Watoga

Watoga is a city in the Cranberry Bog region of Appalachia.

Background
Watoga was founded in 2042, built at the site of an old ghost town in the state of West Virginia. Financed by Atomic Mining Services, the Watoga project aimed to create a "city of the future" and was designed to be fully automated. Civil services and municipal management were handled by a variety of RobCo Industries and General Atomics International robot models. Watoga created its own periodical, the Watoga Times. The newspaper advertised the Atomic Lottery, a lottery in which the winner would receive a decade's supply of various foodstuffs, with at least one winner, Willie Mae, emerging one month before the war, having played the lottery for over 20 years.

Before the war, residency was granted on a case by case basis. RobCo's management determined which applications were approved, and frequently rejected those submitted by their own full-time employees. Unemployment increased due to automation, and those who had been granted residency voted to restrict emergency fire services to the city's major districts  and declined additional bus services so that the lowered cost wouldn't bring the "wrong kinds of people" to the city. The dissatisfaction and rejection caused Scott Turner, a RobCo developer, to form the Free Watoga People's Party and sabotage the city and its robotic staff.

Operation Free Watoga
On October 22, 2077, Turner launched Operation Free Watoga, breaching Watoga's emergency service protocols and causing the city's robots to malfunction. To prevent their repair, Turner broke the transmission sequencer and corrupted the software on update terminals throughout the RobCo Research Center, leaving the terminal in his office the only machine capable of creating updates. To restrict access, Turner locked the terminal and prevented any badge other than his own from accessing the office. While Turner had only planned to evacuate Watoga, the emergency services attacked citizens as they tried to evacuate.

As a precaution in the event of her death, the mayor, Barbara Elizabeth, issued an executive order to instate anyone who entered her Watoga Municipal Center office as the new mayor for the day. Once evacuations were complete, Elizabeth had planned to negotiate a truce with the unknown saboteur but succumbed to fatal injuries before she could do so. Watoga's robotic emergency services continued to remain hostile after the Great War.

Layout
Watoga is an expansive and dense city, featuring tall buildings, shopping plaza, an underground garage, two monorail stations, train station and transit hub. The unique spire of corporate headquarters of Atomic Mining Services towers over all other buildings in the city.

The administrative portion of the town is centralized around the AMS tower and Watoga's municipal and civic centers. The tall buildings connect to those to the southwest, including the Watoga Estates via elevators and sky bridges to and from the topside pool, municipal center rooftops, and monorail station to the northwest. The upper floors of the central buildings are also accessible via stairwells in the southeastern part of town. Across the street from the civic center, Watoga Emergency Services features an open lobby and roof access, containing a helipad and view of downtown Watoga.

The northeastern commercial portion is situated between the headquarters plaza to the west and high school to the south. The businesses of the shopping plaza are located throughout, including Super-Duper Mart, Watoga Real Estate, and Hubris Comics n' Toys store alongside Miller's Appliances and Stuart's Department Store. Along the northern perimeter, a long walkway overlooks the Cranberry Bog region, complete with garden terraces and a bandstand. The southern edge features Fresh Soil Restaurant, Slocum's Joe, Cranberry Heights, and a solitary Drumlin Diner. Circling back towards the center of town, a crashed vertibot and its detritus are scattered across the AMS plaza.

The city is inhabited by several varieties of robots, such as Assaultrons, Eyebots and Protectrons, created continuously via robot fabricators throughout the city. Wrecked vehicles, scorchbeast guano piles, and broken robots litter the roadways. Scorchbeasts have also constructed nests out of accumulations of wreckage, affixed to the walls and roofs of several buildings.

Split-flap display signs are installed throughout the city, actively rotating through their pre-War announcements. The city's roadways are named after the city's tech companies, either by name or by associated verbiage, such as RobCo Boulevard, Innovation East, and AMS West streets.

Notable loot

 * Enola Walker's story, part 4 - Holotape, behind the red music pavilion, near a trash can.
 * Key to Clara's box - In a locked toolbox (opened with the toolbox key) on the rocks at the creek bank just off the sidewalk near Drumlin Diner. Opens a wooden crate inside of the doghouse in Sutton.
 * Two potential magazines:
 * Northeast of Watoga High School, inside the transit bus (not any of the nearby school buses), on the seat just to the right of the entrance.
 * On the suspended monorail car in the southeast corner of the city, just west of Watoga High School. At the front left side of the carriage, near the driver's controls.
 * Two power armor chassis with T-series armor pieces:
 * Next to the crashed vertibot in the central plaza in front of the AMS corporate headquarters.
 * On the roof of the building east of the Watoga Civic Center near a vertibot. There are several access routes, one is the fire escapes on the east wall of the civic center.
 * There are four more sets in or on:
 * Watoga Civic Center - In the main arena.
 * Watoga Emergency Services - One on the roof. There are stairs to the roof from the top floor.
 * Watoga High School - One on the roof. There are outside stairs on the south side of the building.
 * Watoga Transit Hub - One inside a Picklock level 3 locked room off the lobby.
 * Potential workshop plan - Inside a trailer truck at the southwest corner of Watoga, on (or submerged in) a crate to the left of a dresser.
 * Two Stealth Boys:
 * Inside a trailer truck at the southwest corner of Watoga, to the right of a dresser.
 * Inside a bus to the immediate north of the Watoga High School parked buses, to the left.
 * Potential recipe - Inside the Drumlin diner, next to a cooking stove.

Appearances
Watoga appears only in Fallout 76.

Behind the scenes
There is a real-world community of the same name in West Virginia.