# Compatibility

*Contraband adds its own content and reads from the base game rather than rewriting it. That is why it
composes with other mods instead of colliding with them.*

## Requires: Institution: Core

Contraband has a hard dependency on **Institution: Core** and loads after it. This is not optional —
after the split, everything Contraband reads lives in Core:

| Core provides | Contraband uses it for |
|---|---|
| Which pawns count as "in custody," and who can hide things | who counts as a concealer; who can be intaken, whittle, or dig |
| A pawn's criminal propensity (nature × nurture) | every disposition roll — intake (0.6), improvise (0.10), dig (0.08), all scaled and settled per pawn |
| The criminal record | times searched, times caught, escape attempts, contraband made — written by search and acquisition, read by search priority |

Install Contraband without Core and it will not run. Everything else on this page is optional interplay
that degrades gracefully when the other mod is absent.

## It plays nicely with other prison mods

Contraband adds its own content rather than rewriting the base game's. It:

- **Adds a new warden job** (search) rather than changing an existing one.
- **Reuses vanilla warden behaviour** rather than overriding it, so anything that adjusts warden
  behaviour on the base class flows through to searches for free.
- **Extends two escape-related behaviours at startup** so prisoners arm themselves and use what they
  are hiding when they break — inserted at a specific point, and it logs a warning if that anchor is
  missing rather than failing silently.
- **Runs on a heartbeat** over held pawns for intake, improvisation, and tunnels — no hook on the
  capture event is needed because the heartbeat already visits every held pawn.

The net effect: the surfaces other prison mods touch are mostly untouched here, so conflicts are the
exception, not the rule.

## Foul Play — the carboy bridge

**Foul Play** (the "Piss Nuke" mod) stays its own mod with its own front door, and yet its **carboy is
a first-class contraband item.** This is the flagship demonstration of Contraband's *"items are
content, subsystems are shared, mods are audiences"* principle, and it works two ways:

1. **The carboy brings its own behaviour.** The carboy simply declares itself as contraband and points
   at the throw-the-carboy behaviour that lives in *Foul Play*. Contraband never has to know that
   behaviour exists — it just runs whatever the item brought with it.
2. **A concealed carboy keeps its contents.** A carboy is not just "a jar" — it is a jar *of* a
   fermented blend, and that blend has to survive being concealed. When a carboy is intaken or
   smuggled, Contraband captures a label for its contents blindly; on redemption it hands the label
   back to Foul Play to restore the blend. **Contraband knows nothing about substances or
   fermentation** — that framework lives entirely in Foul Play. If Foul Play is absent, no content is
   captured and nothing breaks: a jar is just a jar. See
   [Concealment and Intake](Concealment-and-Intake.md).

The dependency runs one way only: Foul Play bridges *to* Contraband (and to Core) if they are present;
Contraband takes **no** dependency on Foul Play.

## Institution: Justice — the record is the shared bus

Contraband and **Justice** never call each other. They meet on Core's criminal record — Contraband
writes to it, Justice reads from it:

| Contraband writes | Justice reads it into |
|---|---|
| times searched | Classification (security grade) |
| times caught | Deterrence (colony-wide signal) |
| escape attempts | Discipline / Parole (reform) |
| contraband made | |

- **Catching contraband feeds classification.** A prisoner repeatedly caught with shivs or foiled
  mid-tunnel racks up catches and escape attempts, which Justice's classification weighs into a higher
  security grade.
- **And it feeds back.** Justice's deterrence signal flows *back* through Core's propensity, nudging
  every future intake / improvise / dig roll a Contraband pawn makes. A prison that catches and
  disciplines becomes a prison where fewer prisoners bother trying — without either mod referencing the
  other. Run Contraband alone and deterrence is a neutral 1.0; the record still routes the warden.

## Institution: Gangs — the contraband economy

**Gangs** depends on Core, **Contraband**, and Justice, because a gang *is* a contraband economy:

- Gang smuggling moves contraband through the same door intake and corruption use.
- A gang's outside members are the natural caller for the **reach-in corruption** — paying a bent
  warden to make a delivery. That ability exists in Contraband but has no in-game trigger of its own;
  Gangs is what drives it. See [Corruption](Corruption.md).
- Gang fights route to Justice's crime record, which then raises search priority here. The loop closes
  through Core again.

## Prison mods the suite is tested against

| Mod | Interaction | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| **Prison Commons** | it adjusts warden behaviour on the base class, and Contraband's search inherits that, so searches respect prison-commons/allowed areas **for free** | works by inheritance |
| **Custom Prisoner Interactions** | it only touches the *named* vanilla warden jobs (chat, convert, enslave, release); it cannot see a brand-new job | no conflict |
| **Prisoner Realism** | its escapes are for "mood prisoners" mid-break; a tunnel breakout hands off to the vanilla prison-break flow, which Prisoner Realism layers on. Tunnels **complement** it — they let ward patients and slaves who would never mood-break still, patiently, dig out | complementary |
| **Prison Labor** | prisoners working outside the cell are still held pawns and still tracked; Contraband adds nothing to labor jobs. A work assignment is simply another place a disposed prisoner might come by materials | no conflict |
| **Prisoner Recreation** | overlaps the *regime* feature — which now lives in **Institution: Justice**, not here, and is written to coexist with Prisoner Recreation | not Contraband's concern post-split |

## Load order

1. Base game
2. **Institution: Core** — required, loads before Contraband
3. **Institution: Contraband** — this mod
4. **Foul Play / Justice / Gangs** — any order after Core; each bridges if present

## The general rule

If a mod adds prisoner behaviour by **changing vanilla warden jobs or the escape flow by name**, it
will not see Contraband's additions, and Contraband will not see its — they pass each other harmlessly.
If a mod adds a *new* warden job or escape behaviour of its own, it stacks. The one place to watch is
another mod that *also* rewrites the same two escape-related behaviours wholesale; Contraband inserts
its part at a specific point and logs a warning if that point is missing, so a load-order or conflict
problem is visible in the log rather than silent.

---

*Part of the **Institution** suite — Core · Contraband · Justice · Gangs, alongside Foul Play and
Ward. Each stands alone; together they interlock.*