Just to help you with the tracking, racer445 says something like that in this tutorial: http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/project-workflow-creating-a-next-gen-sci-fi-prop-day-1/
i'm terrible. if i say something in my videos take it with a grain of salt. there's a reason why i will never make a tutorial ever again. no, you just untick the box in keyboard shortcuts next to the edit poly hotkeys, then it reverts back to using editable poly hotkeys. true though that some scripts break when using it.
I would say that this is a must watch for weapon creation http://racer445.com/pages/tutorials/ak-tutorial.php only thing I would suggest is when putting on your control edges for turbosmooth use an edit poly modifier so you can remove them for low poly much easier(if your using max)