Special Poperations (BTD6)

For the upgrade in Bloons TD Battles 2, see Special Poperations (Battles 2).

Special Poperations

Deploys a powerful special Monkey Marine with a machine gun.

Tower	Heli Pilot — Path 2 — Tier 5
XP cost	40,000
Cash cost	$25,500 — Easy $30,000 — Medium $32,400 — Hard $36,000 — Impoppable

← Support Chinook

Special Poperations is the Heli Pilot's path 2 tier 5 upgrade in Bloons TD 6. It improves Support Chinook's abilities, and grants a new Monkey Marine ability which drops a marine sub-tower. With Door Gunner, this upgrade also grants an ability which allows the Heli Pilot to hold a tower inside it, allowing it to continue attacking.

This upgrade also increases the movement speed of the Heli Pilot by 25% and reduces Downdraft attack cooldown from 0.15s to 0.075s.

Abilities

See also: Support Chinook (BTD6)#Abilities

Monkey Marine

This upgrade adds the Monkey Marine ability, which deploys a marine sub-tower at the Heli Pilot's position. If there are no available placement locations near the Heli Pilot, the marine cannot be deployed. The marine fires darts at Bloons which deal 6 damage, have 20 pierce, and have an attack cooldown of 0.05 seconds (0.04 seconds with Faster Firing crosspath). Marines have a range of 50 units. It can damage all Bloon types and can detect Camo Bloons.

The Marine last for 30 seconds before disappearing. It also disappears if the Heli that spawned it is removed. Crosspathing the Heli with Quad Darts causes the Marine to remain even if the Heli is removed, which seems to be a bug. Unlike most towers and sub-towers, marines can be sold in CHIMPS. This ability has a cooldown of 25 seconds, and an initial cooldown of 8.33 seconds (meaning a single Special Poperations can keep a Marine on the map at all times and periodically have two Marines at a time without any ability cooldown buffs).

Unlike other sub-towers, the marine can be redeployed with the redeploy ability.

Door Gunner

Main article: Door Gunner

This ability is only available when Door Gunner Monkey Knowledge is enabled. It allows the player to select a tower for the Heli Pilot to pick up and carry inside the helicopter. While picked up, towers move with the helicopter and continue attacking as usual but cannot use abilities or be selected. Selling the Heli Pilot while it is carrying a tower also sells the carried tower. The Heli Pilot cannot use Reposition while a tower is being carried. After a tower is picked up by Door Gunner, the Heli Pilot is able to use this ability again to drop the tower in a valid location. The Reposition and Door Gunner abilities share the same cooldown (including initial cooldown): using one also resets the cooldown of the other.

Reposition

This upgrade reduces the cooldown of Support Chinook's Reposition ability, from 45 to 15 seconds.

Supply Crate

This upgrade increases the value of Support Chinook's cash crate, from $1,550 to $4,500 (or $5,625 with Charged Chinooks), and increases the number of lives provided by its lives crate from 10 to 25 (or 31 with Charged Chinooks). Purchasing Special Poperations sets the cooldown timer on this ability back to full.

Stats

For a complete list of Heli Pilot stats, see Stats:Heli Pilot (BTD6).

This data was last updated for: version 55.1

Tower
Display range 22 units Movement speed 100 units/s Targeting options Follow Touch Lock in Place Patrol Points

Attack
Cooldown 0.57s Offset (X, Y, Z) 11, 15.83, 6.8 (side 1) -11, 15.83, 6.8 (side 2) Targeting range 42 units
Ignores blockers
Projectile Count 2 Pierce 3 Damage 2 Damage type Sharp Speed 260 units/s Lifespan 1s Radius 6 units Ignores blockers

Downdraft
Cooldown 0.075s Offset (X, Y, Z) 0, 0, 0 Targeting range ∞ units
Ignores blockers Can fire without a target
Projectile Pierce 4 Ceramic pierce penalty +1 Lifespan 0.1s Radius 32 units Filters Cannot hit MOAB-Class Cannot hit Bloons with Blowback Ignores blockers Blowback Chance 100% Min distance 64 units Max distance 150 units

Redeploy
Cooldown 15s

Support Drop
Cooldown 90s Max uses per round 2
Cash crate Collection radius 50 units Cash value $4500 Lifespan 15s Rounds ∞ Life crate Collection radius 50 units Lifespan 15s Rounds ∞

Special Poperations
Cooldown 25s

Marine

Tower
Display range 50 units Footprint radius 5 units Lifespan 30s Targeting options First Last Close Strong

Attack
Cooldown 0.05s Offset (X, Y, Z) -2.08, 18.84, 11.57 Targeting Depends on targeting option Targeting range 50 units
Projectile Pierce 20 Damage 6 Damage type Normal Speed 300 units/s Lifespan 0.25s Radius 2 units Ignores blockers

1-5-0

Attack
Copies of this attack 1 → 2 Offset (X, Y, Z) 11, 15.83, 6.8 (side 1) -11, 15.83, 6.8 (side 2) ↓ 11, 15.83, 6.8 (primary 1) -11, 15.83, 6.8 (primary 2) 7.2, 22.33, 6.8 (secondary 1) -7.2, 22.33, 6.8 (secondary 2)

2-5-0

Tower
Targeting options Pursuit

0-5-1

Attack
Offset (X, Y, Z) 11, 15.83, 6.8 (side 1) -11, 15.83, 6.8 (side 2) ↓ 11, 16, 2 (side 1) -11, 16, 2 (side 2) Targeting range 42 units → 54.6 units
Projectile Speed 260 units/s → 416 units/s

0-5-2

Attack
Cooldown 0.57s → 0.456s

Downdraft
Cooldown 0.075s → 0.06s

Marine

Attack
Cooldown 0.05s → 0.04s

Costs and sell values

Note: this list does not factor in Monkey Knowledge or other discounts.

Tiers	Total cost				Sell value
	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable
0-5-0	$38,590	$45,400	$49,035	$54,480	$27,013	$31,780	$34,325	$38,136
1-5-0	$39,270	$46,200	$49,900	$55,440	$27,489	$32,340	$34,930	$38,808
2-5-0	$39,695	$46,700	$50,440	$56,040	$27,787	$32,690	$35,308	$39,228
0-5-1	$38,800	$45,650	$49,305	$54,780	$27,160	$31,955	$34,514	$38,346
0-5-2	$39,095	$46,000	$49,685	$55,200	$27,367	$32,200	$34,780	$38,640

Strategy

This section was last updated for: version 51.2

With improved income and lives, greater blowback, no initial Reposition cooldown, and decent DPS for its price, Special Poperations stands out on Boss Events, especially in Least Cash and Least Tiers settings. It remains viable in CHIMPS with sufficient micromanagement to reposition towers, blow back Super Ceramics, and frequent use of Marine for bursts of damage.

Door Gunner is an important MK to give a tower effectively infinite range. Some valuable candidates are:

• Favored Trades for its sellback bonus.
• Master Builder's Mega Sentries can be picked up.
• Banana Farmer
• Embrittlement, which is mainly used in Boss Events without good Ice placements.
• The Final Harmonic's totem can move blimps into XXXL Trap on distant lane maps such as Muddy Puddles.

Special Poperations does not need to be crosspathed if assuming a support role. However, 0-5-2 does improve blowback and the Marine's DPS. Alternatively, 2-5-0 removes the need for micro.

Update history

For a complete list of Heli Pilot changes, see Update history:Heli Pilot (BTD6).

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Version 1.7

• "Support Chinook ability refinement."

Version 7.0

•  Special Poperations, Marine: cooldown reduced ― 50s → 40s

Version 8.0

•  Supply Crate: Now starts with its full cooldown

Version 10.0

•  Marine ability: no longer spawns Marines at the previous location of activation instead of the Heli's current location (bug fix)

Version 11.0

•  Lock in Place and Patrol Points no longer immediately prompt to choose target positions and instead have default positions
•  After changing targeting off of Lock in Place or Patrol Points, changing back returns the target(s) to how it was previously
• "Heli Pilots should no longer cause save files to not load sometimes" (bug fix)

Version 12.0

•  Marines are now saved

Version 17.0

•  Overall cost increased by $100 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)
•  Redeploy: Now allows Sniper Monkeys to attack while in transit (bug)

Version 17.1

•  Marine: Activating the ability when the Heli is about to redeploy a tower no longer causes it to keep spawning Marines in the same place every few seconds (bug fix)
•  Redeploy: No longer allows Sniper Monkeys to attack while in transit (bug fix)
  • Note: Does not affect Door Gunner
• Redeploy: Can no longer target Dark Knight (or a higher tier) while it is using Darkshift (bug fix)

Version 20.0

“

Pursuit Downdraft has felt like an overperformer for a very long time, but instead of outright nerfing it we increased crosspath potential for those who manually take control over their heli micro.
— Update notes

”

•  Downdraft: rate reduced ― 0.125s → 0.15s

0-5-2

•  Downdraft: rate increased ― 0.125s → 0.12s

Version 21.0

“

Heli Pilot manages on pursuit far too easily without any need to consider Bigger Jets unless camo or downdraft is required. For more crosspath variety than just ‘camo’ we moved more of the base Heli speed out and back into Bigger Jets with an overall buff to Bigger Jets. This should allow Bigger Jets to scale a little better than other helis through early speed ramping.
— Update notes

”

•  Movement speed increased ― 84.375 → 87.5

Version 26.0

“

We’ve noted that Special Poperations has save-up issues, and then once owned has uptime and single target issues. With the 30 second duration, it now has potentially no downtime and instead allowing careful (or techbot) management to give a short burst of increased single target.
— Update notes

”

•  Marine: ability cooldown reduced ― 40s → 25s
•  Marine: pierce reduced ― 30 → 20
• Special Poperations will no longer crash the game if disabling MK after picking up a door gunner (bug fix)

Version 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.
— Update notes

”

•  Redeploy: Now ignores the footprint of the selected tower when choosing where to relocate it

Version 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.
— Update notes

”

•  Support Drop: Cash value is overall increased and no longer randomized ― $1,000–$2,000 → $4,500
•  Support Drop: Life value is overall decreased and no longer randomized ― 50-75 → 25
•  Support Drop: Now stops recharging during a round if 3 minutes elapse after the start
•  Support Drop: Now drops both life and cash crates instead of alternating
•  Support Drop: Cooldown increased ― 60s → 90s

Version 31.1

“

But really you should just never be trying this in the first place
— Update notes

”

•  Resolved an issue with chinook trying to move towers off of ice platforms (bug fix)

Version 33.0

•  Overall cost reduced by $1,000 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)

Version 35.0

•  Heli 'patrol point' markers now visually update immediately after setting new points (bug fix)
•  Resolved an issue with Door Gunner ignoring helipads as blocking objects for dropoffs (bug fix)

Version 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.
— Update notes

”

•  Redeploy: Cooldown reduced ― 60s → 45s
•  Downdraft: Now removes ice and glue mutators from affected Bloons

Version 37.0

•  Overall cost reduced by $1,000 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)
•  Supply Crate: Max uses per round reduced ― 3 → 2

Version 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.
— Update notes

”

•  Downdraft: Pierce increased ― 1 → 4
•  Downdraft: Maximum blowback distance decreased ― 300 → 150
•  Downdraft: Gains +1 pierce penalty to all bloons when crosspathed (undocumented) (bug)
•  Downdraft: Ceramics now consume +1 pierce
•  Blowback no longer works on Bloons near the entrance (bug fix)

Version 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.
— Update notes

”

•  Dart: Projectile size increased ― 3 → 6
•  Dart: Damage increased ― 1 → 2
• Note: These buffs are considered nerfs to stalling

Version 40.2

•  Patched a bug that involved upgrading Chinook into Special Poperations while moving a tower allowing towers to be placed anywhere on the map (undocumented) (bug fix)
  • Note: A harder version can still be performed using Total Transformation

Version 42.0

“

The blowback rate of Special Poperations is being increased to reflect the previous changes upgrading downdraft to support chinook and bring up more lategame value in the support capabilities of this path.
— Update notes

”

•  Downdraft attack cooldown reduced ― 0.15s → 0.075s

Version 43.0

•  Marine: Can now be sold in CHIMPS

Version 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. Special Poperations struggles to fit into competitive strategies due to it serving a different purpose than the T4, so the cooldown of the Support Chinook ability at T5 is now being greatly reduced in order to continue building on what is good about the T4 even for strategies that may not need the Marine specifically.
— Update notes

”

•  Redeploy cooldown reduced ― 45s → 15s
  • Note: This also means purchasing the Special Poperations upgrade reduces the current cooldown by 30 seconds more
•  Door Gunner cooldown reduced ― 45s → 15s
•  Lives crate collection radius reduced ― 100 → 50

Version 48.0

“

Support Chinook is receiving improvement to utility to increase value for people generally wanting this upgrade for other reasons.
— Update notes

”

•  Overall cost reduced by $100 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)
•  Flight speed increased ― 87.5 → 100

Version 49.0

“

For improved quality of life Support Chinook has been enabled for use between rounds, we have concerns with this but will give it some time to see how things settle.
— Update notes

”

“

In order to improve potential synergies, we have finally decided to do away with the pierce cap on Downdraft. This means that, yes, you can now properly Alch buff your Downdraft support
— Update notes

”

•  Downdraft: Pierce cap removed ― 2 → ∞
  • Note: This does not affect its regular pierce, but now allows it to receive pierce buffs.
•  Reposition ability: Can now be used between rounds
•  Reposition ability: Can now move towers on to ice and ink platforms (undocumented)
•  Downdraft: Crosspaths no longer grant +1 pierce penalty to all Bloons (bug fix)

Version 50.0

“

Door Gunner is now allowed to be used between rounds to reduce that start of round stress.
— Update notes

”

“

For quality of life the ‘Drag to Redeploy' textbox now disappears earlier during tower redeployment.
— Update notes

”

•  Door Gunner ability: Can now be used between rounds
•  Redeploy ability: "Drag to Redeploy" textbox now hides once a tower is selected to be moved, instead of after confirming placement
  • Note: This improves visibility with towers placed at the top of the screen

Version 51.0

•  Should no longer be able to stack towers (bug fix)
  • Note: This attempts to fix an exploit where two separate Chinook abilities would be able to stack towers on top within a brief window between activating placements of different towers

Version 51.1

• Redeploy Ability: Can again reposition towers on top of themselves

Version 54.0

“

[...] while Support Chinook’s fire rate remains unchanged, to save you some clicks the cash and life generation will now trigger all instances at once. I just love pasta. Since players have noted the irony of a Marine being in the Chinook path but unmovable and awkward to place, so the Marine is now fully redeployable, enjoy!
— Update notes

”

•  Supply Drop ability: Activating the ability will now trigger it for all available towers
•  Redeployment ability: It can now be used on the Monkey Marine

Gallery

For more Heli Pilot images, see Gallery:Heli Pilot.

Screenshots

• 
  Special Poperations for 150, 250
• 
  Special Poperations for 05X
• 
  Special Poperations helipad
• 
  Special Poperations marine

Assets

• 
  Portrait
• 
  Marine portrait
• 
  Upgrade / Marine ability icon
• 
  Door Gunner ability pickup icon
• 
  Door Gunner ability deploy icon
• 
  Insta Monkey icon

Trivia

• Its upgrade icon is almost identical to the portrait of Elite Defender.
• "Poperations" is a portmanteau of "pop" and "operations".
• Special operations are unconventional military techniques, including but not limited to scouting, espionage, and diversion, typically performed by small units.
• With Door Gunner, it has the most activated abilities of a single tower in BTD6, with 4 in total.

In other languages

Language	Name / Description	Notes
Arabic	عمليات فرقعة خاصة نشر قرد مميز وقوي من مشاة البحرية بمدفع رشاش.	—
Danish	Special springstyrker Indsætter en kraftfuld special abe-marinesoldat med et maskingevær.	—
German	Spezial-Platzerei Setzt einen starken Affen-Marine mit Maschinengewehr ein.	—
Spanish	Explosiones especiales Despliega un mono marine especial y poderoso que tiene una ametralladora.	—
Spanish (LA)	Explosiones especiales Despliega un mono marine especial y poderoso que tiene una ametralladora.	—
Finnish	Erityispoksautukset Ottaa käyttöön tehokkaan konekiväärillä varustetun apinarannikkojääkärin.	—
French	Popérations spéciales Déploie un puissant marine singe spécial avec une mitrailleuse.	—
Italian	Preparativi speciali Mette in campo una potente scimmia marina speciale munita di mitragliatrice.	—
Japanese	特別破裂準備 マシンガンを持つパワフルな特別モンキー海兵隊を展開する。	—
Korean	특수 터트리기 작전 기관총을 든 무시무시한 원숭이 해병대 특수부대원을 배치합니다.	—
Dutch	Speciale knalperaties Zet een krachtige speciale Marinieraap in met een machinegeweer.	—
Norwegian	Spesial-popperasjon Utplasserer en mektig Marine-ape med maskingevær.	—
Polish	Przekłuwacje specjalne Stawia potężną specjalną małpkę marine z karabinem maszynowym.	—
Portuguese (Brazil)	Operações Estouradoras Posiciona um poderoso especial Fuzileiro Macaco com uma metralhadora.	—
Russian	Спецпробивации Выпускает сильную обезьяну-морского пехотинца с пулемётом.	—
Swedish	Hemliga smälltjänsten Sätter in en kraftfull specialapmarinsoldat med automatgevär.	—
Thai	ป๊อปโปเรชั่นพิเศษ เรียกลิงนาวิกโยธินหน่วยพิเศษอันแข็งแกร่งที่ใช้ปืนกลเป็นอาวุธ	—
Turkish	Özel Kuvvetler Makine tüfeğe sahip güçlü ve özel bir Maymun Deniz Kuvvetini görevlendirir.	—
Chinese (simplified)	特种作战 部署一支配备机枪的特种猴子海军陆战队。	—
Chinese (traditional)	特別擊破 部署一隻拿著機槍的特種海軍猴子。	—
This list was last updated for: version 43.1