Monkey Pirates (BTD6)

"Adds 2 cannons to the ship and cannon attacks do more damage. MOAB Takedown Ability: harpoons a MOAB class Bloon and brings it down."

- In-game description

Monkey Pirates is the fourth upgrade of Path 2 for the Monkey Buccaneer in Bloons TD 6. Along with gaining the MOAB Takedown ability, which allows it to instakill the strongest MOAB-class bloon on-screen (up to a BFB or DDT) with a single hook, this upgraded Cannon Ship now shoots 3-bomb sprays instead of singular explosives and they each deal +1 damage.

This upgrade costs $3,825 on Easy, $4,500 on Medium, $4,860 on Hard, and $5,400 on Impoppable.

Appearance
The boat of the Monkey Pirates is upgraded into a proper pirate ship. Two greyish-blue skull pirate flags on two newly installed masts, one in front, are placed in the middle of the ship. Three cannons now appear on each side of the ship. The ship now features a greyish-blue painted rim around it and its bow. There is a cabin at the back, although not so visible. The pirate smiles menacingly, grows a beard, and wears a golden tooth.

MOAB Takedown Ability
MOAB Takedown Ability is the Special Ability for Monkey Pirates; it has a 50-second cooldown. Upon activation, the ship hooks in the strongest MOAB-Class Bloon on screen, up to a BFB or DDT, with a harpoon and destroys it completely.

The player is rewarded an equivalent amount of money as if the whole blimp was destroyed in its individual parts. Adding Monkey Town adds +50% (+60% with "Inland Revenue Streams" MK) more income, and Monkey City increases it by an extra +15%. A blimp affected by Rubber to Gold adds +200% income.

This table shows the income earned for different blimps, considering no cash bonus was applied.

Summary
Monkey Pirates combines decent damage with an added ability to take down a MOAB, BFB, or DDT when necessary. Its overall grouped bloon damage is pretty respectable with its improved extra damage three-cannon attacks, allowing it to deal good damage against regular bloons. Usually, Monkey Pirates is purchased for its ability to instakill early MOABs and early BFBs, but it can serve helpful bloon damage on later rounds too.

Tips

 * Monkey Pirates does not require camo detection to pull down DDTs.
 * Generally, Monkey Pirates is too much of a jack-of-all-trades tower, dealing decent damage while offering the ability to take down a single MOAB, BFB, or DDT. This makes it hard to fit into min-maxed strategies, as it would be difficult to juggle between maximizing the use of its instakill ability versus utilizing its relatively high bloon popping power.
 * What makes it worse is that its long ability cooldown means the ability will only be activated only every once in a while.
 * Just as with all Monkey Buccaneers, if it can shoot on both sides, its DPS will be effectively doubled.
 * By using MOAB Takedown, if acquired before round 40, it can be a way around having to defeat a MOAB, and can also be used on the round 60 BFB. It can easily be upgraded to Pirate Lord before round 80 for the ZOMG. Thus, it is a decent way to save time on said rounds, especially when rushing to complete multiple game modes.
 * Unless Camo Bloons are an issue, use the 2-4-0 crosspath over the 0-4-2, in order to make its improved bomb attacks shoot much faster and to double the amounts of grapes per shot at a faster rate.
 * 0-2-2 Monkey Buccaneers later upgraded to 0-4-2 provide great assistance in ABR thanks to being able to instakill MOABs, BFBs and DDTs, even fortified ones.
 * Try adding a Bloontonium Reactor nearby to decrease the ability cooldown.

Extra Notes (Version History)

 * It is not quite known how the Monkey Pirates algorithm has changed exactly in history, but the Monkey Pirates tested in Version 26.0 appears to now always target the first of the same rank. Priority tree currently operates as follows: blimp type (DDT, BFB, MOAB), fortification (yes or no), and order of appearance (always first).

Sounds
When activating MOAB Takedown Ability:
 * [Hook launching]

Trivia

 * Monkey Pirates' MOAB Takedown Ability can actually add to the damage count, unlike BTD5.
 * In BTD5, the description says that it takes down MOAB-Class Bloons, but can hook normal Bloons instead if no MOABs are present. While in BTD6, it can only hook MOAB-Class Bloons, similar to the description.
 * In Version 17.0, the three-bomb buff now matches the visual artwork of the Monkey Pirates, which always had three rows of cannons per side.
 * A few hours after Version 17.0 was released, Monkey Pirates became the 69th unique 2MPC tower upgrade listed on the fan-official 2MPC spreadsheet.
 * On Version 17.0, there was a bug where the outer bombs did not hit camo bloons even with Crow's Nest crosspath.
 * This was fixed on Version 17.1.
 * On Version 18.0, the description was changed to mention the extra bombs and extra damage from bombs. Whereas Version 17.0 only modified the description such that they mention the extra amounts of bombs but without mention of extra damage of bombs: "[...] Main attack adds two more cannons."