[Help] Modifying Terran ship in Blender

[AkiraR]

Ok so first off I am a complete newb when it comes to Blender or any kind of artistic 3D modeling software, my experience with 3D modeling is solely limited to the engineering world where stuff like vertex coloring etc. simply aren't a thing. So forgive me if I don't understand even the most basic stuff.

I want to modify the model of the Gladius. I've spent ~16 hours or so over the last two days looking at the tutorials and screwing around with blender and these are the results:

Before:
[ external image ]
After:
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As you can hopefully see changing the model worked fine however now the coloring and textures have gotten screwed up.

The workflow that got me here is as follows:
Convert game files to .dae using XRConvertersMain.exe -> import into Blender -> press the "Convert" button added by the Egosoft Blender tools -> save the .blend to p1[assets] -> re-open the .blend, make my edits -> use V-HACD to generate hulls for the parts I edited -> export with the Egosoft Blender tools -> put only the .xmf and .jcs files for the bits that I changed into a subst_01.cat and then load that into the game.

Something is clearly happening either in converting the game files to .dae or in the "Convert" action that comes with the Egosoft Blender tools that is breaking how the colors and textures are applied to the mesh and I don't know how to fix it.
I have tried using the "Convert UV/VC" button instead of the regular "Convert" button however that ends up breaking a lot of things. First I get all these extra objects? (I think that is what they are called?) Like:
anim_mainXlod0Xp1terranXter_p1_fx_01
But after exporting I am supposed to just have a single anim_main-lod0.jcs and anim_main-mesh.jcs and I don't know how to accomplish that. Additionally it seems to add a Rotation transform to all of the objects for some reason that results in all of them being wonky when loaded into the game. The regular "Convert" button leaves the Rotations all at 0.

Picture showing added objects and weird rotation added when using "Convert UV/VC": [ external image ]

I next found the color matrix thing posted on the discord and spent some time mucking about figuring out how to adjust vector colors and spent some time with two blender instances open, one where I had used the "Convert UV/VC" button as reference and another where I tried to paint the correct vector colors onto my "working" model. This did work in changing the colors back to what they should be however they are still missing their textures, but only some places are missing textures, for instance parts of one of the wings still has it's texture.
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[ external image ]
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At this point I don't really know how to proceed. As I said I already went through the tutorials that are around, the problem is they either are missing all of the pictures which makes understanding what they are saying very difficult, or they assume you already know the basics and are giving more advanced information way over my head.
Is there a way to convert and import the game assets that doesn't break all of the color and texture information? Does any one have a .blend of the Gladius that is already all set up that they could share with me so I can just edit the model and export it? Any help would be appreciated! (also why can't I get images to show up in my post?? I used to be able to do it no problem??)