Savvyhead "get a gang" -> a robot?

Howdy.
We just started a new game using the 2nd ed preview- AWESOME first session. The Hx clarification is awesome.

So our Savvyhead is already looking at improvements... and looked at the get a gang option, and asked. "Hey, can I build myself a gang?"

Would making a robot from scraps and bits and pieces be interesting and OK by the rules? (yes it would become a NPC)

The answer is Sure!

It should have enough AI to be an independent threat, capable of getting into trouble, and having its own wants and needs. If the thing cannot function without the Savvyhead, then its more of a tool and not a gang.

Remember, the workspace rules don't actually allow you to tell the Savvyhead he can't build something he sets his mind to. You can, if you really want to, put such heavy restrictions on it that it can't be completed by the time you stop playing (but that doesn't sound like being a fan or making their lives not-boring to me!), but flat-out refusals are not permitted. So even without taking the improvement, he could build a robot! That's the Savvyhead's whole deal, he can build *anything* with enough time, jingle, and parts. Now, if he's willing to "pay" for his robot(s) in the form of an improvement, I'd go even easier on the restrictions.

I think I might be inclined to have him make the first robot, sort of a proof of concept, using the Workspace rules as normal. Then, once he's made one, he can easily make himself a gang of them offscreen just by taking the improvement. But you could certainly do it a number of other ways.

If he spends the improvement, he gets the gang -- he doesn't need to do anything else, other than explain in the fiction how it happens. That said, if he doesn't know how to build a robot, spending an improvement on a gang won't magically allow him to build robots; he'd just get a regular gang.

So I am with JustusGS, in that they seem like orthogonal capabilities. If he wants a gang of robots he needs to establish that he can build robots at all. How difficult it is for him to build robots is kind of game-dependent -- it could be as easy as 'oh yeah I already built one last month it just needs some tweaks', or as hard as basically impossible.

I would also emphasize what Ebok says -- a Robot gang should probably have enough agency and complexity to act as a gang of people would, or at least to qualify as a Threat. (I don't think this means they need AI, but they need enough complexity that they can appear to act of their own accord in some meaningful way.)

For my money, their intelligence should probably come from consciousnesses that had been trapped in the maelstrom that the savvy head can figure out a way to "download" into the robots. Of course that depends on your setting, your maelstrom, and what the Savvyhead comes up with on their own. I'm always looking for ways to pull the maelstrom into the real world though.