I d buy AUR anytime so i can purchase some paintjobs for my ships. I really dont see anything wrong there.

No, the only tricky part is how to involve player industry in the process, either via selling BPC's for the paint jobs or some other mechanic.

CSM: Can the new systems (such as V3) make it easy for players to color their own ships?

Art: It would be possible to do this, but a decision has to be made about how much freedom is appropriate, and then mechanisms have to be added to the game to support whatever decision is made.

CCP Huskarl: I would prefer to limit the possible variations, just as when you buy a car you choose from several pre-defined paint schemes.

Seleene/Two step: Are you leaning towards a few CCP-defined schemes, or providing players with several limited palettes (main color, highlight, etc.) to choose from.

CCP Huskarl: More towards the latter.

CCP Mannbj+¦rn: I tend towards the former, because it's not just the color that you have to worry about, but the material (and how it interacts with the lighting). There are just too many knobs that would have to fiddle with.

Two step: I would expose the knobs and let interested players tweak them and then sell their color schemes.

In response to a question from Two step, CCP Mannbj+¦rn noted that updating T3 ships to V3 models will be easier than updating the T1 and T2 ships.

Seleene: Is this (coloring ships) still envisioned as a microtransaction thing?

CCP Unifex: We haven't made those decisions, but my feeling is that if (Art) spends a lot of time making a custom scheme, that would be an Aurum thing. But other paint schemes might be rare drops, or available in an LP store. I think there needs to be a blend, and just doing one will **** off one or more of the stakeholders. The same goes for clothing; there may be a rare "Field Marshall" jacket only available as a drop

Two step approved of this approach. Getting back to ship skins, he commented that while he understands CCP's concerns about the look of the game ("no pink ships"), EVE is a sandbox game and it would be nice to be able to be a professional ship skin designer.

CCP Huskarl appreciated this point of view, but noted there would have to be limits. There was a short discussion of possible ways to achieve the goal.

Seleene raised the issue of corporate/alliance skins and color schemes.

Two step suggested it would be nice for industrialists to be able to produce custom ships with variations in both attributes and color schemes, so that the ships could be branded.

CCP Unifex: Nice dream.

Seleene: Talk to Stoffer (CCP Soundwave) and see how far you get.

Excerpt from the CSM meeting may-june

but until there is a direct AUR <-> ISK conversion the danger of pay to win is persistent because AUR is outside of the game on one side or the other.

As would many people. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Even if you could not get them initially any other way that spending cash (which blatantly won't happen), they would STILL end up available to everyone in game for ISK when people resell them on the open market.

Winter is coming!