You can spend essentially arbitrary amounts of time on a ship model; there's always going to be some refinement you can add. As you become more skilled, however, you'll need less time to attain the effect you want, and you'll understand how to create more and better effects.
The ships in EV Nova are, essentially, professionally done. To go from a straight-up beginner to making something that will mesh well with them would take you months, if not years, of practice, regardless of what program you choose to use. I don't want to discourage you; this is simply how things are. I've been working with 3D programs for a long time, off and on, and with Blender for about a year (again, off and on), and I'm still not remotely close to achieving that level of detail. Most ships I make get about a week's worth of attention or so, and the last one I made came out like this:
Now, in my personal opinion, that's not a bad ship. I rather like it, anyway. It's still not up to the quality level that EV Nova ships have, and organic ships tend to be easier to make look good than mechanical ships, in my experience. My best mechanical ships don't have a patch on EV Nova ships. They're better than they were when I started, mind - a lot better. But I've a long way to go yet. Here's an example of a mechanical ship I did - a simple missile drone.
Again, it's not a bad ship; it'd fit right in in EV or EVO. But it's not remotely up to meshing well with Pipeline's renders.
Personally, I'd still recommend giving it a shot; I find modelling to be a highly enjoyable pasttime (most of the time, anyway!), and any kind of art is good for your brain. But you should have realistic expectations.
