I'm looking for a more efficient way of cutting grooves and making panels on my little spaceship models.

Here we start with a picture by Starfire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_%28strategy_game%29) artist Jackie Southerland:






I interpret the black lines running longitudinally and latitudinally as recessed grooves, and other portions as panels projecting out of the spherical body.

So, I start with a curve:





And then revolve it to get the spherical body with some of the recessed lines already in place.



Next, make a solid that will inscribe our lines.



And boolean merge it with the main body.



Copy the external part, then undo the merge, thereby healing the main body back into one piece, then past the external piece back in.



Hide the main body, and 2D scale the cutter about its center.



Use boolean diff to cut the lines out of the main body.




This process seems awkward and time consuming to me. Any advice on how to accelerate this sort of process?