[Phoenix-D]

If you want to, yes. More likely you could just include Organic or Crystalline texture. Its been stated that the org/crystalline stuff is optional.

Scaling- you can set whatever size you want, but if you make it too big or too small people won't use it. I doubt the appearence of the ships has any effect on actual combat. Can't really give scaling numbers.

For testing, grab the Starfury demo. You'll have to replace the default destroyer with your new ship.

Poly limits- look at the SF ships. I'd say a couple hundred polys at most.

SJ made a couple of helper programs for SF that might get ported to SEV.