Still working on those templates, coding is taking a lot of time. UV-Mapping really is nice in the current Blender, took about 2-3 hours to learn and unwrap this first model. The more frustrating thing was figuring out how to do backface culling...
Couldn't get myself to properly cut away duplicate surfaces the first time around - there are so many nice little features you can do with asymmetric mapping. Guess the smaller unwrap footprint is a good compromise - the main features of the hull (cockpit and engines) are mapped for asymmetric textures, while small elements and more technical/mechanical/functional elements (e.g. the main engine, side engine mount) are mapped symmetrically to the same positions.