I don’t think the zombie slave function is tied to necromancy. I’ve seen that on most cutting weapons and I don’t use the necromancy mod. It just takes the zombies arms off so that it can’t attack or something like that. The few times I’ve done it I noticed a pretty severe Morale penalty and when the corpse got back up it could still attack.
As nick said the only requirement for the corpse to be suitable for the zombie slave thing is that it can revive. Pulped corpses (if you "s"mash them) cannot get back up. You can "e"xamine a corpse to be sure of whether or not it can revive. If it’s name (e.g.:Shocker Zombie Corpse) is yellow then it will revive. I’ve had some corpses listed as pulped (e.g.:Pulped Zombie Child Corpse) and still be yellow, I didn’t wait to see if they would revive though. You also have to be standing on the corpse to enslave it.
I’ve looked into the JSON files of the Necromancy mod and it appears to revolve around crafting chips that can be inserted into corpses (this seems to be done through the crafting menu, there appears to be a recipe for “chipped corpse” or something to that effect that requires a corpse as a material). Once the corpse is chipped it can be activated and there is a chance that it will come to life as a friendly creature. It’s been a while since I looked so that probably isn’t the entire process.
Of course there is also a chance that it will come to life as hostile as well if the messages are any indication. That coupled with the large amount of time, resources, and skill (either 5 or 8 electronics I believe) that seem to be required to start the process makes it seem to me like it isn’t worth it. I really don’t want to spend hours grinding electronics and gathering components to revive a Zombie Tank if there is a chance that it will get back up hostile.
