@jip Thank you.

@slicknixon
This is an amazing explanation, I'm very grateful! I just started 3 days ago and got lost pretty quickly.

@heybabe

I solved it, it seems when confronted with { internal variables } you have to loop through all the preceding level to find these inside, then you can just change them, like this:

if bp.Weapon then
                        for k,v in bp.Weapon do
							if v.MaxRadius then
									v.MaxRadius = v.MaxRadius * artyrangemodexample

Small correction, but this is important. I checked the Display.Tarmac.Width and Legth variables and, it is the exact same way that the Weapon.MaxRadius is enclosed in an extra pair of { }, so this is two examples of - not of a similar, but - exactly the same problem.

I'm having an issue hooking into nested variables/properties (unsure of the correct terminology, so I'll use variable in this post).

I can hook normally into variables that are only nested inside once; example given:

if bp.Categories 
				and table.find(bp.Categories,'STRUCTURE')
				and not table.find(bp.Categories,'HYDROCARBON') 
				and table.find(bp.Categories,'ENERGYPRODUCTION') then
     
                    if bp.Economy then
                        if bp.Economy.ProductionPerSecondEnergy then
                            bp.Economy.ProductionPerSecondEnergy = bp.Economy.ProductionPerSecondEnergy * energy
                        end
                    end
                end

In this case, the variable I'm modifying ProductionPerSecondEnergy is nested inside Economy and this works perfectly.
However, if there is another nested layer; example given:

if bp.Categories 
				and table.find(bp.Categories,'STRUCTURE') then
     
                    if bp.Display then
                        if bp.Display.Tarmacs then
							if bp.Display.Tarmacs.Width then
								bp.Display.Tarmacs.Width = bp.Display.Tarmacs.Width * tarwmod
						end
                    end
                end

In this case, the variable I'm modifying Width is first nested under Tarmacs and then under Display. This code doesn't change the Width variable.

There is another example which is slightly different as well:

if bp.Categories 
				and table.find(bp.Categories,'STRUCTURE')
				and table.find(bp.Categories,'ANTIMISSILE') then
     
                    if bp.Weapon then
                        if bp.Weapon.MaxRadius then
                            bp.Weapon.MaxRadius = bp.Weapon.MaxRadius * tmdefrange
						end
                    end
                end

In this case, the variable I'm modifying is MaxRadius, but in the original .bp file for the structure the bp.Weapon has a set of extra { } enclosing many of it's variables, which I believe is why I cannot access these with hooks.

If I try and change the variables inside bp.Weapons by creating a "mod_units.bp" and manually specifying the units and the variable it works - but this is a very time consuming process if I wish to go through every structure that has Tarmacs.Width and Tarmacs.Length.

Anyone with more experience have any ideas how to get these extra nested hooks working? I must be missing something obvious.

Regards, Hey Babe