Texture-specific questions

[Treewyrm]

1. Not sure if Freelancer supports Targa compression, even if it doesn't zip usually works fine compressing those. DDS, If I remember correctly it's DirectDraw Surface, used to work with those on a game powered by Unreal Engine 2.5. There was nvidia plug-in for photoshop to export into DDS I think.
2. Yes, had the same problem in UE when I started making materials first time as I'm used to make skins in 2:1 format.
3. Unfortunately I cannot use existing ones, my ships are... well, they're special so I have to make my own textures. Painting textures is not a problem, I just need to evaluate capabilities of Freelancer engine regarding those.
4-5. Ok, will dig into it to see how it's made.
6. No, alpha textures, aka transparency maps, is a different topic. What I meant is that a single surface can be two-sided, you can see it from both sides of the polygon(s). Asking because my ships will be combining both one-sided and two-sided surfaces, and I plan to use both for certain effects.

Thanks for the answers! I appreciate your help.

One more question: does Freelancer uses specular maps to show which areas of the surface needs to have glossy effect? As far as I've seen the "glossy" effect goes all over the surfaces, though not every surface have the effect.