I generally go as far to the left of that picture as I can. I've seen Warmachine tournaments where both sides field bare metal. That's disheartening...
I'd recommend Mod Organizer 2 as a mod manager, there's a bit of a learning curve but it uses virtual folders so it's harder to truly mess things up....
I've been watching episodes of Andromeda during break times at work this week. I started with a time travel episode where they killed a load of ships...