (Easy), $900 (Medium), $970 (Hard), $1080 (Impoppable) Description: Cuts through lead like a hot spike through... lead.

Statistics: Spikes can pop lead and frozen bloons.

***If you upgrade past here, you will be locked out of any further Path 2 upgrades***

Spiked Ball Factory
Cost: $2040 (Easy), $2400 (Medium), $2590 (Hard), $2880 (Impoppable) Description: Modified to produce heavy but viciously sharp spiked balls instead of regular spikes. Do extra damage to ceramic bloons.

Statistics: Each spike does 3x damage to Ceramic bloons. Popping power of spikes increase to 16 (20 in the iOS version).

Spiked Mines
Cost: $11900 (Easy), $14000 (Medium), $15120 (Hard), $16800 (Impoppable) Description: Rigged with heavy explosives, the spiked balls are set to go off when then they lose all their spikes.

Statistics: Explosions pop 4 layers of many bloons. Attack rate (4/0) improves to once every 35 frames, or one second.

Attacks 13 frames every second with 2 right path upgrades. Approximately every 0.38 seconds.

(The explosions have the same effect of the Mortar Tower's Burny Stuff.)

Path 2 Upgrades
This path's upgrades are good for an offensive Spike Factory, placed at the front of the track to weaken Bloons that enter, and once upgraded to 3rd tier, destroy MOAB-Class Bloons.

Faster Production
Cost: $680 (Easy), $800 (Medium), $865 (Hard), $960 (Impoppable) Description: Increases the rate of Spike production to two spikes every second.

Statistics: Attack rate (0/1) improves to once every 58 frames. Approximately every 1.66 seconds

Even Faster Production
Cost: $1065 (Easy), $1250 (Medium), $1350 (Hard), $1500 (Impoppable) Description: By adding sprockets, dongles, and widgets, the rate of spike production increases even more to three spikes a second.

Statistics: Attack rate (0/2) improves to once every 36 frames. Approximately every 1.04 seconds.

***If you upgrade past here, you will be locked out of any further Path 1 upgrades***

MOAB-SHREDR Spikes
Cost: $2550 (Easy), $3000 (Medium), $3240 (Hard), $3600 (Impoppable) Description: Super-Hard-Rending-Engine-Driven-Razors are specially engineered to really hurt MOAB-class bloons.

Statistics: Each spike does 4x damage to MOAB-class bloons, Attack rate improves to once every 18 frames, or half a second.

Spike Storm
Cost: $5525 (Easy), $6500 (Medium), $7020 (Hard), $7800 (Impoppable) Description: Lays a thick carpet of spikes over the whole track and makes the Factory turn temporarily red because of Red Hot Spikes shooting out of the factory very quickly covering the top of the factory, making it look red. (Spikes last 5 seconds unless reacted upon, in which the spikes will get an extra 5 seconds to pop a bloon).

Trivia

 * The first path changes the type of spikes that the Factory produces, while the second path increases the amount of spikes it produces.
 * If the Spike Factory is placed far enough from the track, the Road Spikes it produces will not be seen.
 * It is possible to beat the entire game with only this tower because they can pop Camo Bloons and, with White Hot Spikes, Lead Bloons.
 * This tower has the same colors as the Dartling Gun in BTD4. Both start out green/yellow at levels 1-3, purple at level 4 and red at level 5
 * To see the max amount a 4-2 Spike Factory can pop, see
 * https://docs.google.com/document/d/13NgsRseY1s04mlPm15Q2N27EpU-GJhwEw9JxZgWSHzk/edit?usp=sharing
 * A Spike Factory in Bloons TD Battles without the bigger stacks upgrade after the release of Bloontonium Mine will shoot stacks of 10 instead of 5 at a slower rate (5 seconds).
 * In BTD4, sometimes the Spike Storm will only cover 1/4-1/2 of the track, while in BTD5, it covers the whole track, the spikes disappear faster than in BTD4.
 * However, there originally was a bug where Spike Storm ability only placed spikes in the Spike Factory's range.
 * The spikes created by the Spike Factory will not be placed on the track if the Spike Factory placed far enough from the track. However, in BTD5 the spikes still have an effect if bloons hit it when being blown back by upgrades such as Distraction.
 * In BTD5, there is a glitch where when you buy Even Faster Production, it doesn't load the upgraded look unless it is under the range of a monkey village.
 * There is no hotkey for the Spike Factory in BTD4. In BTD5, its hotkey is M.
 * If the Spiked Mines time out, there will be a bloon-popping explosion. This is especially evident in long rounds.
 * In BTD5, the player only needs 2 of these to beat Monkey Lane on easy (even without selling them or using Road Spikes), and having both of them be 4/1 or 4/2 is optional.
 * In BTD4, there appears to be 6 spikes with no upgrades, but they will pop only 5 bloons.
 * In BTD5, the Bigger Stacks upgrade is unlike regular Road Spikes as it will pop only 10 Bloons instead of 11.
 * On certain maps where the exit is parallel to the start, spikes that are placed at the exit will only pop MOAB class bloons because of their size. This is a great way to pop the MOAB layer, especially in Bloons Monkey City where many maps are like this.Spikesown.png
 * However in BTD5 Mobile, it pops as many bloons as the regular Road Spikes.
 * A 2-2 Spike Factory used to look the same as an 1/1 one if upgraded to 1/1, then both tier 2 upgrades are bought. This could be solved by placing a village near the Spike Factory. This bug was patched.
 * In BTD4 iOS, there is a glitch that the Spike Factory can produce bigger stacks even without any upgrades.
 * In BTD5 iOS a Spike Factory will occasionally produce a big stack when the Popping Power upgrade is active.
 * The Spike Factory is the only tower other than the Boomerang Thrower that has different price in BMC than in BTD5.
 * In BTD4, Spike Factories may not place spikes in the track if placed too close to the Bloons' path.
 * In Bloons TD Battles, Spiked Mines were a great way to freeze the opponent's computer, when spammed, due to the extreme amount of explosions.
 * The Spike Factory and the Monkey Engineer both use sprockets in their upgrade descriptions.
 * Upgrading a Spike Factory from 4/0 to 4/2 will turn it orange instead of the usual red, and upgrading a Spike Factory from 0/4 to 2/4 will turn it green instead of the usual blue.Purplespactories.pngDifferentColoredSpactories.png
 * Upgrading a Spike Factory in both paths gives it a unique appearance, somewhat blending the colors of both upgrades.
 * In Bloons Monkey City, the claim of the strength that it "never misses" is false because if a pink bloon zooms fast enough past the Spike Factory, it cannot spew out the Road Spikes fast enough to catch that pink bloon.
 * In Bloons Monkey City, the range of the Spike Factory is the range it had when placed. This means that when you place a Spike Factory and then a Monkey Village upgraded 1/0, it will only produce spikes inside the original range. If you place the Monkey Village first, the range will be increased.