Mods and Game Patches - query

I must admit to not having studied this to the degree that I should have done but I have some things that puzzle me:

1. Why do some mods request successive official patches be applied when all the patches are, afaik, cumulative?

2. Why does the SEGA site say that you must install patch 1.5 before applying 1.6 when the latter automatically installs the former! See: http://www.sega.com/support/support....barbarianpatch


Maybe I'm just going mad. :dizzy2:

For qustion 2, I should imagine they have a blanket policy of insisting on successive patches in order to cover their posteriors in case the patches aren't perfectly cumulative. Installing them successively doesn't do any harm, or cost the publisher anything other than a bit of bandwidth.

For question 1:

Not all patches are cumulative 1.5 is not cumulative with 1.3 (since 1.5 is about 1/5th the size)