Hey Darkponzu, welcome to Starfarer!
From the blog a few weeks agoAlso, it's worth reading the
'Adding custom ships' thread as Avan started the ball rolling and found a lot of stuff out as he went along (a few of us grabbed hold of his coat-tails for the ride). There's also some good responses from Alex and the rest of the team on various little bits.
And what you don't learn or figure out for yourself (the files tend to be pretty well commented), ask away through here, and we may have come across some of the bits before. Also Alex will also likely chip in to give any answers to things that we haven't played with.
Ooh ... there's also some notes here about the general mod formatting:
Mod Format PreviewHope this helps, have fun!