Please explain the show mod path shenanigans because that's really stonewalling me

Start Rebellion, go to the main menu, go to the mod tab, hit show mod path button. It will give you the location of your mod folder that you must put mods in, usually in the "My Documents" -> "My Games" -> "Ironclad Games" -> "Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion" folder. 

You must place the mods in the mod folder. You must then extract them so that they appear as normal folders, any folder in the mod folder will be read as a mod, which you can then enable from the mod tab where the show mod path button was.