Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I hadn't really thought about floating geometry. For some reason I got it into my mind that each model had to be a single piece. After a bit of experimenting it appears that the engine I am targeting handles floating geometry fine so in future I will probably use this technique in…
That seems pretty effective. I would be tempted to float it as well but it would only save a few tris, not really worth it now that you went to the effort to join them. But it really starts to fall into how, whatever engine its going into, handles floaters. If there is a UV seam around the cap, then it will create a hard…