Max cant do tangents. 

Check the top part of the .mesh

I dont use max but people who do will want to know what's there. You can also hook them up manually as seen here.

A friends been helping me identify the problem, and its not related to improper textures or textures linking to the mesh, as using XSI instead of the max script resulted in textures auctually appearing. So it seems Im either doing something wrong when preping the model in max for export, or the plugin itself just dosnt work. Ive tried both v2.0a and v1.1 of the plugin and both result in the ship being pitchblack.

Heres a screen of the ship just before I export it, illuistrating everything that I know of which needs to be done in order to have your mesh properly export (related to textures).

3ds pre-export setup.

(larger image http://clip2net.com/s/1ogax)

Ive also gone ahead and uploaded the ship below, its in a self contained mod (origionally created by zombies, I now just use it as a temmplate to test my ships),  called Normandy Mod, ina  folder called Hmmm. jus drag an drop into your folder to see the ship ingame, its under normandy, a cap ship for the TEC. Ive also included the max file just before export, when exporting it should be renamed from ARMD3 MAX Ready to Normandy.

Hmmm.rar

http://www.mediafire.com/?pkc6d5gs31qbvfl

My spider senses are telling me Im probably going to be using XSI after all..

[edit]

 @Carbon016, Ive done that man, but perhaps Ive some done it incorrectly? I cant see how though it seems pretty straight forward. Ive included all my files so perhaps you could take a peek and see if Ive infact slipped up somewhere.

The problem IS in your textures.

The ship textures must be in dds format dxt 5 with 8 bit alpha. The alpha channel is important, because without it you get "black ship syndrome"

You need an alpha channel in your -cl texture (or "Color" texture) if you plan on using team colors. NOTE: The -cl texture is the ONLY texture that can be used without an alpha channel. No SoA 2 mesh has an alpha channel in their -cl textures.

You need an alpha channel in your -da texture (or "Data" texture) if you plan on using bloom effects. NOTE: If you do not plan on having bloom then the alpha channel must be all black. However the photoshop dds plugin will not let you save an all black alpha. So just paint a white dot somewhere on the alpha channel that wont show on the mesh.

For your problem.. You especially need an alpha channel in you -nm texture (or "Normal Map").

I am not exactly sure why you need the alpha, but i think it has something to do with reflecting the ambient light of the skybox environment cube (this is totally separate from the blue channel reflection in the -da texture). What is important is that without an alpha channel in your normal map you get "black ship syndrome".

The Sins Developers themselves just duplicate the normal maps Red channel, and place it in the Alpha channel (that is the way the dev's told me how to do it). Again i am not exactly sure why, but it works.

Since your ship came from the 3dsmax exporter script, it has NO tangents which means your ship will have some lighting, and smoothing errors in game that can only be fixed by applying tangents to the model in XSI.

Another solution is setting "hasValidTangents" to FALSE. This will make the sins engine simulate a default set of tangents on the mesh, and give it a default 45% smoothing throughout the mesh. It is not recommended to do this, because it makes the sins engine use much more cpu to render your mesh that it would if it had proper tangents (this is also straight from the dev's mouth).

Welding points wont matter since the max exporter doesnt export the smooth data. It is better to weld since its that much less points to calculate. I only separate my master meshes into groups for texturing, and UV mapping.