Thursday, April 23, 2015

SKINned Alive

We knew about the coming Super Kerr Induced Nanocoating was coming and this week we got the official details from CCP Terminus:
Following the successful prototype Ship Painting Pilot Program we introduced last year and months of offering ship skins in the store, we have created a new more robust system, which provides a multitude of customization and usability benefits. It allows us to maintain and upgrade our ship catalog in a much more sustainable manner, and provides a multitude of interesting options for future developments. We believe the SKIN system will accentuate the visual experience of living in New Eden and allow you to put a personal mark on the ships you love most.
I was an immediate supporter of the ship painting program, and bought a few skins from the Next Store to make some Aliastra Incursus hulls to roam around Essence in. I know a lot of other players also like to pimp their rides even though in space other people are rarely close enough to see any part of your hull unless you are in a capital. Its the same logic of why World War II bomber crews put art on the nose of their planes: its for them and their buddies, not the targets receiving the bombs.

I am a fan of how some skins will be permanent fixtures on ships and how some will be time limited instances:
Time-limited SKINs will drop in game and may be available through other means in the future. They work exactly like Permanent SKINs when interacting with them. The only difference is they do not last indefinitely. Time-Limited SKINs have the following properties:
The time begins counting down as soon as the SKIN is activated. It will count down in real time from that point onwards until it expires.
If you activate a Time-Limited SKIN while you already have an active copy, it will add the specified amount of time on to the existing time left. For example: If you activated a Brutix Roden SKIN (30 Days) 2 days ago and then activate another copy today, you will have 58 days of time left with that SKIN before it expires.
Time-limited SKINs will only be for SKINs which drop in the game (We have no plans at this time to sell time-limited SKINs on the Tranquility server for Aurum.)
This means that some skins will be basic "I like that scheme and want it" or "our corp can now fly a unique scheme and look unique in videos and screenshots" while others can still be 'special' for pilots wishing to show off how rich they are.

I'm already for the conversion with some select skinned ships purchased so that my Aideron ships will rock some awesome colours. Now what we want next is corporate logos on our ships, get on that CCP! :)

1 comment:

  1. The previous scheme was stuffed for me. Any ship that I would skin was T2 rigged already, The risk of being blown up was a non issue, replacing the rigs was the show stopper. Now? Yay!

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