Let's all keep in mind that even though the FS mod structure is intimately familiar to those of us who were downloading campaigns long before mod.ini files were ever a thing (when did they first show up?), it's definitely not to newer or more infrequent players. Expecting newbies to dig through the wiki for fairly-specific answers isn't really practical, or even desired; there's a very good reason the community has been trying to make the game easier and easier to get up and running over the years. While it may seem frustrating to see questions that have been asked a thousand times before, take a moment and think about the fact that you were once asking those same questions too.
Anyway I was wondering, are you that just putting them in let's say MediaVPs_2014\Data will be enough for the new 3.8.0 takes them as a replacement for the ones on MediaVPs_2014? And BTW the new files are redundant, wouldn't be better to replace in the .vp files?
Yes, any files put in a proper subfolder of MediaVPs_2014\data\ will act as replacements of the files in the MediaVPs themselves. Volition originally designed the retail FS filesystem in terms of hierarchy: the highest level is files in the \data\ folder, then in the retail VP files in the root game folder, with the versions in \data\ taking priority over those in the VP files. It's a simple but very flexible system that lets you drop in replacements for any of the retail files at will, and its ease of use is probably the primary reason why FS modding took off the way it did in the first place. The Source Code Project later added the mod folder system to FS2_Open, and it basically acts as an extension of the retail system. The highest level of all (except in really weird edge cases) is the \data\ folder in your currently-selected mod, then any VP files in that mod, then any mods that may be listed in the mod.ini file's secondary mod list, then finally the original retail \data\ folder and VP files. The reason you shouldn't put much of anything in the retail \data\ folder is because it'll show up in the progression of every single mod you select, which could cause conflicts and unintended behavior or game crashes. Updated retail ship models and textures work best in the MediaVPs data folder because then they'll be applied to every other mod which uses the MediaVPs as a secondary mod, which tends to be most of them.
And no, you should absolutely never replace any of the files in the MediaVPs themselves (not to mention the original retail VPs). The reason for this is simple: if you start experiencing errors, then anyone providing support is going to assume that your MediaVP files are the same as everyone else's, so if the problem is being caused by whatever you put into the VP files, it'll be much harder to track down. (In fact, the log file FS2_Open spits out contains information about the size of the VP files, so if they don't match the expected values, people will probably assume yours are corrupted.) The really great thing about the FS modding system's modularity is that you don't even
have to touch any VP files: whatever you drop into a \data\ folder will override them anyway without needing to edit them. The most popular VP-related piece of software, VPView, was a read-only tool for this exact reason. The only people who really have the need to edit VP files are mod creators, and they generally only package all their mod files into VPs when it's time to release the mod.
Hopefully this explanation made sense. It may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but you'll get the hang of it before too long.
