Getting an odd message in the logs "Platform mqtt does not generate unique IDs." - where to solve that?

The platform: homeassistant entry is reading data from HA, and is not your problem.

It is the name or id of each ESPHome sensor or switch that must be unique. Note that the “This entity does not have a unique ID” is not the same error as the subject of this thread. What is the exact error you’re seeing?

Please see rule 11 when posting code.