woot! i got it working, but somethings wrong.
ok I halved evey single ship's hull points for all fractions, including capital ships.
now the second a scout frigate, or any other ship, gets destroyed, it causes a minidump.
I put the edited files into a folder in the mod directory, I can load them fine.
If I try to replace the actualll game files in the game directory, The mod doesnt work, ships have normal health.