“ | Blows back many more Bloons and gains abilities: Drops lives and cash crates, and 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 6. Similarly to its Bloons TD 5 counterpart, Support Chinook adds two new abilities: the Reposition Tower Ability and the Crate Drop Ability. The Reposition Tower Ability lets the Chinook pick up and move any valid tower to a new location. The Crate Drop ability drops two separate crates of cash and lives, giving $1550 and 10 lives, respectively, and can be activated up to twice per round per Chinook.
Additionally, the blowback from Support Chinook becomes extra effective. The rotor produces blasts of wind every 0.15s (0.12s with 0-4-2), for 6.66 times per second (8.33 times per second with 0-4-2). Blowback pierce increases from 2 to 4, for a total of up to 2 Ceramics, rounded up. Blowback effects still deviate between 32-150 units. But due to a bug, Support Chinook with any crosspath (1+/4/0 and 0/4/1+) don’t increase pierce and pierce penalty versus Ceramics.
As a small extra, Support Chinook's darts are larger and deal more damage. Projectile size increases from 3 to 6 and damage increased from 1 to 2.
This upgrade costs $8,075 on Easy, $9,500 on Medium, $10,260 on Hard, and $11,400 on Impoppable. If this tower is nearby Level 6+ Rosalia's workshop, this upgrade costs $7,265 on Easy, $8,550 on Medium, $9,235 on Hard, and $10,260 on Impoppable.
Description[]
Overview[]
Support Chinook turns the blue helicopter into a blue tandem rotor helicopter with three frontal windows (unlike in BTD5's Chinooks, which have only one front window) and twin guns (quad guns with 1-4-0 or 2-4-0) at the front, along with three small rounded windows on each side of the helicopter. Unlike games in the BTD5 generation, the pilot of the BTD6 Support Chinook is not visible.
There is also a black-orange variant of the Support Chinook that briefly appears when removing certain obstacles. It is a Support Chinook that carries no guns, has orange windows and white crossed sign on its sides.
Path 1 crosspathing adds two additional guns and paints the rotor stripes red. Path 2 crosspathing adds yellow or green chevrons either side of the Chinook.
The Chinooks adds two different abilities: the Reposition Ability, and the Crate Ability. Also, the blowback effect now hits more bloons and is faster, plus larger darts that deal more damage.
Activated Abilities[]
The Support Chinook gains two different abilities, more than almost all towers with abilities. One of these abilities drops a cash crate and lives crate, while the other ability can reposition most types of towers to a different location.
Note: As there are no official names for the two different abilities, unofficial names are assigned to each of the two abilities, though Ninja Kiwi has confirmed "Redeploy Ability" as the name of the ability that does tower pickup.
Supply Crate Ability[]
Every Support Chinook's Crate Ability has two different crates that will be spawned: a Cash Crate and a Health Crate.
The cash crate will give $1,550, while the med crate will give 10 lives. If Charged Chinooks is active, the cash crate will give $1,938 and the med crate will give 12 lives. In Deflation Mode, it will cause the Chinook to produce only med crates, since income generation is banned in Deflation Mode.
The rate at which the supply crate ability (and the supply crates of the succeeding upgrade, Special Poperations) dispenses lives decreases immensely if the new total number of lives surpasses at least 1,000 lives. Chinooks only give 1 life per crate in this scenario.
Unlike the Bloons TD 5 Mobile series, there is an initial cooldown before the Support Chinook is able to deploy its first crates.
The cooldown for the Supply Crate ability is 90 seconds. Additionally, each Support Chinook's crate ability can only be used up to 2 times per round, and all Supply Crate abilities disable after 3 minutes from the start of a round.
- Crate Ability (x-4-x)
- Ability: Drops a cash crate and a life crate simultaneously: a crate of money worth $1550 and a health crate worth 10 lives
- Type: Instant + delay, caps at 2 uses per round and cannot activate after 3 minutes from start of round
- Duration: N/A
- Cooldown: 90 seconds (ability), ~0.25 seconds to deploy before collectable
- Uptime: N/A
- Initial cooldown: 90s (100%)
- Reduced cooldowns from: Monkey Knowledge, Relic Knowledge, global Energizer buff, Geraldo's Rejuv Potion
Redeploy Ability[]
Official Name The term "Redeploy Ability" is a term popularized by fans and is confirmed by official sources (e.g. in-game, Ninja Kiwi blog). |
The Redeploy Ability is the ability that allows the Support Chinook to move towers to a new location. Upon activation, the screen will pop up with a menu for moving a tower. Most towers are able to be moved, but there are a number of towers that cannot be moved. Upon moving the selected movable tower to a new spot, the Support Chinook will move (even when set to Lock in Place) towards the selected tower to reposition that tower to a new spot. The footprint of the tower to be moved is ignored while a new location is being selected.
The list of towers that cannot be moved include:
- All Banana Farms
- All Monkey Villages
- Sun Temples
- The True Sun God, including the Vengeful True Sun God variant
- Aircraft Carrier and Carrier Flagship
- All temporary towers
- All Monkey Ace landing bases
- All Heli Pilot landing bases
- All Beast Handlers
- All Paragons
- Portable Lakes
- Pontoons
- All of Geraldo's tower-like items
- Rosalia or her workshop
- Other players' towers in Co-Op Mode
The cooldown for the Redeploy Ability is 45 seconds.
- Redeploy Ability
- Ability: Redeploys any pickupable tower (excludes Aces, Helis, Farms, Villages, Beast Handlers, 4+-x-x Buccaneers, 4+-x-x Supers, Paragons, or any sub-towers) to a new location
- Type: Instant + delay
- Duration: N/A
- Cooldown: 45 seconds (ability), <3 seconds to finish process depending on distance of Heli from target tower and its target location
- Uptime: N/A
- Initial cooldown: 15s (33%)
- Reduced cooldowns from: Monkey Knowledge, Relic Knowledge, global Energizer buff, Geraldo's Rejuv Potion
Targeting Priorities[]
Support Chinook utilizes touch-based mobility and self-mobility to move around the screen with different flight targetings. Its main attack shoots straight movement projectiles, which originate from the Heli Pilot with its independent range like an ordinary tower.
- Follow Touch / Follow Mouse: Moves to where the player taps. On desktop versions, Follow Touch instead becomes Follow Mouse, which will make the Heli Pilot move to wherever the cursor is currently at.
- Lock In Place: Stops the Heli Pilot where it is when the Target Priority is selected. Can be adjusted to choose a different locked location.
- Patrol: Patrols between two spots chosen by the player. Can be adjusted to choose different points.
- Pursuit: Equivalent to the target priority First, except the Heli Pilot will follow in front of the bloons while shooting them. It is unlocked with the purchase of the second upgrade on the first path, with the same name as the target priority. Once upgraded to the respective upgrade, it automatically switches to this target priority.
The Heli Pilot's main attacks always default on First based on the range of the helicopter's weaponry. The blowback attack is locked on Close. Despite gaining camo detection, the Heli Pilot does not gain Camo Prioritization.
Support Chinook's crate ability produces crates as spawned collectables that can be manually picked up by the player. Placement of the crates are erratic. That ability has no interaction with any targeting priorities.
Support Chinook's redeploy ability utilizes a selection menu that requires user interaction to drag-and-drop (or drop-and-lock, depending on settings) a tower to a new location.
Full Popology[]
Statistics[]
- Updated as of Version 44.0
- Base stats
- Landing Base has a rectangular footprint of 27x27. "Dummy range" of 22. Upon placement, spawn Heli Pilot as the main tower.
- Heli Pilot moves at a flight speed of 70. Can be set on Follow Touch / Follow Mouse, Lock In Place, Patrol Points, or Pursuit. Creates Dart projectiles from centre of Heli Pilot if detecting bloons within range. Passively generate Wind.
- Follow Touch / Follow Mouse: move towards wherever the screen was last touched, or wherever the cursor is on screen.
- Lock In Place: move towards the locked location, otherwise stop moving
- Patrol Points: move between two points.
- Dart:
- Projectile, sharp type, camo detection, 42 range, spray of 2, 0.57s attack cooldown, 2 damage, 3 pierce. Projectile size of 6. Projectile speed of 260, projectile lifespan of 1.0s.
- Wind:
- Zone, shatter type, ignores Lead Bloons and MOAB-class bloons, camo detection, 32 radius, 0.15s attack cooldown, 0 damage, 4 pierce (consumption: Ceramics = 2). Applies blowback to bloons, moving them backwards by 32-150 track distance.
- Ability stats
- Redeploy Ability:
- Cooldown of 45 seconds, initial cooldown of 15 seconds. When selected, activate context menu. Context menu highlights eligible towers to be picked up and moved to a new location. Cannot move to temporary land or temporary water. Upon moving a tower, move Heli Pilot to location target and move it to the new location to drop off the picked up tower.
- Crate Drop Ability:
- Cooldown of 90 seconds, initial cooldown of 90 seconds, max 2 times per round per Heli, can only be used within 3 minutes from the start of each round. When activated, summon Crate Drop.
- Crate Drop:
- Spawn, passive type, generates a Cash Crate and Health Crate that both move about 35 units in any random direction from the Heli. Both crates share the same movement path with a slight angle difference.
- Cash Crate:
- Collectable spawn, passive type, generates $1550 when picked up. Pickup range of 50. Lifespan of about 15 seconds.
- Cash Crate:
- Collectable spawn, passive type, generates 10 lives when picked up. Pickup range of 50. Lifespan of about 15 seconds.
- Crosspathing interactions
- 1-4-0: Dart attack spawn locations adjusted, now simultaneously shooting double sprays of two.
- 2-4-0: Gains Pursuit targeting and modifies Patrol Points to also gain a stadium-shaped range of Pursuit.
- 0-4-1: Dart projectile speed and range increased.
- 0-4-2: Dart attack cooldown reduced from 0.57s to 0.456s, Wind attack cooldown reduced from 0.15s to 0.12s.
- Monkey Knowledge interactions
- Airforce Upgrades: All T3+ Heli Pilots get +1 pierce.
- Base pierce increased from 3 to 4
- Elite Military Training: All Military Monkeys get a one-off +1000 XP and earn XP in-game 5% faster permanently.
- Charged Chinooks: Chinook Activated Abilities give 25% more lives and cash.
- Allows the Support Chinook to drop $1937 and 12 lives.
- Military Conscription: First military tower costs only ⅔ of the original cost.
- Heli Pilot base cost from $1,360, $1,600, $1,730, and $1,920 → $910, $1,070, $1,160, and $1,285 on Easy, Medium, Hard, and Impoppable, respectively.
- Advanced Logistics: All Military Monkeys base costs reduced by 5%.
- Heli Pilot base cost from $1,360, $1,600, $1,730, and $1,920 → $1,290, $1,520, $1,640, and $1,825 on Easy, Medium, Hard, and Impoppable, respectively.
- If Military Conscription is also enabled, the final cost will be $845, $990, $1,070, and $1,190.
- Heli Pilot base cost from $1,360, $1,600, $1,730, and $1,920 → $1,290, $1,520, $1,640, and $1,825 on Easy, Medium, Hard, and Impoppable, respectively.
- Monkey Education: All Monkeys XP earn rate increased by 8%.
- Better Sell Deals: All Monkeys sell for 5% more. Increases sell potency from 70% to 75%.
- Veteran Monkey Training: All Monkeys reload time reduced by 3%.
- Global Ability Cooldowns: All Ability cooldowns for all Monkeys reduced by 3%.
Attack Interactions[]
- See also: Attack Interactions/Bloons TD 6/Military
- Updated as of Version 44.0
- Base attack(s)
- Dart:
- Wind:
Costs[]
- Updated as of Version 44.0. Listed prices exclude external buffs, any sacrifices, and Monkey Knowledge.
[Module | Data] | Purchase | Sell | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Costs | Easy | Medium | Hard | Impoppable | Easy | Medium | Hard | Impoppable |
Upgrade (X-4-X) | $8,075 | $9,500 | $10,260 | $11,400 | - | |||
Total (0-4-0) | $13,175 | $15,500 | $16,745 | $18,600 | $9,223 | $10,850 | $11,722 | $13,020 |
Crosspath (1-4-0) | $13,855 | $16,300 | $17,610 | $19,560 | $9,699 | $11,410 | $12,327 | $13,692 |
Crosspath (2-4-0) | $14,280 | $16,800 | $18,150 | $20,160 | $9,996 | $11,760 | $12,705 | $14,112 |
Crosspath (0-4-1) | $13,385 | $15,750 | $17,015 | $18,900 | $9,370 | $11,025 | $11,911 | $13,230 |
Crosspath (0-4-2) | $13,680 | $16,100 | $17,395 | $19,320 | $9,576 | $11,270 | $12,177 | $13,524 |
This upgrade's prices (or included crosspath's prices) are affected by the following MK: Military Conscription, Advanced Logistics, Better Sell Deals
Strategy[]
Summary[]
Support Chinook handles with utility that most towers tend to lack, being able to providing lives and tower repositioning utility. Its use on CHIMPS Mode is still viable, with high usage on harder maps such as Muddy Puddles and Quad. Combined with the power of blowback, it is a great option for generating income and lives by stalling rounds out for a prolonged time, and the ability to reposition towers allows for flexibility on manually repositioning towers. It typically serves best on gamemodes that enable income, as well as those that require maximal life regeneration.
Additionally, Support Chinook's much more powerful blowback makes it much more dependable for its stalling potential across all stages of the game, especially for the late-game. Compared to multiple Downdrafts, Support Chinook is a little more expensive than two Downdrafts but packs stronger overall blowback power in addition to support utilities.
As for Chinook’s extra dart damage, this is mostly irrelevant outside of allowing Chinooks to hold off better during the mid-game, such as against multi-layered Bloons or early MOABs.
Tips[]
- Base the crosspathing choice of Support Chinook from Downdraft or for going to Special Poperations. Note that Chinook does have an improved blowback functionality, so crosspathing may still matter here. Even if it does more damage per dart, the main strength from crosspathing is the stronger blowback, though the extra damage does limit capability to cause large regrow farms.
- Although it cannot produce cash in CHIMPS, the Support Chinook is still useful in CHIMPS because of how useful the Reposition Ability is.
- Support Chinook can still attack while using the Reposition Ability. Although small, this makes a difference on certain challenges.
- It can move the Permanent Brew so it can boost more towers, as selling it removes all current boosts from the tower.
- For deep freeplay, the Support Chinook is able to fit towers inside a Sun Temple's footprint, by using the reposition ability to place towers near the Super Monkey, then upgrading it to a Sun Temple while the Support Chinook is still moving the tower. The Chinook will drop the tower near the Sun Temple, and multiple towers can be placed this way with fast enough reaction time and proper positioning of the Chinook and Tower.
- The extra dart damage can be helpful to allow Chinooks to hold off better on their own, especially for the mid-game, although this also worsens stalling potential.
Bugs[]
The Support Chinook has been notorious for being able to do "illegal" things such as selling towers in no-selling challenges, including C.H.I.M.P.S., where selling is disabled. This is mainly due to its reposition ability that sometimes confuses the games logic of redeploying towers.
- Current
- [???] If the reposition ability is used, but the tower is not moved, the player can move a tower without using the cooldown. This bug has been known to occur since 1.0 and still occurs as of version 14.0.
- [???] If the reposition ability is used to move a land tower onto water using an arctic wind ice monkey, and the ice monkey is sold during the process, the arctic wind effect moves to the centre of the map and the tower appears to be floating on the water.
- [???] The Chinook is able to place towers inside a Sun Temple's footprint by chinooking a tower next to the Super Monkey before upgrading it to a Sun Temple, then upgrading it while the Chinook is still moving the tower. The Chinook will place the tower in the original spot, in the Sun Temple's footprint, as of v35.
- [???] If the Chinook tries to move a tower to the very edge of the map it will crash the game.
- [38.0] Support Chinook with any crosspath (1+/4+/0 and 0/4+/1+) don’t increase blowback pierce and pierce penalty versus Ceramics. This doesn't affect Downdraft, but does affect Special Poperations.
- Patched
- If the Chinook tries to move a tower next to a super monkey and the super monkey upgrades to a Sun Temple, so the temple's footprint blocks the tower's placement, the game crashes as the Chinook picks up the tower. Patched on Version TBA, possibly bug fixed before 2022.
Version History[]
Balance Changes[]
The Chinook sits in a position where it is important and full of utility in non-CHIMPS games but situational and niche in CHIMPS games. Over history, it has been balanced around its pickup utility rather than its crates, which have been nerfed heavily.
The income-generating portion of Chinook was somewhat nerfed due to the income generation initial cooldown nerf among other small changes and bug fixes. However, the Chinook's Reposition Ability was buffed to have a shorter cooldown, but also heavily bug-fixed for its notorious capability for the cause of many bugs, especially with Arctic Wind platforms.
- 2.0
- [Bug fix] Can no longer duplicate towers with Reposition ability.
- 8.0
- All income-based abilities now require a full cooldown before first activation.
- 9.0
- Cancelling the Reposition ability should no longer revert placement settings.
- 16.0
- Supply crate ability no longer gives any lives on Impoppable Difficulty, unless the maximum amount of lives is changed to be higher than 1.
- 22.0
- Chinooks now have a visible cash generation counter.
- 27.0
“ | As a small quality of life feature Chinook's redeploy ability has been reworked to allow slight movements of towers in a single use, rather than having to move them away and then use another redeployment to move them back again. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Support Chinook's Redeploy ability now allows towers to ignore their own footprint when selected.
- 28.0
“ | For similar reasons to Sniper, Chinook is a pretty annoying tower to farm with, so its ability has been standardized into a single producing both a life & a cash crate on a longer cooldown; the cash production of this has gone up while the life generation has been reduced as the power stood out too much compared to any other life generation method. [...] | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Support Chinook's Cash Generating abilities now have a 3 minute timeout
- Support Chinook's Supply Drop now drops life and cash crates together
- Support Chinook's Supply Drop cooldown increased from 60s to 90s
- Support Chinook's Supply Drop cash is now changed from $1000-$2000 to a fixed $1800 value
- Support Chinook's Supply Drop lives produced decreased from 50-75 lives to 10 lives
- 32.0
“ | Heli’s blowback has always been extremely effective from early on, and as players have become more knowledgeable the use into lategame as well only seems to go up especially moving into Super Ceramics. This change shouldn’t really have as large an impact at higher level gameplay as total map length is so much shorter you will often still be blowing back the entire track, but the blowback range has been reduced at T3 leading back into the old value at T4 | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Indirect buff, as Support Chinook blowback distance remains at 32-300.
- 33.0
“ | [...] Support Chinook use is too niche outside of farming for the high cost, so the upgrade cost along with that effective cash gain amount from ability usage has been lowered to retain the same farming while improving niche use. [...] | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Support Chinook price reduced from $12,000 to $10,500
- Support Chinook crate cash reduced from $1800 to $1650
- 36.0
“ | For how powerful downdraft is in comparison to other blowback effects, it didn’t feel right that it wasn’t blowing off status effects as should be normal there. Redeploy feels like it has no business having so long a cooldown, maybe it could see more realistic use cases for this main mechanic if it was able to be utilized more frequently. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Affected by Downdraft rework, now removing glue and ice status effects
- Support Chinook redeploy ability cooldown reduced from 60s to 45s
- 37.0
“ | [...] Chinook feels like it’s near a place we are happy with now, however we want another tiny nudge on cost while keeping cash generation value the same. [...] | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Support Chinook price reduced from $10500 to $9500
- Support Chinook supply crate cash generated reduced from $1,650 to $1,550, does not affect to Special Poperations
- Support Chinook max uses per round reduced from 3 to 2
- 38.0
“ | Given Downdraft has competed as one of the most debated best towers in the game basically for its entire life for both early and late game we are reducing some of the extreme effectiveness against late game Super Ceramics by reworking it to have an overall increased effect of blowing back multiple smaller children at a time but now requiring 2 pierce to blow back ceramics. At the same time, the T4 Support Chinook is also having a large increase to make it now a more powerful real end-game choice for a lategame version of Downdraft that can quickly deal with large groups of Super Ceramics. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Indirectly buffed, as Support Chinook's blowback rate remains at 0.15s but slower at T3.
- Support Chinook's blowback is overall buffed to blow back many more bloons and Ceramics
- Support Chinook's blowback pierce increased (1 → 4)
- Support Chinook's blowback now has a +1 pierce penalty versus Ceramics
- Support Chinook's blowback no longer increases blowback distance, maximum blowback reduced from 300 to 150.
- [undocumented, possibly bug] Blowback no longer removes ice status effect.
- [undocumented, possibly bug] Support Chinook with any crosspath (1+/4+/0 and 0/4+/1+) don’t increase blowback pierce and pierce penalty versus Ceramics.
- 39.0
“ | Support Chinook struggles to do anything with its main attack due to the projectile spawn offset changing at this tier, so we’re slightly tweaking the main attack to assist it here. [...] | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Support Chinook projectile size increased (3 → 6)
- Support Chinook damage increased (1 → 2)
- Note: Support Chinook is a supporting tower with a cooldown-based income generation, so this damage buff is a nerf to stalling.
- 44.0
“ | Players have noticed the life crate has more collection radius than the cash crate, and that this causes problems for some strategies / challenges as you don’t always want to increase lives, so these radius have been matched. [...] | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Support Chinook lives crate collection radius reduced from 100 to 50
Bug Fixes and General Changes[]
This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it. |
- 38.0
- Description changed from "Abilities: Drops lives and cash crates, or can pick up and redeploy most Monkey types." to "Blows back many more Bloons and gains abilities: Drops lives and cash crates, and can pick up and redeploy most Monkey types."
Extra Notes (Version History)[]
- Version 44.0 buffed Rosalia's Level 6+ discount from 5% to 10%, which changed the prices of Support Chinook when buffed by her:
- Easy: $7670 → $7265
- Medium: $9025 → $8550
- Hard: $9745 → $9235
- Impoppable: $10830 → $10260
Sounds[]
When activating Supply Crate Ability:
- [Crate dropping]
- [Cash collecting]
- [Lives collecting]
When activating Redeploy Ability:
- [Helicopter flying]
- [Picking up towers]
- [Dropping off towers]
Gallery[]
Official artwork[]
Trivia[]
- The BTD6 upgrade icon depicts just a Chinook, but the BTD5 upgrade icon depicts a shadow of a Chinook picking up a crate plus green arrows side to side from the crate.
- Compared to the upgrade portraits in BTD5 generation games, the rotors appear smaller in the BTD6 upgrade portrait.
- Support Chinook is much cheaper than its BTD5 variant ($15,000), and starting from Version 37.0 the cumulative prices of a 0-4-0 BTD6 Chinook are only $500 more expensive than the lone upgrade price of the BTD5 Chinook.
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