This one was actually by design: corpse children were to only be able to "hotwire" natural tissue. Anything foreign in a "required" body part would render the target corpse ineligible to be made into a new corpse child.

I'm not ready to get back to modding yet, but there are questions about whether I'd want to stick to this original design. Even I do, are there other options available: with the Frankenstein influence, would it be possible to have a new bill/job requiring medical that enables a Dr Frankenstein-y pawn to implant organs into a host corpse to make it a suitable candidate? There definitely still feels like there's a lot more pieces that could be added into the Corpse Children mod set. Just gotta get that there motivation back!

You know I had the exact same thought. If a corpse was fresh you could have surgeries to remove (not extract intact) implants and replace missing and damaged organs.

Corpse surgery is a brilliant idea. Damn I would make a submod for this if I didn't know that would derail me from playing.

One of the HEDIFFS that is boning the corpse children though is the corpse children necro upgrades to any life-necessary organ. So if you upgrade liver, heart, both lungs etc. you are not able to raise dead.

If you aren't in the mood to work on this I will probably do some local hackage to remove the beneficial implants when the corpse is raised or better leave them as "busted implants" that cause a malus

For me I always feel like modding after I play for a while and want something in the game, and then I make it. I've managed to resist modding rimworld so far. I enjoy playing it too much

Not only are beneficial HEDiffs affecting it but also necro upgrades from corpse children prevent reanimation. That doesn't seem intentional.