animating problems

hi,

i am creating a game where the main character is a robot and the player has the ability to create his robot from hundreds of parts. we are at the animation stage. we decided the best way to animate the character along with hundreds of parts was to animate a skelleton, the underlying frame ( which is a model as well). and simply parent the parts to be mounted onto the frame inside of unity. This way when we animate the underlying frame, the parts move along with it thus animating and saving us hundreds of hours of work.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/841/swxx.png/

Now the problem is that when we export the animation from the frame to maya it comes in as a single mesh and i cant parent parts to it since its a single mesh. i cant export the frame as separate parts because animations dont work then. I need a way to export the animation mesh in separate parts and have it come in as separate parts so i can parent the armors to it.

any help is appreciated. Also if you gota better way of handling the situation please tell me