Well, alpha channel in spring actually represents teamcolor, which helps you identify which team the unit belongs to ingame. For example, the orange in this picture:
full opacity (255, ff, whatever you want to call it) means 100% teamcolor, so a flat color (in your case, flat black).
0% (fully transparent) means no teamcolor, so it's the texture.
Anything in between (semitransparent) causes the testure to be mixed with the teamcolor.
Keep in mind that this is only true in the texture1. In the texture2, the alpha channel has a different effect, and is actually unit transparency, and you can mess some things up and come up with invisible units by making the teture2 transparent.
Hope that helped, and happy modeling!
