Next Step Beyond Skins

My Police Comet

I fly Comets a lot. It has become my "go-to" ship for general Yarring around Citadel/Black Rise and it serves very well in that role. Until ship skins came along I never spent any Aurum on anything, so I had a nice little pile of it available and bought some skins. My first purchase was the Police skin for the Comet. Since it is the best skin available in Eve. Not only is it an awesome skin, but it comes with Police Lights!!  And ever since that day I've been naming my Comets after famous television Police, Detectives and the actors or actresses that played them. My currently undefeated Comet is named Jack Lord, the actor that played Detective Steve McGarret in the original Hawaii Five-O.

Yesterday I asked about the way in which we all name our ships over on Tweetfleet and here on the blog. I got some amazing answers, formulas and strategies from everyone when it comes to naming conventions for their spaceships. Not surprising to me. I expected it, our ships are important to us. They are, after all, the extension of ourselves inside of Eve. They are our vessels in more ways than the obvious. So it is only natural that we all take ownership of them and want them to reflect even a small part of our own personality.

So the natural extension of all this is the following question, "Is there anything else that can be done to express that personality?"  I already mentioned yesterday the idea of having names attached to saved fits so that the newly fitted ship holds onto the name it has been given. I also like the idea of ship names showing up on kill-mails, to preserve some individuality and personality long after our ship goes boom boom. Neither of those two things seem all that difficult to implement. But again, my knowledge of what it would take to do so is less than zero.  But, if I've learned anything during the last eight years, it is this - if you don't ask, you won't get.  So it's worth asking.

Ok, so how about ship names actually being printed on our ships?  We have some reason to believe that Alliance Logos will eventually be appearing on our ships someday soon™.  If that is possible, then would it also be possible to have the name we've given our ship also appear?  Now I'm going to go right ahead here and assume that it is probably impossible to constantly update thousands of ship names that can be changed on a whim at any time.  That seems like a good assumption.  So what if we tie the saved fit name into a permanent feature?  Once fitted the ship name can no longer be changed?  As long as that ship is alive it is stuck with the name it was given?  That would cut down the sheer amount of information being asked of the server, wouldn't it?  Would it be enough to make the idea fall within the realm of possibility?

Would you be willing to trade the ability to re-name your ship at anytime for the ability to have said name displayed on the hull of that ship?

I honestly don't know if any of this is possible.  I'm just asking the questions and pondering the possibilities.  I'd be willing to trade extreme customization on ship names, which is a relatively useless feature, in order to have more permanent ship names emblazoned on my ships.  But that's me.  And I'm weird like that.

How about you?