Mod Compatibility issues will be discussed here. As I will be spending less energy making patches and more energy on delivering content, this is a place where people with a little skill in modding can create their own compatibility patches. I will do my best to explain any issues that might or could arise from any sort of mod.

Just so you know, 'Compatibility' is a very, very dirty word used to lump a range of issues together, from 'crashing the game outright', 'content clutter', to 'balancing issues'. This thread is designed to unpack these in closer detail.



When a mod introduces a new type of ship class (such as dreadnoughts, flagship etc.) that is not in the base game, once you ascend, they will not have the graphics or models and fallback to Mammalian, but otherwise will not crash the game. AI Ascended Empires are also only scripted to build FE ships from this mod, so they will not build any ship classes provided by others. To make such compatibility patches, you must match my FE ship graphics to any new ship classes introduced this way, so that you won't see those ships as Mammalian once you Ascend. The limiting of ship set options in the Ascension event (instead of allowing you to keep your ship set) really helps with this or otherwise you will have to attach their graphical culture to my Fallen ships too.

You are welcome to reverse-engineer this mod to get an idea how this is done.



Aesthetic ship sets do not have the same issues as with new ship classes. Once you become an Ascended Empire, all your ships will still get an FE makeover and look like FE ships.



Generally do not cause any problems. Note that the AI factor for selecting this AP is 1000, meaning if some mod decides to add new Perks that has an AI factor of 10000 AI will pick that first.



Generally do not cause any problems, unless they alter or remove vanilla techs. Galactic Ascendancy requires Dark Matter Power for example, and if a mod removes or replaces that tech you will not be able to become an Ascended Empire. In terms of balance, this is something for the player to decide which technology mods they want to use.



All crises naturally require the 'default' country type to trigger. What I have done is to replace the default only entry to OR = { is_country_type = default is_country_type = ascended_empire } so that it can be triggered for both. If another mod alters the Crisis file directly, thereby removing my entry, this would mean that Crises would be unable to contact the player, but would still be triggered by other default empires in the game. To make any country_type triggers compatible with this mod, simply add the new country type.

I also had to expand some of the communication options to trigger for Ascended Empires. Just include both triggers in any compatibility.



With Patch 16 comes War in Heaven support, which allows the player to receive notification of the start of War in Heaven, as well as make a choice, as an Ascended Empire, which side to join as an ally. There's also an extra option for participating the War in Heaven as a third party by declaring war on both Awakened Empires and all your subjects will join with you.

However, this required me to overwrite several events in the war_in_heaven file directly. Therefore, the only way to make compatibility is to incorporate all the changes I have made, with whatever another mod has done, then make the compatibility patch load before both mods.



Mods that add Fallen Empire buildings without altering vanilla files probably added their own version of the building, made a technology for it, and then overridden the vanilla file for upgrade. When these two mods are run together these things will happen:

• One mod will be loaded first (by alphabetical order). The first loaded mod will get to overwrite the vanilla file.
  
  
• This may or may not result in two buildings that have the same name.
  

But otherwise this will not crash the game. It is of course advisable to only load one mod like this as it does break immersion somewhat.



In order to provide the ability to create Awakened Empire subjects as both obtainable by war for Ascended Empires and as a diplomatic option, the file has to be overwritten completely. Any mod that does the same will probably cause incompatibility (One mod loading first, rendering the other useless) and you will not be able to create these subjects. A compatibility patch can be made so that it loads before both mods and the codes of both mods are combined.



Similar to the above, these actions need to be edited in order for a Casus Belli to show up once a primitive empire refuses your demand for subjugation. You will create a compatibility patch similarly to above where it loads before both mods and the codes of both are combined.



A number of policies normally only available to default empires have been made available to Ascended Empires. These include:

• War Philosophy
  
  
• Orbital Bombardment
  
  
• Border Policy
  

To create compatibility patch you will have to create a mod which loads before both mods and combine the codes.



Some triggers are overwritten so as to actually avoid having to overwrite more things. These include:

• planet_can_be_liberated_from_owner (You can’t liberate planets from Ascended Empires, its pops are too fanatical in their beliefs)
  
  
• is_country_type_with_subjects (Allows Ascended Empire to actually have subjects and the game recognises it can have subjects)
  
  
• has_alien_comms_with_alien_empire (Encountering Ascended Empire counts as encountering aliens)
  
  
• has_comms_with_alien_civilization (Same as above)
  
  
• has_total_war_cb (Enables Ascended Empire to have total war cb at all times.)

Again like the previous issues, just create a mod that loads before both mods and incorporate codes/changes of both.

That should be most of them. I might add more should more questions about specific kinds of mod arise, or if I wasn't clear enough above.




Not really a big deal, as I only rewrote it to prevent Awakened Empires from gaining that cb on Ascended Empires. Any file overwriting that will simply mean they can have the cb.