**strata** & **contrafibbularities**: Thank you.

Still with the side pods, they are now UV mapped and each one has their own texture map. Ambient occlusion has been baked on them to use as a mask over a light brown 'spacedust' colour. Also, I've spent time reducing the polygon count of the 'cages' by selecting and 'melting' loops. Doing this has lowered render time polygons by almost 12,000 so that was time well spent.