Checkout the companion mod "Upgradeable Locust" which allows you to enhance your bronze buddy even further using expensive items to convert them into a sawblade variant!

Tired of always loosing your bronze mechanical buddy?

This mod allows clockmakers to revive bronze locusts after they have been destroyed in combat.

Upon death, hacked bronze locusts will drop scattered parts that can be used in the crafting grid alongside a wrench and soldering iron to revive the locust. Repairing a locust takes 25 points of durability off the wrench and 1 solder bar of any type. You must be a clockmaker to repair a locust.

You can also prod hacked locusts with a tuning spear to repair them before they are destroyed. Locusts will now flee most enemies for a short duration when low on health, so keep an eye out and repair them when they start to run.

This mod also makes it so only Shift + Right Click will toggle the "Follows" / "Waits" state on locusts.

Hacked locust lightbulbs are no longer automatic, and are toggled manually with Ctrl + Right Click.

Hacked locust bulbs are now colored a temporal-ish green.

Bronze locusts have had some of their stats buffed too, note these changes are only applied to HACKED locusts, normal locusts remain unchanged:

• Combat Tier 2 -> 3
• Attack Damage 1.5 -> 3
  
• Health 18 -> 25
  

Unfortunately corrupted locusts are far too twisted to be repaired after death. Although they still have a niche use since their stats are superior to a bronze locust even with the buffs.

Hacked locust bodies now instantly disappear instead of taking 24 hours.

Existing Locusts may need to be replaced for the changes of v1.3.0 to fully apply!

Oversights:

A clockmaker can gift repaired locusts to other players if they toss them the item and do not place it themselves.

Repaired hacked locusts stack to 64, in theory in you could build up a large reserve of locusts and deploy them as they die in combat.

I recommend not taking advantage of these oversights and sticking to one locust per clockmaker.

There's a bug where a tuning spear will seemingly disappear after opening your inventory after repairing a locust repeatedly for awhile. This bug is not introduced by this mod and can occur without this mod loaded by repeatedly hitting a corpse and opening your inventory as well. Luckily it is largely visual, simply grab your spear out of the supposedly empty slot. Other interactions can also correct it.

This will likely have compatibility issues with mods that alter the stats of hacked locusts or that add their own repairable locusts.

Works fine with the "Hacked Locusts" mod.

I recommend using the Animal Cages mod to transport both hacked locusts and Mechanical Companions through translocators, simply add them to the list of possible entities for small cages through the config.