Last three areas of the ship to recreate from the game were laser canons, fission engines and the landing gear.

I started by working on the canons. They're relatively simple constructions, but their length and slim silhouette posed some engineering challenges.They could theoretically be fully 3D printed on SLA, or even FDM printer, but in both cases they'd turn out very fragile and in the latter case, probably pretty blocky. I decided to build the canons around a 3 mm styrene rod.

At first, I considered a brass rod instead, but was afraid that it would be too heavy and would contribute to the ship frequently tipping over to one side. Styrene rods are very light, while still being relatively stiff and strong. Also, they're very common in the modelling community which makes them very accessible and pretty cheap.

The tip of the gun was even thinner than the barrel itself. I could've thicken it up a bit, but I decided to stay true to the original design. To achieve this delicate detail, I decided to use a pair of sewing needles, ground flat at the end. They'll be glued in place, while the heads of the needles prevents them from falling out of the canons end.

As a part of the challenge of making the parts injection molding ready, I wanted both canons to be exact copies of each other. It's easier and cheaper to manufacture in that case, since you don't need two different or one bigger mold to produce two symmetrical versions of the parts, but you can make one smaller mold and mold the part twice. In case of 3D printing it doesn't matter of course, since you can create another printing program of the part being mirrored, for no extra cost.

The engines were next. I went for the classic technique of splitting the part in the middle, which works great for both injection molding and 3D printing, creating a nice flat mold partition plane and base face to print on, respectively. I had to add a linking brace in the middle though as a separate part, since with 3D printing, nothing can extrude beyond the base plane, in contrast to injection molding, so you cant model in the locks for registering the parts to each other.

It took me quite a moment, to fully understand, how engines in this Z-95 version are arranged. Some mirroring was expected but exactly were, surprised me a bit. After good few minutes of jumping between the texture sheet and game screenshots, I concluded that left and right engines were mirrors of each other, which was expected, but bottom and upper weren't, which was odd. Instead, they were rotated 180°, which makes, that different sides of the engine are positioned towards the fuselage, since they're not symmetrical, like the cannons are.

Anyway, I placed all the engines in the right places and orientations, and added connection points between them and the wings, making sure that connections between right and left engines are positioned in different places, making the accidental swapping of the sides impossible.

The exhausts, thankfully, were identical for all the engines, just rotated slightly, so they'll be all printed from one model, four times.

Finally, I started working on the landing gear.

I really wanted to be two ways to assemble the ship- with the landing gear down and up- as it usually is the case with scale assembly models.

Front foot was the easy one to make. I again reached for the styrene rod, this time 2 mm instead of 3. Rod will be turned and small grooves will be cut on it to simulate details. Additionally, 1,2 mm spring wire will be used to simulate the diagonal support. Connection between them will be mostly symbolic, due to the small contact area. Both rods will be mostly held in position by the body of the ship itself. And since the landing gear hole frame is present on the outside regardless of the gears position, just not attaching the front leg will create the closed position.

Back landing gear was a little more complicated and is the only place in the entire build, where I had to change the original design of the ship, to make it actually work.

In the original T-65B X-wing and the classic Z-95 Headhunter, back landing gear folds into hatches positioned on the lower engines, which is a weird creative decision to say the least.

You could argue that there is enough space in the tube for both the engine and the landing gear and the lower engines are attached so well that the entire ships weight can be rested on them, but it still seems wrong to me.

The artist working on Z-95 for the game must've think the same, since the landing gear is attached to the fuselage itself.

Unfortunately, the designer didn't add any new hatches or holes for the legs in the new position. They just stick out of the body randomly, which is fine for the game, where no one will even see them without clipping out of bounds, but wasn't going to work for my model.

Luckily, there is a set of large panels, just behind where the back legs are attached. I'm not sure if they were indented as the doors for the back landing gear, but I could use them as ones. So to make the landing gear work, I moved the legs backwards to the center of the panels and also spaced them out a little more, to improve ships stability.

Since the panels probably were never meant to be landing gears hatches, it's unclear where and how they would open. I considered making them open towards the centerline of the fuselage or towards the edges, but in the end, I decided to split those panels down the middle- another deliberate inaccuracy to the source material- and open the halves to the sides, just like the original X-wings.

I constructed the back legs of the aircraft the same way as the front one- using 2 mm styrene rods. The front foot was a little larger than the back ones but it was the same style and close enough to make them all identical- another wink to the injection molding manufacturing process.

For the back landing gear, I developed two parts from which you choose one to glue in place: either a flat piece with engraved panel lines, simulating the closed hatches, or a one with hatch doors open, small recess for the legs to fold into and 4 slots to insert the styrene rods.

At this point, I also decided to let go of the need to make the parts injection molding ready. It serves no real purpose aside of me challenging myself, since this kit will probably never be injection molded, and it started to really get in a way of completing this design. Injection molding and 3D printing have a lot of similar needs, but in the end they are different manufacturing methods and both start to require different approaches to the design. I allowed some undercuts in the end, to assure that the parts will print well and the connections between them will be strong and reliable. I'd estimate that the parts ended up ~80% injection molding ready, and with additional few dozen hours of modelling, could be totally converted for that manufacturing method.

With the landing gear finished, I completed recreating the entire ship, as it appears in the game.

It took around 4 months of very intensive work in my free time. I ended up with an assembly of 76 parts, and accuracy that I'm very proud of.

But I wasn't done with the design. With this much time and hopes invested in this project already, I decided to take it another step further, before I complete the designing process and turn on my printer.

To be continued.