The new content pack needs to be dependent on Hong Kong.

Another UGC can add a dependency to your UGC, which will make its items and spells available. You can send your content pack to the other person, or publish it to Steam and then they can subscribe to it.

Players would then need to subscribe to both your UGC and the other creator's, otherwise the UGC will not launch. Because of this, creators will often just copy items directly from one UGC into another; that helps avoid problems for players. If you're OK with that, you should mention any permissions requirements in your content. (e.g., "You may copy items into your own content pack, please credit me as X".)

If you use the same equipment list name, then your version will overwrite the Hong Kong version, and the other UGC will only get your version. If they then use the same name, then that version will overwrite yours.

Keep in mind that you can add multiple equipment lists to a single actor, so if you want to add something instead of overwriting it, you can use a different name instead.

Thanks for the helpful information! What I usually did was make HK dependent on my UGC and the ugc dependent on shadowrun core, might explain why I had issues using shared equipment sheets. I'll do some more experimenting and see what I can figure out.

I have another question. I've made my data only UGC and want to test it, and I see that it's published but my content doesn't show up in the game? I made my content dependent on Hong Kong this time and if I load a scene FROM my content pack in the editor I can see my items, but I don't if I just load Hong Kong itself. I think this is why I used to do the dependencies backwards, but it ends of causing problems down the road. Is the only way to really test it to copy it over the HK files? I tried putting it in the user data/ugc folder as well and it says subscribed but same thing.

Oh, hm... it sounds like you're trying to do something similar to what Banjo was doing, so you might want to check out his mods and see how they're set up. After you subscribe to them, you should be able to open in the editor and inspect them.

I haven't looked into this myself, but I think that you might need to create a new modified version of Hong Kong that adds a dependency on your new content pack (similar to Banjo's "Expanded Edition"). There isn't a good way to insert new data packs into the old campaign, so people create "new" campaigns that are really just copies of the old one with a few new things added.

that makes sense, I'll give that a go later

what seemed to resolve most of the weird unexplainable issues I was having was doing the following:

1. export HongKong to source
2. create a new content pack
3. copy data and art folders from HongKong source
4. copy my mods into this new content pack, overwriting anything that is the same name
5. publish locally

Once I get some of the little things corrected now like names I didn't correct etc I will publish to the workshop! Only thing I wish was that there were more backwards compatibility, There's several new calls in Hong Kong that weren't in the other games. Oh well, I see someone ported Shadowrun Returns to HK!

Banjos UGC is a copy of HK with his own tweaks added. No UGC will affect the core game on its own. A data only content pack is easy for another UGC to reference, and typically they are tiny.

Any standalone ugc like Caldcott Caper, DMS:VP, etc... That wants to use your specifically created items either requires the player to also download your content pack, or include a uncooked version of yours in their files.

That's what alot of content creators do with things like the "Geeked" prop pack. It also lets the mod author pick and choose elements from multiple sources to include in their own pack, without requiring full downloads.

Make sure that the original owner gets credit though.