I don't use any plugins at all.
Say, do you need help making textures or applying them? Since you said "in TS 4.2" I assume you meant applying them, so here goes the applying textures tutorial
But if you need help making textures just say so and I'll try to give you some hints... (I use Adobe Photoshop 4 for that)
Oh, and I only know how to texture using multiple texture files... so if you need a single texture, you're out of luck, I guess.
Anyway, what I do is glue the faces together according to the material they use (this is in the hierarchy tools of TS3). For example, all the faces that are part of the two winglets on top of the Rapier's engines are a in a single group, all the faces that are part of the two big cannons are a single group, and so forth... then I use the UV mapping tool on these groups... I always set it to planar, then rotate it around to suit my needs. In both the examples above, the texture is projected from the sides, so I go in front view and rotate the UV mapping box 90 degrees around the Y axis. Once the object has the correct UV mapping, I just choose the appropriate texture map and apply the paint object tool.
Whenever texture alignment changes, though, even if it is the same texture file, different groups must be made. For instance, both of the Rapier's wings use the same texture, but one of them has to be flipped... so the left wing is a separate group of faces than the right wing. For the left wing, I don't even need to rotate the UV mapping box, but for the right wing, I need to rotate it 180 degrees around the Y axis (using front view again).
Textures that are supposed to face back or front, like the engine glows, need to be rotated 90 degrees around the X axis in side view, but the rest of the process is always the same.
Once I have got all objects set to be mapped from the correct alignment (front/back, top/bottom, or left/right), and all textures have been applied using these coordinates, I just use the hierarchy tools again, glue all objects together, and that's it.
So, let me know if you need any more help.
--Eder