Why am I suddenly quite glad my poor little hardware can't cope with shaders? That route seems interesting if complex, but for people whose kit can't support shaders (or those who have them turned off) it won't help.
But I would agree, in my experience the answer is "no". The closest approximation is multi-Dat's, like_ship and suitably set-up ship roles.
Unless of course you mean different textures on different parts of the ship which is done by sub-entities, but I don't think you do.
**Wanders away before brains begin to dribble out of ears**
Thanks guys, the answer is pretty much what I expected.
Thargoid, your assumption was correct. What I wanted was to do several colour schemes, marking sets, what-have-you for the same ship without having to create a distinct model for them all.
To my eyes it looked as if the texture was too deeply tied into the model so I am not at all surprised.