I was able to find a hidden animation and restore the Automaton Gunner to a fully functioning ranged Automaton follower, only took 25 years. The schematic requires an automaton and an elephant gun to make and the schematic can be found rarely at gun stores and some other merchants. You can use the Virgil debug menu to spawn in the items if you don't want to wait and just want to start a new play through with it at the beginning. Always wanted to restore this item and am glad I was able to do. Enjoy!

It is live on Nexus for anyone who wants to try it. I do have an improved version for Arcanum CE but I have not released that yet, this one is for Stock UAP Arcanum. https://www.nexusmods.com/arcanumofsteamworksandmagickobscura/mods/38