eh nice example: the Fenris was probably the best capships texturing job in the game. Honestly....most of the other suck.
The Fenris is unwrapped and has custom textures.
This is exactly why I choosed that ship some months ago..
With the Fenris you could use the textures as a reference for the details, and then see what the

artist had in mind for that ship.
Actually I could have made more changes to the original Fenris shape (I did some, nonetheless), improoving the overall look, expecially on the middle blocky section, and I didn't just because I didn't want to draw new textures.
The other capships are usually (IIRC) more low poly considering the size, they have large flat areas mapped with same texture tiled to infinity.
What I mean is that
1-there aren't details in the textures that you can reproduce, you have to invent them by yourself
2-the models have this shape often NOT only for artistic reasons, but because of the polylimits. I bet (and you can "see" that looking at the models) that the shapes would be pretty different sometimes if the original artists had higher polylimits.
Now that we have those higher limits I think it'd be an error to stick on the same compromises.
3-those shapes are not designed to have details attached on em, I mean that if you just add some greebling here and there it'll suck. I mean that you can't just add minor details to a model with the same shape: the result will be better if you *partially* redesign the whole thing.
Also it is more...gratificating... for a modeller to throw something of his own into a model;)