Editing all items of a given type?

[Andkittles]

Is there any convenient way of editing the stats of all items of a certain type? I've found plenty of guides on how to create or modify individual items via GECK, but I am confused as to how one might go about changing the damage of, say, all laser pistols in the game or modifying the DT of all instances of T-51b power armor in the game. I've seen a number of modifications that do this, of course, but I have had great difficulty finding any effective guide on how to execute such changes myself (the existence of "weapon mods" as an item type in New Vegas tragically complicates most relevant search attempts). Could anyone link me to an appropriately detailed tutorial or resource on this sort of task or advise me on how to approach this directly? I don't have any real experience modifying Fallout New Vegas or any other games using Bethesda's engines.

[NorthWolf]

Modify the base form. The changes will be applied universally. For example, go to the Weapons group, find the Laser Pistol form, and enter in a new damage, then check it out in game. All laser pistols will adopt that new damage.

 

To explain more thoroughly, everything you find in the game is an instance of a base form. So every laser pistol you find is based on that laser pistol in the weapons group. The individual laser pistols don't have statistics of their own, they all refer back to the base form and adopt their stats from that (and are thus called references in most mod lingo). Hopefully that's more informative.

Edited July 14, 2011 by NorthWolf

[Korodic]

However (following up your question with northwolf) you cannot edit every damage at the same time of a particular group, only individual weapon's bases. For example:

 

A laser pistol

A laser rifle

A gatling laser

 

cannot edit all damages at once. However if you edit the base of each object, then every laser pistol, laser rifle, and gatling laser in the game will be affected.