The maintenance level and the connected waste disposal are locations onboard Mothership Zeta.
Layout
Maintenance level
If you use the teleportation matrix to the maintenance level during Among the Stars, you will find Sally attempting to fix the control panel on a Zeta trash can. She explains that she is not really lost and you both might find 'something neat'. Before long though, it starts moving, and it's a long way down...
The trash can stops at several levels of the Zeta Mothership, a small hatch opening for you to look and shoot out:
- A level with a single alien.
- A level containing brahmin. ("We're having burgers tonight!")
- A level with a Corvega in pristine condition.
- A level with 3 aliens you need to clear out before Sally climbs their way "to try something out" (if you take too long she will stay where she is and do that anyway)
The elevator will stop on the last level and involve a shoot-out with aliens. Sally will then climb out of the compactor, explaining that she will figure something out to get it moving again. The trash compactor will then suddenly plummet. A first person view of the player will show you scrabbling for grip inside the compactor, ultimately failing, and landing in a detritus ridden area with a newly crippled leg.
Sally then re-appears. You can tell her you wish to go back the way you came but she will explain that is impossible unless "you are Captain Cosmos". Sally runs off after deciding to split up, explaining that she will "try to find a way to get you out of there."
Waste disposal
Inside you will find a maze of trash compactors. One situated ahead, can be turned on and off and you will find it proves quite adept at destroying anything you place in its path. To the lower east of this room is a grid of trash compactors, examine the rhythm or run through to two safes (one hard, one very easy) containing caps, ammunition and chems, and a first aid box. Just watch where you walk, and head to the exit to this room in the lower west corner.
Another maze of tubes and trash in the next room and Sally's voice emanates. In here there is a first aid box and a safe. Exit the door to find a support drone clearing garbage. If you didn't heal yourself of the cripple earlier, there is a healing archway in this tunnel. Enter the next room to find 2 aliens up on a walkway in the next room. In this room you will also find a military footlocker directly to your right which contains the unique item General Chase's overcoat (map location A). Past the footlocker, the path curves to the left, then makes a sharp left leading to a door. As you proceed you will eventually come to a room with a guardian drone. You can kill it for its drone cannon or push it onto the trash compactor. Either way Sally opens the next doorway for you.
The next room will contain 2-3 aliens who drop down from a rampway above, unless you're adequately stealthed. Dispatch these somehow using the trash compactor, or just kill them, and Sally will have opened doorway 2.
The next few rooms will be closed off similarly (all of these upper areas can be accessed by stacking the small boxes beside a doorway to make a set of stairs and leaping from the top of the doorway arch before you slide off the other side). You must wait a few seconds, possibly dispatching the aliens if spotted. Once through, Sally reports the radio has gone quiet, and you are ambushed in the next room. Grab alien captive recorded log 19 in here and kill all aliens until the doorway opens. There are also containers in this room. Once through, travel through the next area and meet Sally. She tells you to check out the storage closet which contains a samurai's sword (map location B) and loads of first aid boxes. She then tells you to return to the core and '..never speak of this again.'
Notable loot
- In the vicinity of the first aliens encountered in waste disposal, in a high-ceiling room with a low metal catwalk, a military footlocker can be found on the floor to the right of the railing, against the east wall. It contains General Chase's overcoat along with a blank holotape labeled Anchorage quartermaster shipment.
- Alien captive recorded log #19 is in the room past the hallway of trash compactors, in the room where Sally says "ambush", just before the LAST room with the teleporter.
- At the end of waste disposal, in the room where Sally meets you and wants to race you to the teleporter - opposite the getting into that room, in a closet type area with lots of medical kits, on the shelf in front of you is samurai's sword. However, if Toshiro Kago has already made his disappearance, the sword will be gone from the shelf.
Notes
- This is one of many areas of the ship that will not be accessible after the player has completed the main (This Galaxy Ain't Big Enough...) quest.
- You can visit the maintenance level and waste disposal only once. After Sally leads you out, the teleporter to the maintenance level is disabled.
- Also, you cannot enter the maintenance level after you've passed through the decompression chamber and entered space walk, essentially completing the Among the Stars quest.
- Many of the objects in this area belong to the people featured in alien captive recorded logs (for example Janet's car from log 18).
- The car seen while traveling through the lift appears to be a scaled up model of the one on Allistair Tenpenny's desk.
- You can only return along your way so far, as the force-field doors in the trash-compactor boxes close behind you.
Appearances
Maintenance level and waste disposal appear only in the Fallout 3 add-on Mothership Zeta.
Behind the scenes
- One of your choices to begin the conversation with Sally before you enter waste disposal is "What an incredible smell you've discovered..." This is a reference to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when Han Solo follows Leia, Luke, and Chewbacca down a garbage chute into a magnetically-shielded trash compactor.
- When you reach the level with the brahmin and Sally says "Cows? We got cows!", this is a reference to the movie Twister in which one of the main characters says a similar line when a tornado starts hurling a cow across a road in front of their car.
Bugs
When loading from the autosave at the entrance to the maintenance level, it is possible that the game will not allow the player to enter the elevator, and will push the player away from the doorway when they step into it. The solution to this glitch is to go back through the teleporter into the engineering core, and then re-enter the maintenance level. [verified]- The teleport required to leave this section will be activated but not work, leaving the player trapped. However, saving before teleport then reboot can resolve the problem, on PS3 and xbox360. [verified]
Gallery
Interactive map
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