i thank you for the advice. yes i have read that destroyers are a bit hard for all the reasons that you said. i would be willing to build a freighter first just to dabble in the hobby a bit. do you have any links for places that sell plans or kits of those freighters you mentioned? they sound pretty cool and i'd like to check them out. i used to drool over swampworks from time to time and was going to go back to there but they are gone.i have found the Battlersconnection.com place and they are pretty cool but i don't see any freighters.
any more advice would be greatly appreciated and any links would be extremely helpful. for now i will continue my search
jarrod