In my opinion the price is it’s weakest point but that’s how much Shapeways charges for their services, I have only tiny slice out of it and minimal influence over the cost calculation. Hopefully sometime in the future those prices can come down, but I doubt anything happening anytime soon.
As for other models, this was planned for another thread but since you asked...
I am currently busy working on another waterline model for the HMV; USS England DE-635. It’s going to be your typical paper model where, with the exception of few wires, 99% of it can be made out of of paper. It will also allow, as a side option, to build all the internal formers from laser cut 1 mm thick card and of course special edition of another 3D Hull Core.
In fact I’m hoping to offer 3D Cores for all my future projects.
Darius