Alright, I installed Freelancer with little trouble, and SP was working fine. Didn't even bother trying to get multiplayer working yet since I didn't feel like dealing with the workaround.
So I download the mod, version 4.854 with the updater, and try to unzip it. I installed FLMM prior, and didn't seem to have any problems, but when I try to unzip to mod file, it makes it all the way to the end, then gives me a notice that it had a problem with the common.dll file, and just doesn't work at all when I try to activate the mod in the manager.
I'm trying to bring over my backups from my desktop to the laptop right now so I can easily move over a clean install. If I'm doing something obvious wrong, please let me know. If not, I'll try to get more specific information on what the problem exactly is.
Don't even want to think about how fun trying to get online is going to be. I can't even get the bloody mod unzipped.