Could a novice make these changes in BTA?

Last time I did any kind of programing was making a little ascii bird flap it's wings on the Commador64, but I'm comfortable enough with tweaking some game values in a text editor. Would those "skills" be enough to change a couple things in BTA? I'm on the discord, but sometimes the conversation moves at a speed difficult to keep up with, so I figured I'd ask here first.

1. Lost count of how many times I've set my eyes on an enemy tank just to see that little "Not Salvageable" pop up, often after one of my pilots expresses similar feeling. Would making those tanks available be as simple as changing a value from "false" to "true"? Where could I find those files? I'm assuming I'd have to do each tank one at a time.

2. BTA used to have generic pilots sometimes show up as being able to pilot both mechs and tanks, but shortly after I started playing, the chance was nerfed pretty hard and eventually made a thing for a very few unique pilots only. I like all the additional pilot builds that combo provides. Would it be easy to bring that chance back? Or how about tweaking unique pilots to give a few more the ability to pilot both?

3. I'm assuming both of these are going to leave me manually messing with a lot of individual files, and I don't look forward to needing to do it again with every patch that requires a fresh install. If the tanks and pilots are separate files, are they touched often by patches, or would it be reasonably safe to keep back ups and swap them back in after updates? I say "reasonably safe" because I know there would never be a guarantee.