Robot Repair Center

The Robot Repair Center is a building in Fallout 3, slightly southwest of Canterbury Commons. This building is also the base of the Mechanist from The Superhuman Gambit quest.

Description
Before the great war, the building was a large robot showroom and workshop called Darren's Discounts. It sold robots at discount prices. The name suggests pre-war people would have traded in their used robots and they would be repaired and sold second hand for a low price. It appears to have specialized in protectrons. The facility is divided into an office area, the Mechanist's forge (This can be accessed by picking a hard lock which will allow the player to reach the forge without fighting) and two repair sectors, sector A and sector B. Each sector is defended by, at minimum, a robot ranging from a protectron up to a sentry bot and a leveled automated turret.

Located opposite one of the turret arrays, on a high platform, is a security console, which allows the player to trigger an 'emergency pulse', essentially a massive EMP blast which will destroy any and all robots nearby. In order to use this pulse, the encryption key must be looted from the nearby easy locked safe.

There is an elevator near the entrance which can be lockpicked with a skill of 75 or above, allowing entrance to the Mechanist's forge. Otherwise, the facility is broken up into four sections: Office (left of entrance), two maintenance areas (sector A and B, which are connected by a control room on the upper level) and the forge (an upstairs area used by the Mechanist as a secret lair). Sector B is closest to the entrance, connected to the lobby by a metal door past the elevator, and the forge entrance is on the upper level of sector A. Use of the upper level entrance to the forge requires activation of a coffee machine. Once the coffee machine is activated a rusty corrugated metal wall slides away revealing an intricate secret door which opens in elaborate style.

The area in front of the repair center is a random encounter location.

Notable loot

 * Nikola Tesla and You book on the workshop floor in the west room just north of the door to the Mechanist's forge. It is near conveyor belts. It is on a counter next to a tool box and hidden by a wrench.
 * Lying, Congressional Style in the Mechanist's forge, on a desk. Note that you'll have to traverse your way through the center and enter from the door to the west in order to find it. You can not open the door to this room if you enter via the elevator.
 * Some 20 pieces of scrap metal can be found, as long as you search all the robots and all the containers. This can be traded to Walter in Megaton for experience, caps and karma or used in the ammo press in The Pitt.
 * A locked metal box (average) in the room to the left of the entrance (in the last cubicle on the left side) contains 6 pulse grenades. A nearby terminal will point you towards the hidden key.
 * Nuka grenade in the work bench where the mechanist stands in the Mechanist's forge.

Enclave
After the quest "Waters of Life" a small Enclave outpost will appear just south of this position guarded by one Enclave officer and four turrets. The officer holds a key card that if held by the player, will stop the turrets from targeting the player. There is a terminal in the center of the outpost that has information on why the camp is there.

Behind the scenes

 * The Snake mentioned in the note from Frank on the Desk Terminal might be a reference to Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series, as he is said to have smuggled some pulse grenades into the repair center undetected.
 * The door to the Mechanist's forge opens as the doors close at the end of each episode of "Get Smart".

Bugs

 * Closing the secret door using the door gear while standing in the middle of the doorway will cause the player to be stuck inside. One way to get out is to reload the game. Another way out is to go into third person mode and swirl the camera around. This allows you to sometimes reach the button, in the same way you loot Colonel Autumn when he 'dies' at Project Purity.
 * Sometimes when leaving the Mechanists' forge through the room with the coffee machine your follower will fall through the floor and get stuck on the conveyor belt. This can be fixed by leaving the factory.
 * One of the protectrons that you can activate from a pod in Sector B, after killing it at least once, will respawn after you leave the area, but will be dead. Only its body (depending how you killed it) will be floating in the air and can be killed again for a meager amount of exp.
 * The protectrons that are dead appear to fly around the room when approached.
 * Sometimes when you enter the B section of the building, you fall through the floor. You dont get stuck and you wont die. You will just teleport to the entrance area and after a couple of tries it won't happen again.

Appearances
The appears only in Fallout 3.

Сервис-центр роботехники