Retaliator Multi-TC Trio Base Design (2024)

Inner peek-downs have become meta. In the age of grenade launchers and PVP rockets, they’re essential for defending against online raids. However, those peek-downs come at a price. A 5×5 like this one can easily cost north of 20k frags, and 500 high qual upkeep per day and not everyone can afford that.

Introducing the Retaliator. The Retaliator is a competitive multi-TC base, targeted at active solos and small groups. The design is the result of a joint build session with Rust Daddy, and draws inspiration from Alone in Tokyo’s “Little Tokyo.”

To keep the complexity to a minimum, it consists of a core and three externally up-kept honeycomb parts. The core houses main loot and acts as a starter unit at the same time. The external part provides outer and inner peek downs for online raid defense and shift the upkeep cost of those defense capabilities onto the external TCs, which keeps the overall upkeep manageable.

The overall build cost is about 60k stone, 24k frags, and 600 high qual. The combined upkeep is about 10k stone, 7.5k metal fragments, and 130 high qual per day, which is not much for a base with these online defense capabilities. It takes 30 rockets to reach any of the main loot rooms, and about 45 rockets to clear out the core.

Thanks to the external TCs, griefing requires another 24 rockets, which pushes the raid cost to almost 70 rockets already. At the same time, loot storage and spawn points are distributed throughout the base, which makes it challenging and costly to fully raid it. This makes the base more resilient, and you more likely to bounce back after a raid.

According to the cost of the protection ratio metric that I usually calculate, this base is not one of the most efficient ones on my channel. Peek downs, unfortunately, don’t come for free, even in multi-TC configurations. As such, the base is best suited for highly active players. Nevertheless, if Alone in Tokyo can handle a base this size by himself, an active trio should have no issue either. But enough of that, let’s take the tour.

We spawn inside of the external TC outside of the walls of the compound. Keep a few gear sets here in these drop boxes to flank raiders during a raid. With an upkeep of 1.6k frags and 2.7k stones, these are easy to handle. Inside of this airlock, we find those window peeks that allow to engage players inside and outside of the walls of the compound. Through this door we find an auto turret covering parts of the compound. Here, we are seeing the more expensive version of the base with external peek downs. They leave little place to hide inside of the compound.

We enter the base through this door. Behind the garage door, we enter the usable honeycomb. This is the part that is covered by inner peek downs. Use those boxes as drop-off chests. Sleeping bags and another locker can create another spawn point that can be used to defend against online raids. To get into the base, climb up the ladder. The shotgun trap prevents people from going deep easily if the doors are open.

These are the inner peek downs. Those siren lights block players from climbing or falling through the gaps. Behind those doors, we reach the peek downs that cover the corners of the base. If you need to enter the compound in a hurry, use these doors to push yourself through the gap. The single door leads into the bedroom. Jump onto these boxes to keep this space in front of the roof. These beds are distributed across the three sides of the floor, and each bed has a locker and one or two large boxes.

In the center we find the electric circuit. It is kept as simple as possible and used to only run three auto-turrets. Two of them can be found on the roof. The pressure pad quickly opens and automatically closes the garage door for us. On the roof, we find solar panels that feed the battery.

They are placed so that they cannot be easily seen or shot out from the ground. In combination with that barricade, the auto-turrets guard all parts of the roof. This prevents easy raids from the roof. Those roof ramps serve as peek for long-range engagements. If you fall through them and can’t get back up, simply jump into one of the peeks and head back inside.

Down the chute, we arrive at the second floor. It is guarded by two undrainable shotgun traps. Those shotgun traps are separated by a door, meaning that the second one serves as the second line of defense. Most of the utility items and tier three workbench are here. There is one secondary loot room in each of the corners. Thanks to the separation, it’s costly to raid them all. This is the chute that leads down into the core.

Down the chute, we again find two shotgun traps as a defense. Again, if raiders manage to destroy the first one and rocket out the garage door, they may not expect the second one. The tier two workbench is behind this window. The small box below is almost not visible, increasing the chance that raiders miss it. These are the main loot rooms. Behind this window, we find a locker where you can keep your high-value kids. Behind this window is the TC that upkeeps the core. That’s it for the tour, let’s jump into the build.

In the first phase of the build, we will construct the core of the base up to a point where it can serve as a fully functional starter base. The first step is to verify whether the base fits. Start with a triangle of triangles and completely surround it with triangles.

Three squares along the long side, and triangles, square, triangle in between with another triangle on the square. Then add five triangles in front of the three squares. Finally, build out eight squares to check whether you can fit the arms of the external TCs. This is what it should look like. Now delete all excess foundations.

You should be left with this somewhat odd-looking footprint. This is the basis for the core of the base. Locate one of these triangles and use it for the TC compartment. Yes, TCs behind window glasses can be vulnerable to incendiary rockets, however, in a multi-TC base, this is less of an issue. We now turn the rest of this footprint into our starter unit. Furnaces can go next to the TC.

This triangle will be our main loot room for now. Workbench can go into this corner. Place sleeping bags wherever they fit for now. Onto these outer triangles, place at least one wall so that they don’t cave. In front of them, place foundation steps. Do not upgrade them past the stone, or they will prevent the placement of important building blocks. Further, place a triangle in front of them. Now you can turn the space in front of the outer door into a chute. Use the foundation steps to get onto the base. This is the starter unit done.

Now let’s turn our attention to the second floor. The first thing we should do is create an airlock in front of the chute. Place a window to the right, a wall straight ahead, and a double door to the left. I will now upgrade the floor tiles of the core to sheet metal so you can better follow the next steps. Add floating floor tiles around the base. This should be the resulting shape.

Opposite of the chute into the core, build another chute that leads to the roof. Now place two more window frames, four walls around these floating triangles, double doors all around the central triangle, and two wooden single doors as temporary airlock next to this window. For the time being, use those wooden doors to enter and exit the base.

Once you obtain garage doors and reinforced glass windows, let’s bring the core into its final configuration. Bit by bit, replace all double doors with garage doors. Ensure that the TC is protected by reinforced glass, and ideally horizontal embrasures. Move the furnaces into the chute. Turn the section next to the TC into another main loot room. Craft a tier two workbench, and afterward, destroy the tier one.

Place a furnace into the far corner, and a tier two in front of it. Below it, place a small box as far forward as you can, and code lock it. Close it off with a window. The small box now serves as hidden loot storage. I would use this remaining triangle for a locker.

After you placed it, close it off with a window frame. Three sleeping bags should fit onto these open triangles. Please note that you might have to pick them up should you ever need to replace one of the garage doors.

A barrack can go above them for extra comfort. If you managed to obtain the shotgun trap blueprint, place one directly in front of the chute, and a second one into the core. This gives you a nice two-layer defense system if someone manages to go deep. The core is now in its final configuration, which has a nice symmetry to it.

Pop onto the second floor. Bit by bit replace the double doors with garage doors. Thanks to the garage doors, we can now place another three furnaces below the jump up onto the roof. Like in the core, guard the chute with two shotgun traps if possible. Add another shotgun trap guarding the airlock with the wooden doors. The research table and the box can go permanently in front of the chute.

The repair bench can go into this triangle in front of the other window. Another locker can go in front of this empty wall. Note that if you have trouble placing any of those items, try closing the garage doors beneath. Jump onto the roof and add floor tiles into these gaps. This way, it should be easy to land a mini copter on top of the base. Close off the chute with four walls.

Eventually, you will able to reach the top of the roof through it, so seal it off with another door already. At this point, you have a fully functional extended core. This should be sufficient for an early wipe. Of course, since everything is stone, the base is very vulnerable. Do not hesitate to already upgrade vital parts already, such as the outside of the TC compartment. This concludes phase one of the build.

In phase two we will build the compound around the base. This way you are protected while building the peek downs, and you can start deploying large furnaces to speed up the build process. We start by building the foundations of the peek downs. Place a triangle here, build out eight squares, and finish with another triangle. Demolish all the squares and the initial triangle.

Come back with four half-moons, and place a row of three upgraded squares. To make the placement of the external TC less tedious, we will just use those triangles to connect the external TC and not replace them. Upgrade the inner three half-moons. Eventually, they need to be sheet metal. For aesthetic reasons, you can extend them into hexagons. Those additional foundations can remain stone.

Further, complete the row of triangles in front of the squares and upgrade them to sheet metal. They will later provide extra stability to the peek downs. Place the TC on the second last triangle. This is just outside of the building privilege of the core TC, so the placement may be a little challenging.

To protect it, I’m using two garage doors and two single doors. We used two sheet metal compartments with the garage doors to prevent the use of incendiary rockets for a cheaper raid. The two single doors serve as an airlock. Thanks to the garage doors, we can add three sleeping bags.

Place drop boxes against those sheet metal walls. They can hold gear sets and materials to counter raids from the outside of the wall to the compound. Don’t forget to clean up the rest of the twig. Now repeat this step two more times until you have three external TCs. That should look like this.

On the arms to the external TCs, locate these three triangles on the second hexagon. Here, we’re going to build an Alone in Tokyo inspired airlock for our compound. Use three window frames, two single doors, and one double door. The second door is placed strategically to block the entrance if it’s open.

By the front window, we use reinforced glass and for the sides, we ideally use vertical embrasures. Place a single barricade on top of the airlock. After you repeated this step two more times, your base should look like this.

Now we can start to the wall in the compound. I will be using wooden high external walls, just because they may be easier to find. Feel free to use stone ones instead. Line up the wall with the lines on the floor.

At each airlock, clip one high external wall into each of the windows like this. This provides visibility along the inside and the outside of the compound. To get the spacing right, the walls should run parallel to the sides of the three triangles. Now align yourself with the foundation steps in the center of the base. Walk outwards from them, unless space left and right looks a little bit shorter than one high external wall. Wooden high external walls are quite forgiving with the placement. It should be no issue to create a perfectly sealed wall.

Place barricades outside of the side windows of the airlocks. They prevent enemy players from using the corners to hide and door camp you. Thanks to the walls, you can now deploy large furnaces. Place them to the left of that triangle foundation, and very close to the high external walls. Don’t hesitate to use the compound as well for an oil refinery or to grow hemp and food.

To prevent people from building in with twig at these sides, build three additional external TCs. We’re just going to build fully-enclosed single triangle TCs. Bring two stacks of sheet metal. One for the build, and one for the upkeep. The single stack of sheet metal will be sufficient for 13 days of upkeep, thus, it does not make sense to make it window accessible. Unfortunately, compounds and large furnaces attract players to jump or fly over the walls and try to steal the contents of the furnaces. Thus, in case you have the components, consider adding auto-turrets to the airlocks.

For the simplest approach, put a solar panel somewhere. For example, on the ground inside of the compound, or the top of an external TC. Run it into a small battery inside of the airlock and connect this to an auto turret placed inside of the doorway. These turrets help to protect the compound against thieves and raiders. Leave the doors open while you’re online and close to the base, close them if you’re gone for a while. If you spawn into an offline raid, raiders may have ignored those turrets.

By opening the doors, the turrets can help you to regain control of the compound quickly. If you want to be able to service the turrets without the wiring tool, you will need two solar panels and two batteries. Combine their outputs and run them into a switch. These components can be placed above the window. This concludes the second phase of the build. Thanks to the compound, you’re in a good position to accelerate the production of metal fragments, and it is already very difficult to grief you.

In phase three of the build, we’re going to strengthen the core, build the outer honeycomb, the final entrance to the base, and more loot rooms. By now, you hopefully have accumulated plenty of metal fragments and high-quality metal. We will use them to upgrade the core of the base. Upgrade those inner triangles, walls, and foundations to armored.

If an upkeep of 130 high qual per day is too much for you, at least upgrade the TC compartment, as well as the foundations next to those foundation steps. In this case, you can calculate with 1k extra metal fragment upkeep, but only about 60 high qual per day. Upgrade all the floating floor tiles to sheet metal. Surround the triangles next to the foundation steps with sheet metal walls, and upgrade the lone foundation to sheet metal as well. This can later serve to rebuild the base if this armored foundation gets destroyed.

Head inside of the core.

Upgrade the chute at least to sheet metal, better armored. Inside of the core, upgrade everything apart from the garage door frames to sheet metal. On the second floor, upgrade all the floor tiles above the core to armored. Jump onto the roof and upgrade all floor tiles. Eventually, the ones above the core should be armored as well. The floating ones can remain sheet metal.

On your way down, upgrade all remaining walls to sheet metal. Skip over the door frames and the windows. Place note this step is very resource-intensive, many but not all of the upgrades can be delayed until you have the material. The mandatory ones are the upgrades of the compartments behind the windows, namely the TC, the locker, and the tier two workbench as you cannot reach them later anymore.

For the next steps, you need a ladder blueprint. Run outside, and place sheet metal walls onto the center of the base. On top of them, place three triangles going out like this. Place a garage door in front of these sheet walls. Then place two stories of stone walls around the outer perimeter of the three squares. In front of the garage door, build a chute that leads onto the third floor.

Use a ladder to climb up. Place a half-height triangle. Onto the triangle, place a single small box and a shotgun trap. Close it off with a single door. I would use the small box to keep items for raid defense, such as meds, ammo, and excess grenade or rocket launchers if you have them. This is the inner peek down taking shape.

We can build three secondary loot rooms onto the second floor.

Jump onto the three exposed triangles of the core. Make yourself a platform to work by placing twig on the outside. Place this wall to the left side. Deploy two boxes as close to that wall as you can. Add a half-height shelf, and add two more boxes. Add a stone wall frame in the center. This will later minimize the gap in the walls. Upgrade the window frames and rotate them. Close off these two triangles with a wall on this side. Doing this on all three sides creates three perfectly separated loot rooms.

Now let’s protect the space outside of those loot rooms. Place a stone floor frame and a roof on top of it. Then place another roof onto the outer triangle foundation. Now close off the honeycomb space. This covers the gaps and disincentivizes raiding straight through these walls. Optionally, add a sneaky shotgun trap here and place a sandbag barricade inside of the gap. Interestingly, the sandbag barricade is the only thing that could fit there.

Now it’s time to get rid of the temporary airlock. Soft side hatchet out the two wooden door frames. Place a locker into the triangle. Replace the inner door with a garage door. Then place the tier three workbench in the center against the wall. Make sure that it is well aligned and dead center inside of the floor tile.

If done right, you can still place the window frame. However, before doing this, add two small boxes underneath the tier three. You will be able to replace the garage door by turning the workbench. There is a risk that if you misplace the workbench, you won’t be able to place the window. Thus, feel free to place the window frame first. The first and second floors of the central unit are now in their final build stage. This concludes the third phase of the build.

In the final phase of the build, we’re going to work on the defense perimeter. Start by completing the inner peek downs. Consider leaving the inner ones stone. The reason is, if the central triangles get destroyed, those triangles will prevent replacing them. If they are stone, you can at least soft side pick them out to replace the central ones. One suggestion from Lord Desert is to use a siren light to close those gaps. They are not easy to destroy and make it impossible to climb or fall through that gap.

Since the honeycomb below the inner peek down so far is just dead space, let’s make good use of it. Now we’ll place a long row of large boxes along the inner wall. These can be extremely useful if you need to quickly offload large quantities of loot without spending time on sorting things, such as after a successful raid. The remaining space can be used for sleeping bags and maybe a locker.

This gives you yet another spawn point to counter raids. Now let’s turn to the third floor. I will leave the ceiling off so you can better follow my build steps. At the open squares, place wall frames and slanted roofs on top. In front, place the window with metal embrasures. In front of each peek down section, place a single door and two windows. Use embrasures and reinforced glass for the windows. You now have an inner shooting floor surrounding the core.

To strengthen the door path, add a single door and a garage door in front of the three exits. Close this wall off with a window or a full wall. Add another wall frame between the single and the garage door to close this gap. Around the center, place the garage door to the right and the wall to the left. Inside of those compartments that this creates, place one bed, one locker, and two large boxes. Next to the chute, place the locker like this, and the bed behind it.

We are also going to have the second garage door as the bed sticks through the inner one. Here, a large and small box have to suffice. To discourage raids through the roof, I would upgrade the ceilings above the core to armored, and the three triangles above the airlock to sheet. While we’re at it, upgrade the chute to sheet metal as well. Also, consider upgrading the floor tile above the chute for extra protection. Use a shotgun trap to guard the chute. A brute-force raid trying to tunnel in from the top now needs to go through three armored ceilings.

Next, we’re going to work on the outer shooting floor. Start by placing single doors around the outer triangle. Next to the entrance chute, place reinforced glass windows. If you consider those inner peek downs sufficient and prefer to save upkeep costs, simply place windows in those triangles. If external peek downs are a must for you, and worth another 1k metal fragments and 1.5k stone of daily upkeep, do the following. Instead of those windows use single door frames. On the shooting floor level, place three triangles like this. Around those triangles, place windows with embrasures.

Close the gap with a single door. Place the door frame on the side of the gaps so that the door swings outwards. This is how the end result should look like from the top. If you cannot place any of these, you might have to destroy the large furnace below. Let’s close off the ceiling.

If you want to give these peek downs a chance to survive the initial volley of rockets, place sheet metal wall frames into those triangle foundations. Further, upgrade the wall frames below the inner peeks. They will provide extra stability to the peek downs.

Make sure that the floor tiles are sheet metal as well. If you place the doors next to the slanted roof peek in the right orientation, they can allow you to push you out of the doorway. This creates a sneaky way to exit the base and fall into the back of enemy players inside of your compound, should the need arise.

Next, let’s turn our attention to the roof. Closeout the chute with half walls. Add another triangle as an airlock. Have the single door open inwards. Add a shotgun trap in the rear of the triangle. If the roller faces the right way, you can close the single door through the garage door. Place a pressure pad inside of the chute, and connect it to a door controller that is paired to the garage door.

This way, you can make it even harder for roof campers to go deep. These gaps in the ceiling are still an issue, as they allow enemy players to see and shoot into the bedrooms. Thus, place slanted roofs on top of the outer ceilings. If you place additional slanted roofs onto those sides, the roofs will create a solid defensive perimeter. Add low walls onto the center roof to create more options to peek sideways.

To further protect the roof, we will add auto-turrets. We will create a circuit with three auto-turrets as this is easiest to build and maintain. I will place one auto turret above the chute to the core to defend the second floor. The other two auto-turrets should go on top of the roof. Place them at the height of the exit facing the door. A combined field of view covers almost the whole inner part of the roof. Only this bit behind the exit is not covered by either of them. Place a barricade there to prevent players from hiding there. Inside the core of the bedroom, place a medium or large battery against this wall.

On the wall behind it, place four route combiners, one switch, and one splitter. Place a small generator next to the battery. Go onto the roof, and place four solar panels facing north around the center. This way they are not easily visible from the ground floor and cannot be easily shot out with, for example, compound bows.

Run each of the solar panels into one of the inputs of the two leftmost route combiners. Combine their output in the third one, and run it into the input of the large battery. Run the output of the large battery into the fourth route combiner. Connect the output of the small generator as well. This way, the generator can take over if the battery is depleted.

Run the combined output into the switch, and the switch into the splitter. Then connect each of the outputs of the splitter with one of the auto-turrets.

This concludes the final phase of the build. One thing you can consider adding is a crow’s nest on top of the base, like in the Little Tokyo base. I would build a solid column in the center of the base, as well as wall frames to provide stability to a platform that has the same shape as the armored floor. For good shooters, this is sufficient to take heli. Be warned though, this easily adds 1k frags and 2k stone to the daily upkeep. And that’s Retaliator done.

Please remember, I consider my designs to be platforms that you can adapt to your needs. If you’re conscious about upkeep, work with the basic configuration without external peek downs and consider keeping the wall of the core sheet metal. If the upkeep is not an issue for you, add the external peek down, the crow’s nest, and whatever else you need.

Whatever you decide, may the base bring you safely through the wipe.

Evil Wurst, out.