What is up with Combat Extended?

[EagleClaws17]

Browsing the Workshop and viewing comments I have seen alot of Mods assumed to be incompatible with Combat Extended, since alot of them either have a comment requesting the mod to be made compatible or claiming the incompatibility with Combat Extended beeing related to this mod.
Now, since these Comments all come from different Users on different Mods, it's fairly obvious that Combat Extended itself is a major problem in terms of Mod compatibility, however I am curious if somebody has some answers or hints on why it is such a big troublemaker, and what exactly it does behind the scenes.

[brian_va]

From the mod page:
Combat Extended completely overhauls combat. It adds completely new shooting and melee mechanics, an inventory system and rebalances the health system.

That's a lot of changes that will have to be accounted for by a mod to be compatible.

[Radiosity]

CE has been a thorn in RimWorld's side for a LONG time, and is highly contentious, especially for modders who rightly get fed up of constant requests for CE compatibility. You'll see some modders who put a WHOLE SCREEN LENGTH of 'NOT CE COMPATIBLE, STOP ASKING' as a result of this.

It's not just the mod itself, it's the community around the mod, in short.

[Wraith_Magus]

Among other things, it changes the way that armor works to be based upon millimeters of protection and weapons have millimeters of armor penetration. (Basically, the sort of people who get into arguments about armor pen tables on World of Tanks forums love Combat Extended.) This means any sort of weapon, armor, or even clothing or accessories added by a mod is incompatible unless it has a whole second set of statistics made with CE in mind. This is basically extra code specifically for this one mod, and the people who use the mod are really picky about doing things a specific way, so the CE modders themselves basically have to add the compatibility.

It has a new medical system, which means any sort of creature added by a mod needs to have a second set of CE-compatible medical stats. This includes robots and the like.

It has a system that rebalances how guns are fired to have a pseudo-vertical element and tracks how much of the body different types of cover add based upon the object a pawn is behind, which means any kind of furniture needs new stats just for CE.

Also, the way that the changes to the combat model work can conflict with basically any other game mechanic alterations if they happen to change similar parts of code, so something like a psycast mod that drops objects onto the field might have a conflict because those objects don't have the right cover stats or something.

Only mods that are purely aesthetic in nature tend to get by fine, since CE doesn't freak out about graphics. (I.E. something like the varied meal graphics mod or any of the body/clothing/hair graphics replacements.)

Basically, it creates a whole bespoke set of coding requirements that most modders aren't interested in dealing with (or would get yelled at for dealing with wrong even if they tried).

[EagleClaws17]

Originally posted by Radiosity:

CE has been a thorn in RimWorld's side for a LONG time, and is highly contentious, especially for modders who rightly get fed up of constant requests for CE compatibility. You'll see some modders who put a WHOLE SCREEN LENGTH of 'NOT CE COMPATIBLE, STOP ASKING' as a result of this.

It's not just the mod itself, it's the community around the mod, in short.

Yea ive noticed that, so I became curious about the detailed reasons as to why it escalated so far.

[Narn]

CE sounds good on paper but when you think about it, its not really the type of game for it.

[DatNoobDoe]

Compatibility nightmare moment

[Astasia]

Even mods you would think would be "cosmetic only" can break with CE. I've seen a mod that changes tree art error out because of CE (changed the dimensions of trees or something which messed with CE cover mechanics), and a mod that added beards fully break the game with CE (layering conflicts). People who use CE should really just assume nothing is compatible unless the CE team specifically tells them it is.