What is the best approach for texturing complex model?

Hi guys,
I made this model of the AT-RT from star wars, and I have started to UV Unwrap it.



Once I have everything laid out, what is the best approach for texturing as their are quite a number of small pieces.
I’m pretty new to texturing so I’m sure this is probably be a very basic question but any answers including different methods would be great. Note: the objective for this model would be to be able to export it fully textured to a game engine such as unity.

Thanks for your answers in advance!
Hugo

You can always just paint the texture in Blender itself (go into texture paint mode with a blank image loaded in the image editor and start painting).

Weld islands together where you can to get less islands
Manage the island position on the map so you know what each UV island actually is.
Are there duplicate objects, you can overlap common UVs so you texture one object and the duplicate UVs also use that same texture
You can bake AO map to start you off with a base texture which you can then build colour and textures onto

In addition, you can split the mesh in half and make use of the mirror modifier (which will allow symmetry in pretty much all known types of data).

Thanks guys,
Your replies have been very useful.
I suspected as much, just wanted to make sure that i was doing the right thing before embarking on texturing this!
Hugo

Another thing to try, which might not be the most efficient method but works pretty well for me for hard-surface modeling, is to duplicate the model and go ham on the topology cutting in loops where color changes are (EG if you want a stripe to run down the middle, cut loops in for the edges of the stripe) and then assign materials with the colors you want- and then you can bake that to a texture on the original not-messed-up-topology model, which can give a nice base of flat colors to work from with crisp edges between differently colored areas.