nice
REduction is a attribution (lat. reductio).
You reduce a bigger thing in a smaller thats the way in chemistry, computer science, boiling, ... abstract: Reductionism.
But i didn't know that the meaning of reductions is addicted to the place, you come from?
Please stop offending on little details, mrguest.

but i went offtopic, sry.

For the first model, your ship looks great, but as said, there a a lot useless polygons. It's great, that ratchet took his time to show you, how you could create a ship with less polygons.

Thanks to ratchet for showing!

After modelling, you can draw a skin where you add a lot of details without using that much polygons. You can use also LOD - level of detail, so ships far away will use models with even less polygons or smaller textures.
A normal-mapping-shader will be great, too to add more details.

edit: just wanted to notice the normal mapping, maybe he didn't know it :-)