No, I don't have any links to smart projection tutorials, never had much luck finding any good ones.

A larger number in the angle field produces fewer islands and smaller numbers produce more islands and consequently more seams but it is fast. Using projection painting in conjunction with the UV (smart Projections) should get you finished texturing pretty quick with good results.

If you are wanting to do detailed textures with asymetric painted details then you'll probably be better off at this point using manual seam creation and unwrapping which is covered in the wiki as well as I could explain it.

If you want to manually unwrap but have mirroed textures on the pods you can unwrap the front pods and rear pods and stack the islands then use the alignment tool in the UV editor to straighten and align the stacked islandss. Doing it that way will leave you with three major sections instead of five, helps when texture space is an issue.

If you absolutely get stuck on this unwrapping thing send me the .blend or the .obj and I'll do  quick unwraps using the various methods then send them  back with notes so you can see how it all works.