Wow, you made the whole turret process really complicated. I always have found it easier to create the turret in a seperate scene, set its axis, glue up the lights and any submodels (turretarm), and save the whole turret as an object. That way, when you get ready to attach it to the main model all you have to do is load it, position it, scale it, rename it (though it actually works if not every part of the heirarchy is renamed to the corresponding turret number, you just have to play a bit in Modview) and glue it as a sibling to LOD0. This avoids all the confusion of gluing/ungluing with all of the other model components in the scene, and with a capship with over 20 turrets, especially multi-part turrets, the constant setup of the heirarchy for each turret can get really annoying.
You may also talk about using the copy tool to reproduce turrets once you have one made.
And my final suggestions:
1) don't glue until everything is in position.
2) ALWAYS glue "detailx" subobjects in ascending order (detail1, detail2, detail3), or they will be out of sequence in FS2.
3) I have found advantages to placing the axis of each turret at the center of the turret's base, where it would connect to the ship. This allows a more precise alignment of the turret and the hull if you get as picky as I can be.
