Spectre (BTD5)

"Flying fortress of bloon doom."

- BTD5 description

Spectre is the final upgrade on path 1 for the Monkey Ace in Bloons TD 5. It makes the plane continuously fire bombs and darts very quickly directly at the bloons instead of firing eight darts. The bombs can pop lead bloons and black bloons (in the BTD5 generation). With the Spy Plane upgrade, they can target any bloon or MOAB class bloon within range and can easily destroy grouped bloons.

With a update on March 22nd 2012 in BTD5, the bombs from the Spectre pops 2 layers of Bloons instead of 1. As a result, the Spectre is now the cheapest effective tower against non-MOAB class Bloons.

The Spectre doesn't have target priority and will shoot whatever is closest. To counteract this, it's better to place it off to the side so that the Bloons are always coming towards it. That way, it will generally target "First". However, it stops shooting if the plane flies too far off-screen.

Tips

 * Spectres will shoot a lot faster than the previous upgrades (15 shots per second, or once every 2 frames)
 * One Spectre can destroy a MOAB easily, unless there is more than one spaced out, due to the fact that the bombs explode in a short radius, and can damage about 1 or 2 MOABs. Only the sharp darts are able to attack more than one.
 * Note that a 4/2 Spectre by itself can still damage a DDT. This is because a Spectre can pop black bloons and leads bloons by shooting bomb shells that can hurt any bloon type, so a DDT is not immune to this tower. However, adding Monkey Intelligence Bureau next to a Spectre's landing base is strongly recommended because then the Spectre will effectively become twice as powerful against DDTs because Monkey Intelligence Bureau also allows darts to damage DDTs.
 * On mobile, this tower is one of the few towers that can have its projectiles duplicated (in this case, its bombs). As a result, using this with Monkey Fort makes the tower extremely efficient at stopping M.O.A.B. Class Bloons, even BFBs and ZOMGs.
 * One Spectre can easily take down Ceramic Bloon rushes like round 76.

Differences Between BTD5 Flash and BTD5 Mobile
Spectre bombs can duplicate if the landing pad is under the influence of a Monkey Fort.

Update History (Bloons TD Battles Mobile)
Generally speaking this upgrade is only bought to defend against Round 32 A.I. or sometimes Bloon Adjustment, due to how expensive it is to get up a Spectre ($21475 including path 2 upgrades). Overall this upgrade has been buffed, but not significantly. Spectre price decreased ($18000 → $17000).
 * 4.3

Trivia

 * The Spectre is based on a real US gunship, the AC-130 Spectre.
 * Thus, this explains the reason why in Bloon Monkey City that the AC130 Construction Hangar is required for the Spectre.
 * If you look carefully at the artwork, you can see the words "From: Ace" and "To: Bloons" are tagged on the first and second bombs.
 * In the BTD5 Flash artwork, a monkey can be seen piloting the plane, however in other versions it cannot be seen.
 * If the Spectre does not have the Spy Plane upgrade, it can still target Camo Bloons although it will not pop them.
 * Unlike the Neva-Miss Targeting upgrade from the Monkey Ace, projectiles will not turn and follow bloons when they miss, mainly because of their speed.
 * Only one Spectre is enough to beat an entire beginner track on easy, even on medium. It can't beat any difficulty alone on Switch, Castle, Drag Strip, Death Valley or on extreme tracks. The player can try this with Cash Injection.