Ahaha I wish I had more talent in texture making, I tried my hand at a manufactured look with hull plating and such but everything I tried came out really crappy looking. It's also pretty time consuming to make a texture like that with a lot of detail. Aside from that i'm aiming more for a 'anime clean' look (not just because it saves me work heh) not to mention i'm planning on something big and i'd rather have 10 decent looking ships then 2 perfect looking ones.
Though I don't want to use the above as an excuse to stop improving
A) Where's your cockpit?
It won't get an external one. In the setting I have in mind, pilots are offered a bit more protection while relying on their equipment to get a look on the outside (even have a mission in mind where this plays a major role)
Kinda like the fighters in legend of the galactic heroes
B) Variate! Don't cover the whole fighter with the same texture! You 're UVing the thing, for God's sake, make the texture fit like a glove! And give it detail. For Example:
(pic)
Again, this is just how I would do it. And, while we're on the subject, I recommend you tone down the general saturation a bit (to get a grey-er tone) and add a few high-saturation (overlayed) stripes for eye-catching prettiness. Check out what I've done with the Zephyrus (scroll down a bit) to see what I mean
I like what you did with the Zephyrus there, nice work
I'll see if I can apply some of that wisdom to the Ray. I'm not completely sure on how to proceed with details though. (Since texturing isn't really my forte) I added those black lines as detailing but that didn't work out so well apparantly
Oh, and I can't help but notice that there's a certain mirroring going on on the top of the fighter. If you're planning to make some normal maps for it, make sure and change your UVing, to avoid shading issues. UV mirroring is good for OPPOSITE sides of a craft, but the TOP and BOTTOM faces that connect to each other (straight down the central axis of the fighter) MUST NOT be mirrored, but UV'd together. It probably looks good in your modeling program. but if you get the mirrored thing into FS, it will do this @#$% thing:
(pic)
Or not? 
I might be wrong there. Still, I've had this problem with the WIP Zephyrus, so it's safe to assume that it still persists.
I did notice that shading issue once with the Mk I but as I progressed it vanished without a trace and I haven't had that issue since. The shots in this thread are all from the 'F3 shiplab' in FS
I'm thinking it could do better with actual hull plates instead of that...stained glass filter stuff that just make it look weird.
Find me a texturer worthy of mordor
*Edit:
An other reason why I don't feel like completely perfecting a fighter
135 range is pretty close and look at how much detail you can see from that distance.
I played sync completely without the mediavp's and only realized it half way through. When i'm busy flying/shooting/following a story/dodging enemy fire I could care less if the enemy target has 10 more lines of detail.
