Texture help needed

The thing you're looking for is UVM coordinates. The hotkey in Milkshape is either M or T, I just can't remember right now.

Since you followed this tutorial I can assume you're using Gmax. Gmax is based on 3Ds Max, so there are suppose to be tools for that. Texturing through Gmax would be easier.
I suggest you to try it in Milkshape, and then in Gmax. if you find it comfortable in Milkshape (I think you won't) then keep working with it. If not, just post a reply and I'll see if I can help you.

Oh BTW, welcome to TLR!

It's not that the textures are 'huge' but how much of the texture map is applied to a polygon. This is called UV Mapping.

Milkshape can edit uv mapping but frankly, milkshape is a little bit primitive in it's abilities, so you'll probably find it easier to uv map elsewhere as Poly suggested.

A commonly used option in 3d, is to export the mesh in a format such as wavefront obj, and uv map in a separate application, such as LithUnwrap, UVMapper, or RoadKill. Some of the uv mapping utilities are free, others shareware, others commercial, such as BodyPaint.

Here is a tutorial page on uv mapping, for clothing items in Poser, using Roadkill, by English Bob, that should give you an idea of how the basic process works...

http://www.morphography.uk.vu/uvmapping.html

And here is a page with links to a number of utilities, including RoadKill, and LithUnwrap

http://www.morphography.uk.vu/utilities.html

You can also pull up other tutorials with a simple google search for 'uv mapping'

I'd recommand you to follow the attached tutorial instead of Drizzt's one, since its not up-to-date...
+ it contains UV Mapping with 3Ds Max (same with Gmax).

Youre welcome

Good luck with your model! Post a screenshot when you're done K?

I've never used the gmax uv tools, but as a general principle, most uv maping solutions in 3d apps, allow you to assign a texture to a group of selected polygons, or even a single poly...

However, milkshape prefers one material per mesh group, so, remember that when assigning materials, eash unicque material will need to be a separate group in milk, for export to FL.

If you want to set a single material for separated groups of polys, one here, one there sort of thing, that should be doable, certainly roadkill and lithunwrap can do this, this will almost certainly be easier than going it in gmax itself.

Well, if Gmax has the same UV Mapping system as 3Ds Max, it won't be a problem. (BTW Nova's tutorial explains how.)
As I said, Milkshape is difficult to use for UV mapping. If Gmax hasn't the mapping system, use what Demon wrote.

Looks like you just used the 'auto uv map' option and chose box mapping...

Works great with some simple meshes, but with something like a ship, basically you end up only using about 20% of your texture map on the polygons, with standard FL sized texture images, 256 x 256, that means you're texturing your ENTIRE ship with a block of pixels 256 wide by less than 64 high, which wil look bloody awful.

Now, I don't use roadkill myself as a rule, dont even have it installed, cos the modeling app I use has its own uv mapping tools which are completely different...

But...

1 Read the tutorial I posted a link to, see how it's done, there are pictures of the various steps, even tells you what key to press, and the item English Bob is mapping has far more angled bits than your ship...
2 Since your ship is slightly different to a dress for poser, with a much lower poly count, it should actualy be easier to map...
3 Don't just select all faces and hit 'auto map - type whatever'...
4 Remember that your ship will have more than one texture image, so rather than using 'cookie cutter' mapping (all the bits like little cookies cut out of a sheet of dough) you want to use overlapped mapping, all the bits that will share the same texture laid out over the whole image, all the hull panels that will use the same 'hull panel' texture, laid out on top of each other so one painted panel will texture them all, etc...