Steeltown

**Steeltown** is a faction and a location in *Wasteland 3*, introduced in *Battle of Steeltown*. Steeltown was one of the most important and largest locations to not make the cut into the release version of the game, but was eventually released as the DLC.

## Background

Steeltown is pretty much just the Arcology, where Markam makes all the steel, machines, and weapons that the Partiarch needs to keep Colorado the biggest bully on the block. Outside it you have the refugee camps, the stacks, the scrapyard, and the ruins of Pueblo, the town that was here before the world ended - once one of America's biggest steel producing centers.

The Arcology itself is Abigail Markham's mystery factory. The place pumps out all of Colorado's vehicles, weapons, building materials, radios, generators, on and on and on. All the stuff people in the hotlands scavenge, the Arcology makes new, all because of Markham. She also keeps the Arapaho in business shipping it all for her. The Patriarch won't say it, but he relies on Steeltown: Its weapons help him keep the eastern gangs docile, his heaters, radios, and generators keep the Coloradoans happy and docile.

However, it wasn't a factory from the start. No, it started as a small scale operation where Saul Buchanan got one truck every two months. When Markham arrived with her partner, Blue Spector he hired her on, after she promised him ten trucks a month. After abandoning the MCC, Abigail and Blue looked for a buyer for their collective talents, Abigail reorganized the factory, instituting hard organizational rules she brought with herself from the Combine, and ultimately installed a complex computation engine designed by Di and implemented a few years back, shortly before Blue left Steeltown in disgust over Markham's plans and her callous attitude towards workers.

The computation engine does everything - oversees the hiring of new employees, places them in jobs they're suited for, sets production quotas, calculates payroll, everything, and until a few weeks ago, it worked like a charm. Then it started to get... buggy. Shifts and quotas were changed in strange ways, new hires were placed in positions they were obviously unsuited for. Worse, people go in, but they don't come out anymore. The gate's been shut for a week, as the Human Resources center rejects 99% of applicants for some reason, causing the situation to deteriorate further.

People come here from all over, hoping to get jobs at the arcology, and for a while Markham would take anybody who showed up. Now though, she's hardly taking anybody, and people outside are starving - and worse.

All the problems can be tracked back to the computation engine and the original sin: Enslaving synths lured from Arizona to Steeltown by Di and hooking them up to it. The eight advanced AIs, all linked to a central processing unit, have human-like personalities supposed to give it advantages of intuition and inspiration, but the engine turned on Markham and Steeltown. Now, Abigail just wants them reset and wiped of any personality, while Blue fights his guerrilla war at head of the Ghost Gang, looking for a way to make Markham see reason.

## Layout

* Steeltown gates
* Steeltown factory level
* Steeltown admin level
* Steeltown spire
* Ghost garage

## Interactions

### Reputation

Main article: Reputation**Reputation** is a new game mechanic introduced in *Wasteland 3*. Whereas previous games largely relied on scripted interactions to determine how other factions viewed you, *Wasteland 3* instead tracks your reputation on a sliding scale, reflecting how other factions view you. The Rangers' standing with them is graded on a five step scale: Hated, Disliked, Neutral, Liked, and Loved, and the reputation has a direct impact on the story, quest resolutions, and even random encounters.

Reputation effects

Gaining reputation
* Steeltown gates: First conversation with Bennie Bianchi "Nice to meet you. Who are you?" (+1).
* Steeltown admin level: Telling Bennie Bianchi with Kiss Ass 6 option to read the names off the team's uniforms in order to correctly spell them on their Steeltown employee badges (+1).

## Possible endings

Patriarch legacy
* "*In Colorado Springs, the Patriarch stubbornly clung to power and refused to designate an heir.*"
	+ If Abigail was alive: "*Still, everyone knew that Abigail Markham was his heir in all but name, especially after you saved Steeltown, allowing it to become an example to the rest of Colorado.* "
	+ "*With his children cast down and Abigail Markham dead, no one is left who can unify the Patriarch's nation. When he finally dies, Colorado will perish with him.*"

Computation engine
* "The city of Steeltown thrived and grew. After you fixed Markham's 'computation engine,' her systems began to work as intended, and production boomed."
* "*Throughout Colorado, people looked to Steeltown for a new vision of the wasteland's future - every person in their place, and every machine a slave.*"
* "*The city of Steeltown thrived and grew. Markham was wary of the freed synths at first, but they were smart and efficient planners,* almost *living up to her standards.*"
* "*Workers got the jobs that suited them best, and production processes continually improved. Abigail Markham's genius was proven at last... just not in the way she had expected.*"
* "*Throughout Colorado, people looked to Steeltown for a new vision of the wasteland's future - machines making the plans and humans doing the work.*"

If Abigail was killed
* "*In Steeltown, the death of the brilliant Abigail Markham left a void that the less-than-brilliant Bennie Bianchi tried to fill. Things went poorly from the start.*"
	+ "*Since she didn't know how to manage a factory, Bennie focused on what she did know - stealing company money for herself. When problems arose, she made sure she was unavailable and assumed that someone else would fix them.*"
	+ "*Bennie managed to escape with a load of company money and bought passage to Los Angeles, hoping to build herself a beachfront estate.*"
	+ "*Instead, Bennie discovered that people in California didn't accept Colorado dollars. She burned the money to keep herself warm.*"
* "*In Steeltown, Salene Crow set out to build a new kind of factory-city, where everything was owned by the workers themselves. Unfortunately, all the workers were former refugees from the wasteland, and none of them knew anything about running a factory.*"
	+ "*Crow was a fast learner... but not fast enough. Accidents ruined machines that no one could repair. Production deadlines came and went. Workers got discouraged, stole equipment, and left.*"
	+ "*After a few years, Steeltown was a wreck. Crow and some friends held on, running a garage and repair shop in what was left of the factory, but the old Steeltown was gone for good.*"
* "*But thanks to you, old Blue was there to teach them. Production wasn't strong at first, but the workers learned and improved.*"
	+ "*Steeltown would never be the automated wonder that it might have become under Markham. Still, the workers met most of their deadlines, kept their families fed, and didn't have to pay any bribes to use the bathroom.*"

Nothing fixed
* "*Steeltown collapsed under the weight of internal unrest. Markham's 'computation engines,' which were supposed to run her arcology better than any human, proved to be a spectacular failure.*"
* "*Markham slipped out of town in disgrace while her workers and guards slaughtered one another. By the time the fighting was over, Steeltown was a ruin.*"
* "*People looted the arcology for scrap, and it became a skeletal eyesore in the wasteland, its purpose forgotten.*"

Everyone killed
* "*Unfortunately, all the competent people had been killed in the fighting. In less than a year, Steeltown fell into anarchy.* "
* "*Steeltown fell into ruin, its workers dispersing into the wasteland. People looted the arcology for scrap, and it became a skeletal eyesore in the wasteland.*"

## Behind the scenes

The Steeltown was originally divided into several more areas:

* Refugee camp, where wastelander refugees would gather and one potential destination for Erastus Dorsey.
* The Arcology itself.

## References

1. ↑ Wasteland 3 loading screen hints: *"Steeltown was built upon the ruins of Pueblo, Colorado."*