Both of these are not true, at least in my opinion, and I hope by the end of this video I'll have changed your mind. First, I'll tackle the second point, that Multi-TC is tedious.

When you build out with 8 squares, destroy them, and come back with triangles, you're left with a line of foundations.

Some of these you can destroy with your hammer, but since it's not connected to the center TC, you will lose building privilege at the end, and you will need to destroy them manually. Early game you may not have much more than a spear, so asking a naked to do this is understandably a bit much.

But there is a better way.

First, you go out with 8 squares normally, and cap it off with a triangle.

However, instead of demolishing the entire line of square foundations, only remove 3 of them.

This means you'll only be able to place a few triangles before you need to destroy more, but before you do that, you can use the building privilege of the main TC to your advantage.

Destroy those last few triangles that you would have had to knock out with spears.

Repeat the same process again, destroying the triangle buildup as you go, and you'll be left with a perfectly stacked foundation with zero twig remaining. I'll show this whole process again, this time confidently at full speed.

It only takes me around 30 seconds to do the foundation stacking and clean up after myself in vanilla.

This isn't that hard to do either, there's no fancy tricks involved here, just a bit of practice on a build server. Obviously you'll need to build the external TC for this now disconnected foundation, which is extra effort, but using this technique should make the overall process a lot quicker and a lot less annoying. Next, the first point.

Multi-TC designs are hard to understand.

This one's a bit complex to unwrap, but I've always found this weird because it's pretty intuitive once you start thinking about it the right way, so I actually think this is an issue of presentation. I often see questions like: Where do I start the stacking?

Which direction do I build out?

How do I place all these triangles and squares?

Do I go out with 7 or 8 squares?

How many half-moons of triangles do I need to build back with?

All revolving around the same fundamental issue of non-understanding.

You've probably been told the exact steps of how to foundation stack a specific base, and not why you're foundation stacking.

It's easy to repeat the steps someone shows you in a YouTube video, but it takes some extra effort to understand what's happening. So, for a minute, I want you to forget about all of the build out with 8 squares and come back with triangle half-moons nonsense, it's just complicating the problem.

For this video, I'm filming on Builder's Sanctuary, my personal public build server network, which you should definitely check out.

Link in the description. We have a feature called auto wall stacking, which is a convenience for experienced builders to test new designs quicker, but also presents the problem in a way that I intuitively think about it, and that I think is easier to understand.

Obviously, you can't do this on vanilla, but for the sake of argument, let's use it. Once you hit the button, the next foundation you place will be slightly offset.

This is really all that building out with 8 squares and coming back is doing.

It's not really wall stacking anymore, that's just an old term left over from earlier Rust, it's really just offsetting, so you have this small gap here. This simple trick means that the two TCs are not connected and allows you to have multiple TCs in your base, hence the name Multi-TC.

Now obviously in vanilla, you can't have this triangle here because you'll get a too close to another building error, but the square here is stacked away from the edges and isn't too close to anything, so it's fine.

You can then continue to build the rest of the base as normal, keeping in mind the fact that you have this gap.

Anything that you connect to the offset block will also be offset in the same direction. You can see here that when I build over, I have the exact same gap over here as I did from where I started.

This gap here is the same as this gap here, and this whole unit of foundations is offset a few inches from the rest of the base in the direction that we built out.

In fact, I could have started on this side here and built up this way, it would have made no difference as it would have been stacked the same either way. The key takeaway from this is that this entire unit of foundations is stacked in the same direction.

Anything connected to this is going to be offset this way and connected to the external TC.

This is why 6-sided circle bases are made Multi-TC with 6 externals.

You need to stack 6 times going in each direction away from the base to offset these pieces from the center TC. It's easier to wrap your head around this way rather than trying to piece together something meaningful from the list of directions on where to place your foundations to magically arrive at a Multi-TC base.

Of course, once you understand the principle behind it, doing the actual stacking is fairly trivial, so much so that I don't even think about it when designing and testing bases until I actually need to do it in vanilla. Going back to the auto wall stacking button, if you need to wall stack a square, place down 8 squares, including the one that you started with, cap it off with a triangle, and then build back with triangles.

Once you get to the end, you can place down the final foundation and upgrade it.

If you instead need to wall stack a triangle, you only go out with 7 squares.

This is because when you build back with triangles, you actually just cap it off with the final triangle before placing the last square.

And 8 minus 1 is 7, of course, so you use 7 squares.

Both of these techniques are just two means to the same end, offsetting a single foundation. There are, of course, a lot more tricks and weirdness with Multi-TC bases, but this is the core concept, so I'll end the video here.

I hope this video was helpful to some of the beginners out there.

Make sure to subscribe if you like the content, and I'll see you next time.