What's the crew count [looks like the helm is manned by just one]? Where are they coming form in the event of an emergency [what kind of emergency]? What other safety measures are in place? Could you just detach the entire "head" of the ship from the "neck" instead [if they're escaping a fuel/reactor problem]? Is it a pressurized environment [what about explosive decompression when the hatches are opened]? Why hatches instead of escape pod[s]? Drifting around in space, hoping for a pickup before your O2 runs out, isn't gonna much fun, nevermind the fact you'd have to, very quickly, get far enough away from the ship to be out of harms way if does pop.

If you do opt to put it on the side, don't forget to consider asymmetry, there's probably not a great need for two hatches, almost within arm's reach of one another, especially if there's only one person at the controls, and asymmetry can a be a strong design choice sometimes.

From a modelling stand point . . . forget the notion that the hull needs to be one piece! It doesn't and probably shouldn't be. You're only going to handcuff yourself trying to make it a single piece of geometry. With the exception of a few specific use cases [where a "water-tight" mesh is required] there's virtually no benefit to a single unified mesh, almost nothing in the real world is built that way either. Embrace the "splits" and learn to work them in at places you'd find on the real world counterpart. All you generally need is "light-tight" [so you don't get holes in shadows] and that's easily taken care of with a little overlap at those "splits".

For adding detail, Lux, pretty much hit it on the head, how you do the detail is going to depend largely on your end use case. What kind of details you add, will probably depend a lot on the purpose of the ship, a fighter vs a freighter, gun placements vs cargo mounts, etc.

Here's some quick thoughts tho. [Excuse the slop, my tablet is not at all calibrated for this laptop!?! o.O ]

Maybe give it "cheeks" you could mount your escape hatche[s] [or pods!] on/in them as well as some more coms/nav greebles? Maybe something like a "collar" where the "neck" meets the body? A simple curve to either the top, or the sides of the main body, will help break the "box" look, it doesn't take much to make it more interesting.

In the back where the engines are, instead of the part of the body that surrounds them being perfectly vertical, maybe the "lip" could be angled [when looking at it from the side/in profile? You could keep inner area where the engines intersect the body vertical the way it is now, but if you adjusted the "surround" so that it was angled from the top to bottom, or even vertical the way it is now, but sloped the bottom half forward, or a gentle curve that tapers off at some point.

Keep in mind you don't have to cover EVERY, SINGLE, SURFACE, with details, its usually a stronger design aesthetically to have contrast between large empty areas [with only minor details like a couple panel seams/screws/rivets] and more heavily detailed areas.

Just some quick thoughts!

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