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CE replaces the vanilla shooting system with its own more or less made from scratch version. We have our own Verb classes and a ProjectileCE class which doesn't inherit from vanilla Projectile.

Regarding the 1-tile miss radius, as you said I can probably leave that alone and cover most realistic scenarios.

However the fact that CE uses Verb_LaunchProjectileCE that doesn't inherit from Verse.Verb_LaunchProjectile means my mod won't work, as my mod determines what a projectile weapon is by checking if its associated verb is Verse.Verb_LaunchProjectile. Is there a reason Verb_LaunchProjectileCE inherits from Verse.Verb instead of Verse.Verb_LaunchProjectile? If there were no downside to inheriting from the latter then that would be nice for mods like mine as they would work seamlessly in vanilla and CE.

I tried it with CE, figuring if the 1-tile miss radius assumption wasn't ideal, it would still help with the worst cases. Unfortunately it didn't seem to work at all, the FF button didn't even show up on CE-enabled weapons.

Yes based on the reply they posted they've done a change to vanilla that at the moment makes it impossible fo rmy mod to work with it. I have to post a follow up question with a possible workaround.

A question for the developers:

I'm trying to determine if a mod I made recently for friendly fire avoidance will be able to work with this mod. My question is, does CE change the vanilla miss radius for regular ranged weapons (i.e. those without a forced miss radius)? In vanilla, a regular ranged weapon has a miss radius of one tile (i.e. the bullet can travel to the target tile or one of the 8 tiles surrounding it). My mod uses this fact to calculate a fire cone within which pawns are subject to friendly fire. If the miss radius were made dynamic, then my mod would fail to prevent all possible friendly fire scenarios. Does CE keep this default miss radius to 1 tile?

Just published a new version that fixes a bug where the FF toggle button for a selected pawn does not go away when an Architecture toolbox is opened. Please update if you have manually downloaded the mod.

This is now available on the Steam Workshop too

I've fixed the bug on the landing site selection screen and the download link has been updated to the new version.

I'm not sure if this would be compatible with Combat Extended. This mod assumes all regular ranged weapons use a one tile miss radius. I will have to see if CE make that larger or variable for each weapon. Other than that there should be no reason for incompatibility, so long as CE uses Harmony patching and does not overwrite vanilla code this mod depends on.

Not sure if this is a mod conflict, but when starting a new colony with this mod enabled, you won't be able to see any UI info elements on the landing site selection screen and changing a once selected spot is not possible anymore.
This occurs only on the landing site screen, the world view of existing games works fine.

Thanks, I will look into that now.

[Usage]

This mod should hopefully alleviate some of the micromanagement needed to stop ranged colonists shooting friendlies, without changing the way friendly fire works in the game or reducing its potency.

Colonists who have the Avoid Friendly Fire option enabled will not take a shot if the projectile's path could hit a friendly or neutral pawn (taking into account miss radius). Drafted colonists will look for a target with a clean shot (or wait if there isn't one), while hunters will reposition themselves.

Usage
Any colonist with an appropriate weapon will show an "Avoid Friendly Fire" toggle button when they are selected (which is On by default; you can toggle it off for individual colonists). With this On their AI will automatically do the right thing.

If you manually try to force a drafted colonist who is set to avoid friendly fire to shoot an enemy with a friendly in the way, you will see a "Cannot hit target" message as you would if LoS was blocked.

Shooters who are being blocked by friendlies (but would otherwise have a target) will have their name on the map and in the Colonist Bar be written in cyan. Likewise, the first friendly blocking any shooter will show up in green.

There is a setting in the Mod Options screen to always enable 'Avoid FF' status on a pawn when it's undrafted. If you tend to disable the 'Avoid FF' setting on pawns during combat, using this option will ensure it is always turned back on again before the next combat. This option is off by default.



Shield Belts
Shooters will not worry about pawns wearing a shield belt with at least 10% power standing in the line of fire, so you can still use shielded infantry to attack while ranged troops continue to fire over them from behind. If the shield drops below 10% power while the pawn is still subject to friendly fire, then the shooters will stop. They will resume shooting after the shield gets above 10%.

Targeting Overlay
If you use the game's manual targeting button (the one with the B hotkey that then shows the weapons range), you will see a red overlay that appears from the shooter to where you point the mouse (see image). This overlay shows the potential "fire cone" from a standard ranged weapon in the game, from the shooter to a target under the mouse (miss radius depends on weapon and shooter skill). Any pawn within the red overlay could potentially be hit. This is purely a visual aid for planning and can be disabled from the Mod Settings menu if you don't like it. Note that pawns within 4 tiles of the shooter do not receive friendly fire, so the overlay does not mark them red and the mod takes this into account when deciding if a shooter should stop. In the example image the shooter on the top right will not shoot the pirate on the bottom left because the colonist "Flip" could potentially get hit.

Animals
By default the mod will also take into account animals with an assigned master and protect them from friendly fire, so you should be able to use and release trained animals without them getting shot. In the Mod Settings you can disable this, or expand it to include all tamed colony animals, such as livestock, but this is off by default as it could be annoying and cause performance issues on slower machines.

Downloads
Steam Workshop
Direct Download



Notes
This can be added to an existing save.

This mod is compatible with the Combat Extended mod, however the more complex fire trajectory in CE may mean this mod may not be 100% effective at very long ranges.

Current Limitations

• Does not protect against friendly fire from explosive weapons such as grenades or rockets. They will be used as normal and you will need to micromanage them as before.
• Will protect neutral pawns on your map, but not animals owned by them. E.g., if there are traders around during a raid, your colonists will avoid hitting them but not watch out for their animals. Should be fixed in the future.
• Only affects the AI of your colonists. Does not prevent the computer controlled factions shooting their own troops; that's a hard problem.
• Only affects the AI of shooters, who will stop shooting when someone gets in the way. Nothing is done to stop undrafted pawns from wandering into the middle of battle; again a harder problem to solve.

Translations:
* Japanese by @Proxyer
* Traditional Chinese by @FantasyMusic

Fluffy's WorkTab can do this, but I'm not sure if that's finished being updated to A17 yet.

Just uploaded a new version.

The mod now lets you configure the opacity and update speed from the Mod Setting menu.

The file I downloaded has a "-master" at the end of the folder and the game doesn't recognize it.  Inside there are all the folders with 'CopyPasteLink' folders etc., and a 'dist' folder with all the info I am used to seeing in mods.
How do I install this fantastic QoL mod?

Sounds like you downloaded the source code instead of the mod. Go to this link, download ImprovedWorkbenches-17.6.0.zip and inside that you will find a folder which you need to put into your mods area. There's a stickied thread with more details about how to install mods manually if you're unsure.

Stockpile/ground toggle and result item info without opening details?

I will look into that. Folks have also asked for a "Take to specific stockpile" option to be added to that list, which would make displaying this button on the overview a bit more complicated but I'll see how it goes.

When crafting clothes, a material is very important. Maybe "info" button for it, so it would be possible to compare without too many clicks?

I will have a stab at that.

Can you make 'do until you have x' not stack with other workbenches?
Example:
I have 2 cooking station, both of them has a bill to cook until i have 2 of x, but it will cook 2 food on a cooking station but 0 on the other one, because they stack. I want both of the cooking stations cook 2 to a total of 4.

That can't work per workbench but I will look at adding a "Count only in specific stockpile" option so you can define a stockpile per workbench.

Yep, the next update is going to have configurable opacity as well as update frequency.

I'll be doing it either with a setting in the mod config menu (from options) or a right click menu on the button itself. The latter is nicer but the former is faster to implement so probably end up going with that.

I've published the latest version. I'll include additional copy functionality in the next version.