Super Mines

"Creates gigantic exploding spiked mines that can wipe out almost anything."

- BTD6 description

Super Mines is the final upgrade of Path 1 for the Spike Factory in Bloons TD 6. While this upgrade decreases attack rate by a significant amount (specifically down to one mine per 3.5 seconds), it makes the Spike Factory shoot much stronger mines that create much larger explosions (from 19 to 100 blast radius) that deal enormous damage (1000 damage, +250 to Fortified) to up to 60 bloons per explosion (instead of 40 from Spiked Mines). Like most attacks, the explosions from Super Mines cannot penetrate through MOAB-class bloons. The Super Mines upgrade also increases damage of each spike from 2 to 50, +20 against Ceramics and +15 against Fortified. Lastly, every time a super mine loses spikes, a mini explosion triggers, popping up to 30 bloons each with a blast radius of 20, dealing 20 damage plus another +10 and +5 against Ceramics and Fortified, respectively.

It costs $127,500 on Easy, $150,000 on Medium, $162,000 on Hard, and $180,000 on Impoppable.

Description
TBA

Tower Prices

 * Updated as of Version 29.4

Summary
Super Mines is extremely potent at inflicting massive damage, but it generally falls behind against grouped bloons due to the relatively low pierce of the massive explosions. Similar to most Spike Factories, a Super Mines is best placed at the back of the map to catch large groups of bloons and chip away against MOAB-class bloons. Explosions created from recently expired mines generate double the damage, causing many layers of MOAB-class to eventually fall apart, and happens particularly due to the slow speed of MOAB-class bloons.

With the favorable Even Faster Production crosspath, Super Mines is reasonably decent at soloing before surpassing Round 100, but slowdown support such as Bloon Sabotage and MOAB Glue is necessary on shorter maps. Super Mines becomes much less effective during Rounds 101 to Rounds 120 with the presence of hyperclumped Purples, as its explosions and spikes easily waste potential against these types, and beyond Round 120 it still becomes much less effective due to the immense ramping of MOAB-class bloons.

Tips

 * This upgrade decreases the production rate of the mines compared to Spiked Mines, so it's recommended to purchase the Faster Production and Even Faster Production upgrades in tandem with it. There's little point purchasing Long Reach or Smart Spikes, as neither of these upgrades improve it significantly enough to make them worth purchasing, except in extremely niche situations.
 * If the Spike Factory is placed at the end of the track, it's recommended to purchase the Perma-Spike upgrade for it, since Perma-Spike is much more reliable long-term and considerably cheaper.
 * Placing a 5-2-0 Super Mines on the end of most single-path maps can usually beat all rounds up to 100.
 * Don't use this as the primary attacking tower, as it is very unreliable against mass grouped normal bloons, even though its explosions are extremely potent at wiping out various bloon types with ease. This is because the explosions have very little pierce. In fact, it struggles immensely against the hypergrouped Purple Bloons on Rounds 101+.
 * This upgrade is still very helpful against damaging MOAB-class bloons immensely, especially when the mines explode when timed out. When the mines are timed out, they explode and can damage MOAB-class bloons heavily if the explosion reaches MOAB-class bloons. It is especially helpful on rounds with many clumped MOAB-class bloons like 96 and 98.
 * Super Mines makes excellent popping power at wiping out various types of bloons, but it tends to struggle against ultraclumped Purple Bloons in Freeplay Mode due to the extremely low explosive pierce compared to its cost, so it is worth combining with Flying Fortress or other good popping power to complement the Super Mines; in fact, both of these expensive towers are able to counter each others' weaknesses quite well.
 * While the game setting "Auto Start" is turned on, placing a Super Mines at the very front of the track allows any remaining Super Mines to instantly deal massive damage to the first incoming bloons. This is because all mines explode immediately when the round begins, and the expired explosions still count as damage sources. Link.
 * Due to its high damage, it can be used as MOAB popping power. However, it is quite ineffective at dealing with the BAD.
 * Super Mines can easily solo many rounds until past Round 100, although it can struggle versus DDTs, especially Fortified DDTs.
 * Place it on where the explosions can cover a lot of the map's track, for huge overall popping power.
 * While not particularly powerful against Boss Bloons, the nature of Boss Bloon battles means that a recently ended round will instantly expire all stockpiles of Super Mines. This can be used to inflict an immediately high amount of damage at once.

Trivia

 * Super Mines is among the most expensive Tier-5 upgrades in BTD6, surpassed only by the Legend of the Night and the True Sun God upgrades for the Super Monkey.
 * Super Mines was a subject of a number of BTD6 memes, due to its notorious reputation of being weak for its pricetag. Even after numerous buffs, Super Mines has continued being mocked upon by many fans of BTD6, even those who like Super Mines, albeit 12.0.0 introduces a buff of giving the explosion nearly thrice the damage.
 * Despite dealing immense damage from the explosions, it still deals a measly 1 damage per 2.0 seconds for the napalm.
 * The Version 22.0 buffs granting mini explosions per spike loss was done likely for countering the Super Mine's weakness to the hyperclumped Purples randomly generated between Rounds 101 and 120. Version 25.0 changed the aforementioned rounds to become pre-determined, but the buff is still justifiable on the rounds with large groups of Purples.
 * The earliest known Super Mines on CHIMPS Mode is currently Round 146 in Version 22.0. This was done on Logs CHIMPS with an Ezili + Master Bomber + Shinobi spam strategy. Link.
 * The Version 23.0 Spike Factory attack speed overhaul has improved Path 3 crosspathing while retaining viability for 5-2-0. So overall, this is a buff to the opposite crosspath. Similar occurs for Perma-Spike, but Perma-Spike didn't get that attack speed rework fixed till a sub-update.
 * Before the Super Mines got buffed to pop Black properties in Version 7.0, Super Mines could still apply napalm to Blacks and Zebras hit by the explosion. This likely got changed in Version 6.0 where napalm only triggers upon damage, as is the case with the new Mortar Monkey's Burny Stuff.
 * This is one of the few upgrades to have substantial differences between the Instamonkey icon and the in-game appearance; the hatch has a red skull and outline and the furnace inside is off (because no red light comes out of it). The Spike Factory is also narrower on top and has two red tubes on each side instead of just one.
 * This possibly means that it has undergone graphical changes before the game was released.