Not that this is by any standards a difficult thing for me to feel...however, I downloaded Milkshape so I could give ship editing a try. I also downloaded what I thought was an importer/exporter plugin, so I could bring ship files from the game and toy around with them, but so far I've not had any luck. I'm going to snoop around in that guide, but in the meantime if someone wouldn't mind pointing me in the right direction, it might help someone else too.