LUA Increment Unit Name

[Relayer2112]

Hi folks,

I'm getting to grips with using LUA for pretty much the first time. I'm using it to build a scenario which uses special actions to 'buy' units at a points cost, in a manner similar to the old Sultan of Socotra scenario. The issue I'm running into is with incrementing the names of units.

It's easy enough for me to generate incremented names when creating units using a loop:
eg -

Code: Select all

for loop = 1, 4, 1 do
 	ScenEdit_AddUnit({type = 'Air', unitname = 'Fulcrum #'..loop, loadoutid = 26807, dbid = 740, side = 'REDFOR', base = 'Tonopah Test Range Airport'})
 end
 

But, for creating the Blue units, it's not quite so simple because I don't want to lock the player into generating whole groups - I want the player to 'buy' each unit individually. This is the script I'm currently using to do so:

Code: Select all

ScenEdit_AddUnit({type = 'Air', unitname = 'Falcon #', dbid = 158, loadoutid = 3, side = 'BLUFOR', base = 'Nellis AFB'})
 local score = ScenEdit_GetScore('BLUFOR')
 score = score - 100
 ScenEdit_SetScore('BLUFOR', score, 'F-16A Added to Nellis AFB')

But of course, if I trigger this event 4 times, I end up with 4 units called 'Falcon #' rather than 'Falcon #1-4'. Do I need to find some way of checking for the existence of a unit with the name 'Falcon #1' and somehow incrementing it to 'Falcon #2'?

There probably is an elegant, straightforward way of doing this but I'm only currently getting to grips with the language! Many thanks in advance.

[michaelm75au]

You want to uniquely name the units so you need some sort of counter
...
ScenEdit_AddUnit({type = 'Air', unitname = 'Falcon #' .. counter, dbid = 158, loadoutid = 3, side = 'BLUFOR', base = 'Nellis AFB'})
counter = counter +1
....

The counter could be a global Lua variable but that will get reset when you start Command. A better idea would be to keep the counter in the KeyStore that retained between saves.
ScenEdit_SetKeyValue("UnitId","2")
ScenEdit_GetKeyValue("UnitId") -- returns "2"

As for if unit exists, use this in a script and it will return nil if the unit doesn't exist.
ScenEdit_GetUnit({unitname = 'Falcon #1', side = 'BLUFOR'})