Even though I say this myself, I think I've made a couple of great ships with mechanisto over the years. There's one that I want to host on the image gallery, but it's on the wrong computer, and it'll take me a while to transfer it over because it has to go from floppy, to a PC, to zip, to an imac to get on the web. Complicated? You betcha.
The old computer has no USB, the new one has no floppy drive. It's a sad thing, but there you go.
Mechanisto was a great starting program for me, I used it for two years and it introduced me into making ships. It's also the only program for which there are spaceship making tutorials. I would suggest doing a websearch and a search on the boards for old mechanisto topics with links. They can teach you some really neat things about how to use the program. I unfortunately found them all after I had learnt all the really hard lessons about transforms and order, and so on, but they have some great other stuff too.
I'd learn it, but later on you're going to want to make the switch to strata 3D or something, for variety, and an introduction to the real modelling world. Mechanisto is brilliantly unique in how it makes shapes.
Oh, and by the way, figure out ALL the uses of the "taper" transform. It is easily the most handy. Also, "scale 2" is incredibly usefull. Read the manual, and discover what each do. Play around to figure out what they do to each other. 
Lots of fun.
~A~
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"How can I make it go faster?" -Me-
