spiritplumber
Spaceman
The Rapier just LOOKS fun to fly. Awesome. Textures wise, I vote we go for more realistic/subdued for WC1 and WC2 era ships (aka keep your rapier the way it is now), or they'll look out of place when mingled with more modern ships. We can bet that if Origin had 3d accel back then they would have done the same, I think.
I would stick to the close modelling as possible, but have no will to draw textures like that 
) The turrets on the side of the bow, according to Claw Marks, are dual-gun, though they seem to be single-gun on your model. Also, there seems to be a bit of a fillet/fin type thing horizontally mounted on those pipe-things that are at 45 degree angles to the main hull. Here's the