First of all you need commitment and patience to go through long tutorials. You MUST read.
Nice start for that: these forums and you will easy find this page or this or even the Freelancer Explorer
You will not be back with further questions before appx. 10 hours

EDIT:
@NightHound:
we make perfect couple - no contradiction, but complementory

Edited by - zazie on 6/1/2005 4:28:48 AM

Well what you ask is posible. but since you have no experice at all...i'd recomend going though a few tutorials and haveing ago at making a few models in Milkshape then there's al sorts of click and play programs that drift around

i'm sure other poeple here will provide you with a bigger list of stuff

EDIT: lol same time

Edited by - NightHound on 6/1/2005 2:32:27 AM

so i recon that ships are created using programs like milkshape or gmax right? and systems are created using sdk or bini?

The SDK are a set of freelancer ini files that have been decompressed,the origional ini files are compressed.Back in the early days of freelancer modding they had to use bini to decompress them just to be able to edit them,now we use the SDK instead.

There are 2 ways to make a system,1}use a system editor (FLExplorer or FLSE),2}edit the ini files by hand.
The system editors make it easy to create systems but they still have thier flaws,(sorry guys)you can end up with systems that crash every time you enter them.
Doing it by hand you learn how the files are put together and you can find the cause for the crashes(most of the time ).Most of the big mod makers probably use both,make them in the editors and then fine tune them by hand.

Read the threads Newbie questions 1&2,they're how I got started,they're full of useful information on how to start modding,but be warned thier over 40 pages long each.