confused

You will need the Reference Data to view the files correctly: HERE

Once you have them, look for the files in the GameInfo folder which start with:
FrigateTech~~~~~~~~~.ENTITY
and
CAPITALSHIP_TECH~~~~~~~~~~~~~.ENTITY

Each one is a different ship, and inside is where you edit most of their stats, etc. The numbers and references are usually self explanatory. Just change something and test it to see if it works, and what it changes.

As much as we like to see more potential modders, general questions like this, well, are frowned upon, by me anyway. There is now two extensive tutorials available on the downloads page, have a look through them, and get the basics. You will learn what you are doing them, not just following instructions.

Sorry to come over a bit forward, but recently I've seen numerous 'general' questions that take moments to write, but a lot longer to reply to in any depth.

So does that mean I can't count on you submitting some spiffy tutorials, Uzii?

As to the OP, each ship/structure/ability/etc has it's own .ENTITY file in the GameInfo folder. Everything that is able to be modded is in there, with the exception of English.str, which you shouldn't need for entry level modding.

PLANETMODULE_*.entity = Buildings
CAPITALSHIP_*.entity = Capital Ships, obviously
Frigate*.entity = Frigates, again obvious
Ability*.entity = Special Ability information (range, etc)
Buff*.entity = The files that usually correspond to modify special ability damage
Player*.entity = For changing race related things I think

TECH = TEC
PSI = Advent
PHASE = Vasari

Going off memory here so somethings might be off a little.

Honestly, it's all really, incredibly self-explanatory with a few exceptions. It seems like a lot of garbled crap at first, but just sit down and read through things and it will all make sense really quickly. The .pdf files that are included with the original forge tool set are very helpful. It's easiest to learn by just asking general questions (How much damage does an advent scout ship do per volley?) and then just trying to find the answer by looking through the files. You'll get the feel for it real quick, I promise.

A man after my own heart, couldn't have written that better myself. Thank you.

And Saikou, I did a tutorial once, but it took me over an hour. That was simply explaining how to increase the Capital Ship and Fleet slots. So, no, I won't be adding lots of nice tutorials

Oh, and thats a good breakdown of each file class, should help a few people, nice one.

Rofl, I suck at tutorials too, so I know what you mean! I usually end up writing WAY more than I should and make it overly complicated.

Yeah, I tried to write a "basic overview" tutorial. It got to 10+ pages in Word before I was even half done explaining what's in the GameInfo folder, after that I figured there's no way I can post this

As Ditchdigger said, most of it is pretty self explanatory. The hardest thing to learn is how the files are related to each other (Ship.entity > English.str/Ability/Buff for example, or RESEARCHSUBJECT > English.str/Ship/Ability/Buff).

But the stuff inside the files is named in such a way that's really fairly easy to understand right away, with the few exceptions Give it a shot, and if you have specific questions feel free to ask - otherwise, writing a tutorial on GameInfo folder modding can be a full length book

thanks for the help