Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I know this topic has been touched on many times in various different ways... But I think people are dreaming a bit too big. While I do not doubt the possibilities in the future, this may be a start.

I believe it is simple and we already have the majority of the systems in place for what could be implemented.

Paint buckets!

Now before you laugh at me and chase me away, hear me out.

6 Colours, 4 Sizes.

Red
Green
Blue
Yellow
Black - Rare
White - Very rare

Small
Medium
Large
Capital

Do the sizes remind you of something? RIGS!

Each ship can have an additional slot or two added (Much like a RIG slot) that can take a paint bucket. The bucket is locked in place and is destroyed if it is removed or the ship is repackaged. There is space on the fitting wheel for it.

If it is a single slot, it is a primary colour. If it is a two-slot ship, a primary and a secondary.

The painting system can function in a very similar way to RIGS in that a ship cannot be sold on the market while it has rigs/paint-buckets in it.

This solves MANY problems:

1) If a corp wants to have all their ships fly their colours, make buckets available in the corp offices and it is an opt-in option.

2) This allows players who do not want to change their ship too much (Maybe just have an accent change) to put a bucket in only the secondary paint slot and it makes minor changes

3) There are no lumo-pink Titans, or purple-headed 'geddons

4) Server load? What load? CCP already have a magnificent way to handle excessive people on grid (that whole time dilation system) perhaps as part of that. The second even minor dilation kicks in, all secondary colours are "ignored" and at higher levels, all colour customisation is removed. And if a server cannot handle 4-8bits more per ship in a system... Well... I'd worry.

5) Costs of buckets... Well many people have suggested AUR for the ship colour customisation... and I disagree. Perhaps use AUR for things like an overlay. If you want your camo paint job fitted, pay for it in AUR if it ever comes out but still only use the 6 colours available for the ships from the market. Primary and secondary slots.

Small buckets - 500 000 ISK per bucket?
Medium buckets - 3 000 000 per bucket?
Large buckets - 8 000 000 per bucket?
Capital - 250 000 000 per bucket?

Thoughts and suggestions?

UPDATE

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Some EvE Devs have suggested a new system that uses AUR, which I don't normally have an issue with... except to paint a frigate, you have to spend what amounts to 8 500 000 ISK for a single painting. Most frigates are roughly that price. And, I may be wrong, you need the frigate as an ingredient in the once off usage blueprint.

I am not against the AUR implementation, but not for the basics of the system. Perhaps Orange, grey, pink, pale blue, "cow hide", racing stripes and other slightly more exotic colours and colour styles could be put in the AUR store.

Funny thing is, if you look at how the current colour control works, you'll notice it'd already support fixed colour schemes.

It has the standard diffuse map which is mixed with a mask map containing 2 channels. Each of those channels is filled with a colour specified in the relevant ship's .black file, so say an EOM Apoc is your normal Apoc texture which then has a proper mask (whole hull) applied to it and the eom .black colour scheme.

If anything, CCP would wait with that feature though - until everything was V3'd properly.

(EDIT: they will probably slap it into the new NEX store too...)

I was talking to someone who mentioned the layers in the files. While I don't really understand them too well, it just sounded to me like it was easy enough to make a minor change and get a different colour coming through.

But yes, I agree. V3 would have to be throughout before ANY colour system could be implemented.

This thread died quickly...

clearly issue is T2 since they get their own unique painting that is dedicated to corp that made them. Lai Dai for example have brown with Orange.

I support for it and actual suggest that a T1 ship get only one color scheme. While T2 get 2 color scheme in their lay out.

Faction ship get their pattern scheme.

based on link I see, it can also play good isk sink as well.

Speak for yourself, I plan on buying as many Kador-Punishers as my wallet allows. My in-game wallet, that is. (I also plan on spending nothing on AUR. I have ISK and there is an in-game market, so let's roll.)

But this is not the place for discussing the demerits or merits of the option CCP is looking at implementing.

This is for possible ideas and expansion of the original post.