Star Citizen’s Ship Skins

We are in the midst of Fleet Week & I wanted to talk a little about Star Citizen Fleet Week Skins, maybe a bit of a rant as well, so with Alpha 3.9.1 they have readded the ability to put skins on your ships… These skins are not a proper painting system just literally some premades skins atm.

Previous skins like the IAE Best in show or Private skin should be equipable and removable now. So those are items now and they are NOT permanently applied.

They have added some to buy for real money for just a few ships, the Auroras, Constellations, Arrows & Valkyrie… tho there should be more with the Aegis Sale later today and throughout Fleet Week.

Skins are not yet purchasable in game yet so the only way to get them is with real money. They are going to be purchasable in game in the future tho and eventually we will have a much more in depth system for manufacturer, aftermarket and painting customization of ships & vehicles.

So what will happen to skins when we have a paint customization system? Well we don’t 100% know yet. I think that they will keep skins as a type of customization where you could have much more detailed specific work like a dragon wrapped around a ship BUT it’s possible that they could have a system that when you customize a paint job that it saves that as a skin.

Also there is an exclusivity issue… there are some skins like the Drake Dragonfly Yellow Jacket, Executive Editions of Ships, the ILW2950 Paint Schemes for ships… if you are able to paint your ship freely then surely these are meaningless…

I think CI shot themselves in the foot slightly with this as they have previously said you’ll be able to make similar to the Rare/Exclusive skins in some cases BUT they won’t be identical… and that’s fine BUT I think that there should of been some more work done to these skins to make them more unique… give them some more accents or something that really makes them bam… not something that can just be copied… that’s just me tho.

There is a question of cost here as well… the Skins currently are priced a bit oddly $3 for a common aurora skin, $5 for what I assume is the event only Invictus 2950 Blue and Gold one.

But then we have $7.50 for a Green Consetllation BUT $11 for the Invictus Event, $9 for the standard Valkyrie Skins and $13 for the event only one.

Skins are going to be priced on a % of the value of a ship’s hull BUT my issue is that I don’t really want to be spending more than $5 for basic color changes… and big ships are going to have expensive skins! The skins are a little lackluster for me at this stage too… with the Constellation looking a bit like it’s from Fallout 76 imo However I do like the Camouflage Valk. The other thing is that only very very few ships have skins.

This puts the 300 series customization on the website in a weird place as well. For those of you that don’t know you can customize and buy a 300 series ship on the website and change a host of it’s aesthetics including chair, paint job etc… and eventually this will be part of the manufacturer customization system in game when you first purchase a ship.

Skins are separate and in addition to that at this stage and the only way to get 300 series skins is thru that customization atm.

There are more skins planned to be added and I would actually expect to see more with each major patch, some minor ones and with any events that CI do… as they are a simple way to generate some extra funds.

I am not yet impressed by the skins that CI has added to the game, though I certainly would rather have more skins even if they are only available for real money than not have them at all. It’s possible that something cool might turn up during fleet week…

But if they sold a Javelin skin how much would that be? It looks like skins around around 3-4% is $100 for a skin for that ship ridiculous? Again… when it’s available in game I kind of want painting to be a bit expensive… it make sense to help drive the economy and will help players NOT want to lose their precious ships… It must be said we don’t know if CI will scale up costs like that. I think part of my frustration with this is that I wanted/expected a bit more at this stage AND skins are nothing new to star citizen… I remember flying in my Aurora SXSW skin in 2015. I am interested to know what you think in the comments.

I am actually pro skin for monetization, just a little upset at the prices and the limited choices.

In some other news Players have found ways of destroying the UEE Capital Ships… which is amazing tho unintended at this stage. I have seen some very cool videos from CaptainBerks and DTox.

In just a few hours at 7pm UTC May 26th we are getting the Aegis Sale and the first wave of their limited hull ships on sale.

There is an expectation that the Idris and maybe some Javelins will be sold.

And I would love to see the Redeemer on Sale too, we should be able to see it on the show floor in the holo-rooms with some of it’s updates.

I think that the Aegis will be the biggest day for CI’s Sales for Fleet Week… I am interested to see if we will see the Reclaimer or Vulcan on sale BUT Aegis have a lot of combat or military ships that will all go on sale… I am hoping we will see some interesting skins as well…

I keep getting the question is there anything else new or something that CI could surprise us with in fleet week…

We have the Cutlass Blue coming on the 30th… you’ll be able to try that BUT it’s possible there could be something else on concept or straight to flyable that we haven’t seen yet. Tho that’s looking less likely now. The expo hall for each of the manufacturers are cool and worth a look for sure… Aegis later today, changing to Misc, Crusader, CNOU & Argo on the 28th AND then Drake on the 30th at their slightly off site expo at Riker Memorial SpacePort.. There is sure to be lots of limited ships and cool stuff on sale!