Some thoughts on clockwork creatures

[Pig and beefalo]

1. Limit the number of clockwork creatures that can be followed by a single player in each world to no more than 16.

2. The clockwork creatures that can be followed can be set to Sentinel mode, attacking all hostile creatures and those attacked by the player within a certain range. At the same time, the following will be cancelled. The number of sentinels will be counted towards the number of followers. If the number exceeds this limit, the player will lose control of the clockwork creatures in sequence and switch to an hostile state.

3. Damaged clockwork creatures can be repaired to an undamaged state with wires after being captured.

4. Add some costumes or armors similar to those in stage plays to decorate the following clockwork creatures and the sentinel-state clockwork.

5. After the health value of the clockwork creature drops to zero, there is a certain probability that it will become a scrapped state. It can be repaired to the corresponding damaged version with a gear or wire.

6. When players load across worlds or go offline, the following clockwork creature automatically switches to Sentinel mode.

Edited February 14 by Pig and beefalo

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Pig and beefalo said:

Damaged clockwork creatures can be repaired to an undamaged state with wires after being captured

I disagree with that one

1 hour ago, Pig and beefalo said:

After the health value of the clockwork creature drops to zero, there is a certain probability that it will become a scrapped state. It can be repaired to the corresponding damaged version with a gear or wire.

Idk if this woukd be good in practice.

[user1464576869]

I had this thought about being able to customize the clockworks' AI as WX. But I'm sure there's a performance and complexity concerns with how I imagine it.

It would be that Jimmy gets the ability to gather a "profile" of every kind of mob, which you can among other circuit logic components put into the corpses of a Clockworks to structure custom AI behavior. It's a vague idea since I'm unsure how the grammatical language design of the logic would be structured or the limit of it's complexity. But, basically something to tell the AI how to act against certain mobs, whether to stay put as a sentry and guard an area, or what to do if the area is disturbed, or to follow a target. etc.  


This does however limit the taming of clockworks to WX. Unless his specific power are the AI reconstructing- above perhaps the default loyalty behavior we see now. Either way, I keep leaning towards clockworks having to be defeated before taming.

[Pumking7]

6 hours ago, Pig and beefalo said:

Damaged clockwork creatures can be repaired to an undamaged state with wires after being captured.

You should be able to repair broken clockworks with the Auto-Mat-O-Chanic (Wagstaff repair kit) and allow fixed clockworks to be broken again by using pure horror on them. This would mean if you want the clockwork of the respective shard you would require materials from the other shard to fix them, which is good for the caves since materials are often taken to the surface from there and not vice versa.

[Draggofroot]

9 hours ago, Pig and beefalo said:

2. The clockwork creatures that can be followed can be set to Sentinel mode, attacking all hostile creatures and those attacked by the player within a certain range. At the same time, the following will be cancelled. The number of sentinels will be counted towards the number of followers. If the number exceeds this limit, the player will lose control of the clockwork creatures in sequence and switch to an hostile state.

love seeing my ideas in other posts hehe 😆

 

9 hours ago, Pig and beefalo said:

1. Limit the number of clockwork creatures that can be followed by a single player in each world to no more than 16.

I feel like 16 is too much, 8 at most is enough I think

[Pig and beefalo]

Well, now the number of these clockwork creatures hired has been limited to two. Since it's already so few, could we stop them from following us all the time? My base was just destroyed by these Clockwork Rook! Also, the option we click with the mouse should be check instead of attack, as this is very likely to cause them to kill each other

Edited April 20 by Pig and beefalo

[Draggofroot]

yes i still long for the sentinel mode
also when you said 16 i thought you just wanted a lot and the chess piece aspect didnt cross my mind lol

[Pig and beefalo]

59 minutes ago, Draggofroot said:

yes i still long for the sentinel mode
also when you said 16 i thought you just wanted a lot and the chess piece aspect didnt cross my mind lol

Haha, I don't really care about their number. In my opinion, a reassuring and controllable follower is far more interesting than a hundred stupid ai.

Edited April 20 by Pig and beefalo

[eeriecupid]

On 2/14/2026 at 6:51 AM, user1464576869 said:

I had this thought about being able to customize the clockworks' AI as WX. But I'm sure there's a performance and complexity concerns with how I imagine it.

It would be that Jimmy gets the ability to gather a "profile" of every kind of mob, which you can among other circuit logic components put into the corpses of a Clockworks to structure custom AI behavior. It's a vague idea since I'm unsure how the grammatical language design of the logic would be structured or the limit of it's complexity. But, basically something to tell the AI how to act against certain mobs, whether to stay put as a sentry and guard an area, or what to do if the area is disturbed, or to follow a target. etc.  


This does however limit the taming of clockworks to WX. Unless his specific power are the AI reconstructing- above perhaps the default loyalty behavior we see now. Either way, I keep leaning towards clockworks having to be defeated before taming.

Oh god I’m having Rimworld flashbacks(this is a very cool suggestion you should commission this into a real mod)