OK, I finally have a day off and won't be modding half-asleep anymore- I've fixed my last blunder that Quietust pointed out, and in my latest test finally built some real working (well not really working) clocks! It's a really hollow achievement all in all, as they basically eat a gem with no consideration of that in their value. I wanted the finished item to reflect all the materials that went into it, so if you used a good gem and some metal mechanisms in a metal box you could end up with a fairly nice trade good, but as is it's a purely flavor mod. As a temporary measure I'm further limiting the building material to metal, just to improve their base value a little more.
I don't think I have seen anyone do a custom embellishment reaction, even though the wiki seems to suggest it's possible- say instead of adding the gems at the time of constructing the clock, I had a secondary reaction, that would encrust only clocks with gems? I know that with some stockpile manipulation this could be done anyway, I just thought that by making a specific clock-only reaction, with mechanics instead of gem setting as the operative skill, would better simulate setting the gems into the movement of the clock. So here is what I am thinking for a road ahead with this workshop and expanding the mechanic's role:
- removing gems as a primary reagent in the clock and making a customary encrusting action so their value is applied to the final product value
- PTTG's suggestion of a clock as a workshop in itself, to give dwarves good thoughts and let them keep track of time between seiges. possibly making a 'large clock' workshop, requiring more mechanisms and gems, suitable for placement on a tower or in a town square
- further intermediate steps in producing clockworks, reducing mechanisms or raw stone to small gears and clock parts?
- other small clockwork devices able to be build as trade goods via mechanic skill (small automatons, toy colossi?) I know other mods have done small drone robots as creatures but as there are plenty enough animals on any given map to kill fps I'm not really interested in that thus far.
- further mechanics-based trade goods: tool-kits, etc