It's my understanding that the only thing necessary to put new ships in the recog manual is the inclusion of file(s) used by the game to create a particular ship's page in it. You don't get a new manual when you add ships, the new ships are just added to the existing one. AFAIK the MFM includes the necessary files for all its ships. I've not encountered one that did not have a corresponding page in the manual when I checked.
The mod is compatible with GWX however a few of the ships in the full version may already be included in GWX3, or in some other mods that include additional ships (not sure which, but I know I already had a few of IABL's ships before I added MFM). I don't know that this is an issue except when it comes to making the recommended additions to the EnglishNames.cfg file, as you could end up with duplicate entries for ships that were already in your game. Since the additions have to be done manually anyway, it's easy enough to avoid duplicates just by carefully checking the file to see what needs to be added and what doesn't.
The most common cause of CTD with the MFM has nothing to do with the mod per se but is a result of the system resources required to load all the additional ships into the game, especially if you are already using other mods that are demanding in that respect. As a bare minimum, most folks recommend that you have applied the 4GB patch to the SH3.exe file and have enough RAM on board to take advantage of it. Obviously running 64-bit rather than 32-bit Windows also helps, but I don't know that it's required... for 32-bit you would most likely need the 4GB patch for the game plus the /3GB switch for Windows plus the adequate RAM on board to give the game enough to load with MFM enabled. Personally I was never able to use either the full or lite versions of the mod until I switched to 64-bit.
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