Learning to skin'd probably do you good. Unfortunately, there's something where I've got not a ****ing clue, and would rather like a tut on how it's done myself.
Other than that- box modeling. Most Freespace vessels are composed of a single, coherent mesh, so you need to learn to build up a primitive into something that looks like a fighter, or a capship, or whatever. Basically, the Mesh Edit modifier is your friend- just apply it and move the vertices around.
Aaand... well, get that stuff down, first. That's all you really need for the most basic stuff, and everything thereafter that you can do in MAX is pretty simple by comparison.