http://soase.weebly.com/modeling.html

That website has everything you need to know about Sins modding, explore through the tabs to find stuff on things besides modeling. The Sins devs used the softimage XSI program to do their models, and the mod tool linked on that site is free so if you may as well start on that as you'll need it anyways for getting a model ready for Sins regardless of the program you use to create it.

Also FYI there are many mods that try to combine lots of different Sci-fi races, I'm guessing one of them will actually be complete enough to be a mod in its own right one day.

Also pro tip as far as the game is concerned there is no difference between frigates and cruisers, they are treated exactly the same.

You can use XSI to model, its just a lot of the pros prefer to use more expensive pro programs like 3DS max. Its a lot of stuff to learn, it took me a few years to be able to do just about everything it takes to mod just about everything.

The visual effects for a superlaser, to borrow upon the Geo SDN as an example, are achieved by setting up a Buff which has an instantAction to create a "PlayPersistantBeamEffect", which uses coding in the aforementioned Buff file plus some particle effects. The file in question is BUFF_SUPERLASERACTIVATED.entity for reference.

In the Buff's entity file, under the instantAction code, you can define the width and colors of the beam.

Modding has many layers.  As soon as you figure out one of them, two of its friends come over and beat you up and trash your work.

Sins is a lot of exact text lines and one space break, miscapitalized letter or improper indent can mess it up.  In addition the abilities, buffs and manifests and the like require corresponding entries for changes and exact data to work properly.  Modeling requires working with more than three tools and some not always working properly.

Don't even try without using the "Dev.exe" to spot your errors.  Save often.  And when you have something working, make a new copy before adding to it and edit them separately so you can fall back to the unbroken version if your new work bjorks things up.

Try not to mod  when you are half asleep.  That's never a good idea

A lot of people do. I myself didn't start out modding any particular project, I just wanted to edit some stat values at first, then merge two different mods, then make a new ship using an already existing mesh etc. I think the reason a lot of these people who come in wanting to make a huge mod with all these Sci-fi races give up because they set their sights to high, that's the only reason why I'd be worried with you.

No, just for the version you are working with. Basically a manifest is a list of all the files you want Sins to load.

In the media section of this website you'll find something called the "Forge Tools". Many of the things like the reference data is obselete, but their are some PDF tutorials made by the devs that will get you the basics of how to make a new ship. The only addition is the entity.manifest file. When you make your new ship, you'll copy a capitalship or frigate file and rename it. Then you simply add a new line to the manifest file that you copied from the mod or base game you're working with.

So first you'll have something like this

entityNameCount 1654
entityName "PlanetCyro.entity"

...

To add your ship you just change it to this

entityNameCount 1655

entityName "YourNewShip.entity"
entityName "PlanetCyro.entity"
...

I just downloaded and installed Blender, It's open but I don't know what to do with it, lmao! Even worse, at the weebly site, the link to the SoftImagesXSI converter tool is non-functioning but to my understanding I need that to convert my model into something Sins can use. I'm screwed. I really want to make a ship right now but I don't think I can do that. There's so much to read, AHHHHHH

Try Sketchup. 

It's very easy and free and after your model is made there you can "export" it as a kmz file.  Rename the kmz file to  zip and you can get your model out of the zip file as a dae file.

That dae file can be open and converted to an easy to work with format (like obj) by another free program called Meshlab.

From this point on you will have to try working with the XSI tools but if you can't get through these, you won't get through those.

Well I just did some mucking around and have come to the conlcusion I'm not meant to do any of this so this thread is now irrelevant. I thank you all for your help but I guess it's not in me.

True, I mean I know my way around a computer enough to use it, but I shouldn't press my luck and jump ahead too far and blow my mind apart. Someday though, I will have the Eclipse...

Now I've been a rather rude git and forgot to hand out Karma so let me get to that...

enjoy mate, enjoy indeed