This ship went through half a dozen designs through forum suggestions, swapping my original Tesla coils on the roof for something slightly more web generator-ish on the sides (and another half-dozen tries before Shapeways agreed to pint them).
Years ago I started on a story that involved Klingon subject crews on Tholian auxiliaries, as the Tholian members of the crew needed a hot environment that the foreign ships couldn't handle. Here the front half of a Tholian Skiff has replaced the bridge of a purchased freighter.
This ship went through some significant design changes going from SL2400 to Shapeways. The metal miniature was significantly too small, so it was stretched from 120 meters to 148 meters. This stretching also opened up some space on the forward set of fins for another pair of engine grills.
All of the Tholian bits and pieces were leading up to this thing. This version shows the fully refitted battleship without the Spiders and Arachnids found on the Stellar Domination version of the ship. (I believe an updated SSD will be in an upcoming Captain's Log.)
All of the pinwheel models are made from combining three regular models with a custom three-prong stand topper and printing them out as one piece. This format allows for customized pinwheels, either by removing and replacing a ship on a one-piece pinwheel, or building one from scratch using individual ships.
I had originally tried building up some fancy superstructures for underneath, but stripped it down to the basics after deciding to go back to smooth on the top.
After drawing and rejecting half a dozen different designs for this, I decided just to go for clean and sleek. The phaser layout is taken from the original 8.5" resin mini.
I made a few attempts to panel the entire ship, with one patch of panels being distinctive for each ship. I scrapped the panel idea, but the nameplate stayed behind above the missile tubes. (This is Golden Spiral.)
