I realised I had left out Level1000 { [stuff] } out of my .ae file - telling it to mount just a bucket upgrading Carry and nothing else.
I'm going to list some more things I haven't tried that don't work as intended. These here allow the game to load, but which clickable upgrades correspond to which stat edits is making no sense.
As you can see, I've been toying around with the idea that I only need 8 levels, After all... that's because that's all I need. Eight levels. None, C, Sp, Sc, CSp, CSc, SpSc, CSpSc. Eight levels should be all I need.
Yet the Small Transport Truck and Loader Dozer both have 16 levels, and if I paste the Loader Dozer's files in LRR just silently crashes to desktop without a sound on loading.
Curiously they both have duplicated entries: for instance look at level 1 and level 2 of the Loader Dozer (pasted here for your convenience):
Level 1 and Level 2 are exactly the same. You only need 8 (23) levels for 3 upgrades, yet the Loader Dozer has 16.
The Small Digger, meanwhile, has 8 levels despite also having three upgrades - but they're different as it has no Carry.
The Small Mobile Laser Cutter (Smallmlp) can only upgrade its Drill yet it has four levels. And the Rapid Rider (Smallcat) has three levels, going RouteSpeed 2:3:4, which makes absolutely no sense in the LRR engine we know.
But if I paste in the Loader Dozer's code... it just doesn't work. Something about sixteen levels causes the game to go kaput.
And yet I can't get eight levels to work properly... when I upgrade the vehicle to maximum none of its upgrades seem to take effect...
Tried CanScare TRUE ? That might be interesting... who needs bats when you have the terror of STTs zooming around at ungodly speeds? At least it'd teach those raiders to be safe when crossing Power Paths