[Akalabeth Angel]

So once I've done all of my objects, do I "union" them all into one big object? Or "glue" them all together in the same hierarchy? I've got all of the smaller objects finished, I'm just unclear as how to proceed from there. I'm using Truespace but none of the the tutorials seem to deal directly with that program

[TrashMan]

What objects are you refering to?
turrets? ship parts?

In case of ship parts, union (turn off all the options in the union window - triangulate first and the other two options)
This is VERY important, for you will most likely need to add a few vertex manually (it's very easy actually, but the second option in the window I metioned will delete all hand-made vertex when you union/substract - and that's something you want to avoid!)

If it's turrets, lods, debirs an such, then do the folowing (you can convert a ts .scn file to pof) - using a small plugin (darn..I can't recall the name.....used to view hierarchy..) you just drag and drop first all the turrets and then all derbris onto LOD0...
If you have some turrets for LOD1 drop them onto LOD1...Don't touch the other lods...
Bfore you save and convert make sure all LOD's have normalized and centerd axis( do move a axis a bit if the lod's don't fall in line), and that they are all at (0,0,0)...

[KARMA]

there are many tutorials that explain how to do hierachy, and when to split a mesh in subobjects or not+ many other suggestions.
Just check karajoma's and IPandrews' guides (both from karajoma's sign)
anyway, just try to build the main object as a solid object, and possible try to make the whole LOD0 as a solid mesh, and then split the parts of the mesh that need to be separated objects.
You can create the mesh by manually sweeping faces, adding edges, deforming faces, moving vertices starting from a single primitive object; or you can create your mesh as an union of different primitive objects: create those primitives and deform them, unify them using boolean union, then manually weld unuseful verts and fix the bad geometry.
The best strategy is to mix those two strategies

[karajorma]

Trueview is probably the plugin you're thinking of Trashman although I personally prefer PI-SceneTool (if you have TS4.3 or above).