Well, a lot of people are playing the "stand alone" expansion to SFC2, entitled:
Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates
So, if you have a chance you may want to pick that one up too, it adds new weapons, arcs, a whole new era, and pirate cartels.
As far as what you might want, well, there are model's available that can really make the game a visual delight, but it's kind of a pick and choose thing, just browse the Model forum and look around for the various modelers sites.
Orion Pirates has the OP+ mod, which adds a bunch of ships from SFB, and points them to different model markers so it really shakes up the visual look of things as well. I think there was an effort at one point to do the same for EAW as well, but I didn't keep up on that one.
As far as resources, you can check out:
SFCX.orgStarfleet UniverseXenocorpas well as many other sites for SFC: EAW and OP resources, utilities, etc. I'm sure a bunch of people will chime in on this, possibly before I even get done writing this.
I know that for EAW, SFCX has a variety of new mission scripts available, as well as the lastest patch for all the games (which should be on the other sites as well), in addition to a guide to editing your settings to make make your campaigns just the way you want them to be.
Most of all... WELCOME!
When you get the chance you may want to try out the D2, there is a big OP campaign going on right now, but I'm not sure what's going on EAW side (I'm an OP junky
)