I worked on some of the geometry last night but couldn't resist getting started on the texture.
Here is a REALLY quick and dirty render of the pod with a painted texture on the majority of the outer shell.
What i've done is segment the pod into sections that I thought would map well.
I worked on the outer shell last night. I got the best results with a planar map then saved a uv snapshot out, opened the snapshot in photoshop and went to work.

Yet to come is the bump, spec, and dirt maps and of course texturing the rest of the model.