While the full featured ship customization system is still in development stages, currently there are options available to own ships with slightly different appearances, such as a different color or style of livery. These are known as "skins" and "paint" and while only the very basic and limited options are in place for certain ships, there will be a great deal more variety and options to customize your fleet's appearance in the future.
We will not be going over the future plans for the customization system here since it is constantly in flux and changing, and instead will be covering the options currently available for our players.
Current Types of Skins and Customization
- Ships that come with a unique look from their basic counterpart. (Ex: Gladius vs Pirate Gladius)
- Ships that can be customized to apply a unique look. (Ex: The Origin 300 series)
- Upgrades like paints to apply to a ship to give them a distinct new appearance. (Ex: IAE Best in Show Cutlass Livery)
- In-Game paint items that work like and are stored similar to ship components.
Keep in mind that not all options will always be available. A specific example is the special skin/exterior paint that players could only apply to their 300 series ship during the 2019 Origin Celebration.
How to Apply Skins
- For ships that have options with different colors or hull livery, obtain the ship that has the different skin.
- If you have an upgrade item that will change the look of one of your ships, use the skin upgrade from your hangar page and apply it to the relevant ship. If you own multiple copies of the relevant ship, take care that you are applying it to the correct one!
- For In-Game paint items, go to your ship's loadout screen in the mobiGlas and select the appropriate tab. After that, select your desired option from the list. Be sure to save the changes before exiting!
As mentioned above, eventually there will be many additional options and ways to customize your ships with different colors and skins. Since that is all in development right now and may radically change as we move though our test phases, exact details on how it will function are not known.
In-Game Paint Items
For ship paints and livery that have in-game item components associated with them, they will be sent to and stored in your local inventory at your primary residence when you first acquire them. This is the location you choose to start when you first logged into the game.
Above: Example of paint stored in local inventory at Orison.
To use it on your ship, you must be at the location where your paint is stored with the proper ship to be able to access the paint to use on your ship. So for the picture above, to use that paint you must fly the ship you want to customize to Orison to make use of it.
If you have forgotten where your paints are stored, you can use the Assets app on your mobiGlas to verify the location of any available and unapplied paints.
How to Remove or Change Skins
Currently, we are in the process of updating the paint and skin system to allow players to switch and change out skins on command. As mentioned in the linked Commlink article, this is being rolled out slowly as work on the system and how it will interacts with various ships is completed.
If a ship has not yet been updated for use with the new system, then it is not possible to remove or revert changes made to a ship pledge, which includes a skin or customization option. Consider options carefully before altering a pledge with a skin upgrade.
Should you not wish to wait for the system to be updated and allow you to remove your skins freely for a given ship, players will need to reclaim the pledge that contains the ship and buy it back to "remove the skin" or customization by reverting the ship to its base. This will add the ship's (and if applicable, the skin's) value to your RSI account as store credit to use on a new pledge.
Some very important points to keep in mind before doing this to remove a skin or customization:
- Limited offer skins and customization options that are built in to a pledge will be permanently lost. (Ex: the 2019 Origin Celebration special ship colors, the IAE 2949 Best in Show skins)
- The ship/pledge being reclaimed may not be available on the pledge store. Double check it is there and available to pledge for again before reclaiming your current items.
- Buy-backs using store credit are limited by an account's credit buy-back token, which are distributed once per quarter.
Review our guide about reclaiming pledges and pledge buy-back before doing this!
Future Plans for Ship Customization
If you have some suggestions and other ideas for ship customization and skins, head over to Spectrum and post your ideas there! These forums are reviewed by special teams daily for feedback on how to make Star Citizen the best it can be.