Door Gunner

“	Special Poperations Heli allows tier 4 and below Monkey Towers to attack Bloons while in transit.	”
	^{~ In-game description}

Door Gunner is an upgrade in the Military Monkey Knowledge tree, added in Version 17.0. It gives the Special Poperations another ability that allows it to pick up any tower below Tier 5 for as long as the player wishes until dropped onto a new location. It requires 14 military knowledge points invested, Charged Chinooks, and a one-time purchase of 1,000.

Description

The Door Gunner ability unlocks for the Special Poperations when the "Door Gunner" MK is unlocked and active. The main function of the Door Gunner ability is to pick up any pickable tower Tier 4 or below (this excludes Heroes too, but can still pick up Banana Farmers or Cave Monkey) and allow the tower to attack while active. The tower will not be able to change target priority or activate their abilities until transported to a new location, although the picked up tower's ability can still be active while transported via Door Gunner.

When activated, the ability sends the helicopter towards the selected tower and picks it up. Once activated, the tower will continue shooting on their set target priority until transported back to a new location via pressing the Door Gunner ability again.

While a Door Gunner is active, the Redeploy ability is disabled until the Door Gunner is placed onto a new location. When the Door Gunner is relocated onto another location, the 60-second cooldown for both Door Gunner ability and Redeploy ability will begin. Note that both the Door Gunner ability and Redeploy ability are shared between each other; activating either ability sets the cooldown for both abilities.

Certain interactions occur while using Door Gunner. For example, Engineers with any valid Path 1 upgrade will drop their sentries directly below where the Special Poperations Heli is currently hovering at, or to the nearest placeable land spot if the target location is water or otherwise considered unplaceable terrain. Dartling Gunners picked up will point in the direction of where the mouse/pointer is currently at, with the most prominent example being Plasma Accelerator.

Additionally, it is possible for the Door Gunner's ability to be active while picked up, but the Door Gunner's abilities cannot begin while picked up until placed down.

Towers currently picked up by Door Gunner are technically attached onto the Heli Pilot, which means they are unaffected by Paragon sacrifices.

The list of towers that can be picked up by Door Gunner:

The following purchasable towers up to Tier 4:
- Dart Monkeys
- Boomerang Monkeys
- Bomb Shooters
- Tack Shooters
- Ice Monkeys
- Glue Gunners
- Sniper Monkeys
- Monkey Subs
- Monkey Buccaneers except Aircraft Carriers
- Mortar Monkeys
- Dartling Gunners
- Wizard Monkeys
- Super Monkeys except Sun Temples
- Ninja Monkeys
- Alchemists
- Druids
- Spike Factories
- Engineer Monkeys
Banana Farmers
Tech Bots but cannot use special ability
Energizing Totems but cannot use special ability
Cave Monkey
Master Builder's any Sentry Paragons except Modified Paragon Sentry (Most Likely a Bug?)
Allure Totems from Symphonic Resonance and The Final Harmonic

The list of towers that cannot be picked up by Door Gunner:

All Tier 5 Upgrades Towers
All Banana Farms
All Monkey Villages
All Heroes
Sun Temples and True Sun God, including Vengeful True Sun God
Aircraft Carrier and Carrier Flagship
All Sub-Towers
Monkey Ace landing pads
Heli Pilot landing pads
All Beast Handlers
Portable Lakes
Pontoons
Dungeon Statue
All Paragons
Other players' towers in Co-Op Mode

Additionally, any towers covered by the glass in the Covered Garden map cannot be picked up.

Strategy

Summary

Door Gunner can be played around to provide convenience of picking up a certain tower anywhere on screen. Certain unique interactions with Door Gunner may actually make it pretty viable of an MK Point. Refer to #Best Candidates for further discussion on "best" towers to select as the Door Gunner.

Tips

If using Door Gunner on a Banana Farmer, the Banana Farmer can have enough range to pick up more bananas than within its immediate range. Because Special Poperations has a super fast movement speed, setting it on Patrol Points between one map region to another is very helpful for saving monkey money by not needing to buy extra Farmers.
The most expensive tower to Door Gunner is the Dark Champion. However, Dark Champion already possesses reasonably good mobility, which isn't quite as helpful as it seems.
With Door Gunner, there is a neat trick that can be done to improve Trade Empire + Merchantmen strategies on maps with limited water, such as on Chutes. Simply place as many Favored Trades into all the available water, with one upgraded to Trade Empire, pick up one Favored Trades with Door Gunner, and then place another Favored Trades in the spot where the old one was. That way, it's possible to push up the maximum potential of Trade Empire income strategies on maps with limited water.
All Door Gunners will have the High Ground while picked up by Special Poperations. This is most helpful for Sniper Monkeys and Dartling Gunners, which rely heavily on optimizing maximum range potential.
If there is a Door Gunner active, remember that the Special Poperations cannot pick up another tower with the Redeploy ability until it places down the Door Gunner. Also bear in mind that the cooldowns for both Door Gunner and Redeploy abilities are shared with each other.
By using Door Gunner on an Arctic Wind, one can hover the Chinook above water. This freezes the nearby water, allowing towers to be placed over the surrounding water, though moving the Chinook will make the other towers fall into the water and disappear. By placing another Arctic Wind in the Water such that they are in each other's areas, they support each other without any connection to the land and frees the Chinook up for moving around again.
Door Gunnered towers cannot be sacrificed to the Paragon. This may sound counterintuitive, but the capability to "save" a tower can allow important T4 towers to stay, such as Overclock and Favored Trades.

Best Candidates

Door Gunner can be used optimally for the right purposes. Best candidates for Door Gunner include:

Embrittlement - Letting an Embrittlement move around the screen via Special Poperations is essentially just a +1 debuff with mobility. It is particularly useful for Boss Events while the boss is active.
Favored Trades - Favored Trades provides +10% sellback; if it can be used anywhere on screen, one can potentially let any tower on screen gain the benefit, provided the Special Poperations hovers over the tower. Special Poperations has very quick flight speed, which actually becomes beneficial while performing the act of selling in quick succession.
Banana Farmer - Farmer can autocollect bananas from anywhere wherever the Special Poperations goes. This includes the Supply Crates dropped by Special Pops' own ability.
Master Builder Mega Sentries - For some reason, despite not being able to pick up paragons, Door Gunner can pick up the Master Builders Mega Sentries, making this is the go-to option if you just want a high-DPS tower for this ability. Not only does this allow for the sentry to always be firing at its target, it can place the mini-sentries anywhere, allowing full uptime of their shots and explosions if placed near bloons. All three types of the sentries are a good choice, so choose whichever your needs depend.
The Final Harmonic Allure Totem - Like with the sentries above, the door gunner can pick up The Final Harmonic's totem and have the hypnotic aura move with the helicopter. This is incredibly powerful as you can quickly move the aura wherever you want it to go, giving it full uptime of hypnotising bloons. This can be also done with the totem's previous upgrade, Symponic Resonance.

Bugs

Current

[43.3, possibly earlier] Towers picked up with Door Gunner can be deployed inside Special Poperations heli pad.^[1]

Patched

[17.1] On Version 17.1, there was a bug where a Door Gunner could be used to transport any tower, including Sun Temples and True Sun Gods. To pull it off, get a Destroyer, activate Door Gunner on it, get another Chinook to quickly pick up the Destroyer mid-way through, and then quickly upgrade to Aircraft Carrier after the Door Gunner picks it up while the original Support Chinook ability menu is still on. Then upgrade the Aircraft Carrier to Carrier Flagship, and then place towers on top of the tower corresponding to the two land platforms.
- ISAB made a video showcasing that glitch on the video "Using Glitches To Make A Portable True Sun God! (Bloons TD 6)".
- This glitch is patched on Version 18.0.

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