A.R.C.T.I.C.

The A.R.C.T.I.C. is an high-tech heavily infested gunship armed with a rear-mounted Heavy Infest deployer, side-mounted devestating freeze missiles, 3 assault guns (1 front-mounted and 2 side-mounted) and a top-mounted acid-thrower.

Info
The A.R.C.T.I.C. has 22,500 health and it moves at 1/3 of the speed of a BFB

It's immune to acid weaponry.

It's very uncommon, it appears close to round 190, however depending on the difficulty it may happen before or after round 190.

This gains the benefits of heavy infestation

It has 2.5 AD.

Freeze Missiles
The freeze missiles are at a slow rate released from the front in the A.R.C.T.I.C. and it heads for a tower (it will try to target clusters of towers (seeking)) and it will explode a large freeze AOE, which will completely freeze towers for 4-5 seconds. This has a very wide AOE (roughly the radius of a 2/2 bomb tower). This fires 2 Missiles at a time every 4-5 seconds. The missiles do 2 damage on impact and the AOE does 0.

The missiles are moderately resistant to anti-missile weapons.

The weakness of Freeze Missiles are that they are completely negated by shields and do little damage anyway.

Heavy Infest pods.
The heavy infest pods are a terrifying sight, even more violent than the already dangerous standard Infest pods.

These move at the speed of a green bloon.

On contact with a (questionably) fortunate bloon/blimp it gets coated in a red set of vines, these regenerate at 2x the rate, it shields for 2.5x the damage compared to standard infest!

For every 100 pixels the host is long (and high) it gains +2 health regeneration per second and +50 shield the shield regenerates at +10 per second.

The A.R.C.T.I.C. spits out 2 of these per Heavy Pod-maker, it has 1 maker on the rear for 2 per release.

These infest far larger targets than standard Infest pods, however some things are large enough to even resist a Heavy Pod, however this also spreads at 2x the rate of normal (if a very large thing has both heavy infest and regular infest growing, then whatever there is the most of will be the infest the thing gets, however the heavy infest will actually infest the regular infest).

If the heavily infested thing can create bloons, it'll either create infest pods or it'll spawn the bloons as normal but they will be heavily infested. (all children/bloons produced will be heavily infested).

If an infested carrier can create quite powerful things from a bay it may produce Heavy Infest pods instead!

If the heavily infested has weapons those weapons now can apply the "acid" effect (equal to that of a 3/0 glue gunner) the duration depends on the power of the weapon.

On contact with a monkey (or any other tower) (it'll only head for these if there's nothing to infest (fortunately!)) it'll infest it! The monkey if it doesn't have enough Loyalty (if it has less than around 400-500) it will start attacking your towers! If it has enough loyalty that towers loyalty will be significantly lowered perminantly (by around 400-500), but fortunately the infestation will give it a shield and it will get a regen!

Each heavy pod has 550 health. The heavy pods have low priority and a high speed.

Assault guns
Each Assault Gun can only turn 180 degrees from wherever they're mounted. Each assault gun fires 4 shells that do 3 damage every 7.5 seconds.

Acid Thrower
The Acid Thrower has a short range but fires a wide cone of acid that coats towers with acid that acts like glue from a 2/2 Glue Gunner. This weapon turns fast and can sweep a group of towers quickly and easily. This, like the Freeze Missiles is weak to shields.

Children.
The Arctic carries 3 standard infest spores and 4-5 Heavy infest spores.

The back-story.
The A.R.C.T.I.C. was designed as an escort for higher tier blimps and has been effectively equipped for the task. It utilises missiles more than capable of locking down a defence and powerful assault guns for punching through shield systems that would otherwise stop the missiles. The Heavy Infest bay lets the A.R.C.T.I.C. buff allies. The Acid Thrower is effective at sweeping across huge groups of opponents at a time, slowing and damaging them severely.

Highly advanced armour, engines and weapons give it a surprisingly generous top-speed for a Gunship of it's power and size. Advanced armour and computers let the A.R.C.T.I.C. strategically attack defences as well as resist as massive beating.

(Please note that throughout the back-story I'm NOT talking about this. When I say infestation I mean the actual infest.)

Tactics against this.
Shields are heavily advised as they negate both the Freeze Missiles and the Acid Thrower. The shields need to be able to take and recover from a hit as fast as possible or else the Assault guns will beat upon and knock out the shield.

Clustered defences are a poor idea as they mean the Freeze Missiles can lock almost the entire defence system and the Acid Thrower will sweep through them even faster than usual.

Long-ranged defences are a good idea as it means they can stay out of the Acid Thrower's range.

Dispite the resistance to them a good anti-missile weapon is heavily advised to knock out the Freeze Missiles. This's especially effective due to the low quantity and low fire-rate of the missiles.

Tactics used by this.
The A.R.C.T.I.C. is quite smart and can vary tactics to take down defences the most effectively.

If a few A.R.C.T.I.C.s die and don't do so well, future A.R.C.T.I.C.s will use a different set of tactics.

Set 1
The A.R.C.T.I.C. will use the Freeze Missiles on clustered defences.

The Assault Guns will prioritise frozen targets, anti-missile towers and shields.

The Acid thrower will not prioritise.

The Spores will prioritise fast blimps.

Set 2

The A.R.C.T.I.C. will use the Freeze Missiles on the toughest tower.

The Assault Guns will prioritise frozen targets and anti-missile towers.

The Acid thrower will not prioritise.

The Spores will prioritise heavily armoured blimps.

Set 3

The A.R.C.T.I.C. will use the Freeze Missiles on clustered defences, each missile will try to avoid overlapping their freeze blast if possible.

The Assault Guns will prioritise unfrozen targets, anti-missile towers and shields.

The Acid thrower will not prioritise.

The Spores will prioritise heavily armed blimps.

Set 4

The A.R.C.T.I.C. will use the Freeze Missiles on high pop-count defences, each missile will try to avoid overlapping their freeze blast if possible.

The Assault Guns will prioritise anti-missile towers and the highest pop-count defences.

The Acid thrower will not prioritise.

The Spores will prioritise heavily armoured blimps.

Set 5

The A.R.C.T.I.C. will not prioritise the Freeze Missiles.

The Assault Guns will not prioritise.

The Acid thrower will not prioritise.

The Spores will prioritise heavily armed/armoured blimps.

Bloon-Class: Gunship
Gunships are a bloon class along-side things like blimps and standard bloons.

The Gunships have several bonuses compared to blimps.

Gunships are resistant to the same things a standard blimp is resistant/immune to. For example Gunships can't be coated in glue.

Gunships aren't affected by attacks designed for blimps (for example a Moab Mauler will not get the extra damage when attacking a Gunship).

Gunships move slightly above the track, ignoring things like road-spikes.