What you'll want to do is to highlight all the faces you want and then hit planar mapping. It will create a plane for the map to be displayed on, roughly as flat as it can get it accross all the polys you selected. You can easily manipulate the plane using the box with all the size and position data, though it's easier in theory than it is to get the actual result you want in practice. Make sure you keep plenty of backups cos sometimes TS likes to planar map the entire model instead, and that can't be undone.
Course that's for details and stuff, if you wanted simple hull pattern then a global, cubic UV map is best. If you create a new model in TS then each poly will be planar mapped by default, which is dead handy, but if you're editing someone else's model then you may find some ploys have textures mapped on at a dodgy angle so that appear as streaks or something. In that case you'd need to click the poly and hit planar map
Just remember to save it often! TS has a habit of doing what it thinks you want it to do and then not letting you undo what it did. So keep a backup and back the backup up again, preferably in another folder
Oh, and another good idea is to create a scene with light bulbs at, say, 30m out from center in all six compass directions. Turn them up by right clicking on them and adjusting the slider. This way you'll have your model well-lit from all angles
