Maypop Mechanic

*Maypop Mechanics are manual plants thatspawn gears that bounce vertically.*

**Let's face it - Maypop is pretty lazy. It took ages to get him to rejoin the battlefield, and having to manually throw each gear sounded exhausting to him. Whatever could convince him to return? Vaseline.**

**Maypop Mechanic**  is a Timeless Avenue gauntlet plant in *Alternate UniverZ*. He can launch gears to any tile on the lawn the player aims them at. These gears will first travel horizontally and on hit, the trajectory bends 90 degrees and continues bouncing vertically until the gear despawns. Each gear is able to bounce up to 12 times and slow zombies by 20%.

## Almanac entry

**Maypop Mechanic**

SUN COST: 250

RECHARGE: 15

TOUGHNESS: 300

DAMAGE: 70

MAX BOUNCES: 12

ACTION COOLDOWN: 20

RANGE: Straight

Maypop Mechanics are manual plants thatspawn gears that bounce vertically.
Special: slightly slows down zombies that are hit
Usage: tap to drag from Maypop to move a gear to a tile

Let's face it - Maypop is pretty lazy. It took ages to get him to rejoin the battlefield, and having to manually throw each gear sounded exhausting to him. Whatever could convince him to return? Vaseline.

## Plant Food effect

When given Plant Food, Maypop Mechanic fires a giant gear ahead that bounces in a style similar to that of a Bowling Bulb's projectile. The gear deals 400 damage and 200 splash damage, while also stunning for 15 seconds.

## Strategies

Maypop Mechanic is rather unique, being a very cost-effective manual plant that is useful in most situations due to its nature. Being a manual plant with board range, he is naturally good at being a supporting attacking plant that could help struggling lanes out, as well as take out dangerous threats with rather low health. Also, compared to other manual plants, he is easier to quickly plant them down due to their cheaper sun cost.

However, Maypop Mechanic also has a few drawbacks. Firstly, his gear can sometimes be difficult to control, and it being rather small also leads to difficulty in timing, and wasting bounces subsequently. Also, compared to other manual plants with board range, he lacks in splash damage, which could lead to obstacles such as tombstones blocking shots, and he thus has a worse capability to snipe dangerous threats, or will have trouble dealing with clumps of zombies, which is common if one happens to run manual plants as their only attacking plant. Though, this lack of area-of-effect damage can lead to synergy with Submerge-mint, unlike other manual plants with board range, and temporarily creating a powerhouse. Finally, it is generally not wise to plant a lot of Maypop Mechanics and use them as the only attacking plant in a level, due to their high recharge rate, which could make you too busy spawning gears to defend yourself with other plants.

## Balance Changes

### Version 1.6.1.1

* Plant Food projectile damage: 300 > 400
* Plant Food splash damage: 0 > 200
* PF Stun now affects all zombies hit by splash damage.

### Version 1.6.2

* Sun cost: 300 -> 250
	+ Dev Note: For what was meant to be the cheapest manual plant, it was only 25 sun cheaper than Coconut Cannon and didn't quite have the same top potential compared to other manual plants.