The latest blend file (just download and open with Blender to see the mesh for this spaceship)

The latest stage of the work on this spaceship model, now that the basic state of the underlying mesh is basically fixed, is to add greebles, features and interest.

Right now I am adding a touch of colour. I have been working with Blender's default white colour for quite some time and since adding a nice yellow canopy I've become a little bored with it.

The colours will of course be primarily determined by the textures that are eventually added to the mesh, if I understand the process correctly, but it is apparently also a good idea to associate colours that approximate those of the completed model to the raw mesh.

I'm also working on the cockpit. It is surprising just how much detail you can see from quite far away and the cockpit just isn't detailed enough as it stands right now. You only see these things for a split second as you are dogfighting in game I guess, but if a thing is worth doing.....

One of the contributers to the Vega Strike forum thread where I'm getting encouragement and advice during the creation of this model mentioned that the pilot looked a little too big. To make sure that the pilot was the right size for the cockpit I modelled him/her independently and then "stitched" him/her into the mesh.

Next I worked on the surface of the spaceship adding panels, details and bits that light up. This includes the jets of red hot metal dropplets that are used in the 12 radiators on the spaceship wings. Three radiators can be seen on the upper side of the right wing here.

Initially the spaceship panels were looking a bit too rounded.

After a little bit of work - OK it took hours and hours and a lot of head scratching - I was able to get the surface detail of the spaceship looking a little less like a turtle shell and a little more like the high-tech devices of an advanced space-going faction.