Are you exporting with the image UV linked by materials?
I know for blender, you can't have it as a linked material to the mesh, but a normal UV association. I have no idea how to translate that to 3DS though.
For all I know, it's just a simple UVW unwrap and the material applied to the mesh afterwords.

The majority of model has it show up fine, it's just a few subobjects in particular are having the problem.
As you can see, the landing pads, "saucer" quadrants, and the upper antenna array are all mucked up. If I zoom in all the way, I can see the entire texture, but it's not really related to the geometry.
Well, before I hijack newman's thread any further...
Newman, did you solve your tiling issue, or is it still present?
I'm just going to modify this post... I've already double posted and don't want to double-double-down (mm, fried grease...)
erm... Ok, I made a bit of progress. It seems the UV mapping is still there, but a glitch has scaled the coordinates way WAY up.