The new Ship Kits lack the thing I buy Ship Kits for. :..(

While I love the ideas behind the new ship kits, the purpose for buying a ship kit is to customize my ship but the only customization decision in the new kits is what color my ship should be - same as buying a paint job.

These new kits (like the Mandalay Explorer pack, the Carapace pack, the Extraction pack, etc) don't give any selection of parts; everyone who buys the kit will get an identical-looking ship to everyone else, which defeats the point for me. I purchase ship kits to build a custom appearance, it kills my interest to know that all ships with the kit all look the same.

I understand that (to maximize the effect of the ship mesh additions) it makes sense to include paint jobs designed for those meshes, and that including paint jobs suggests either bumping up the price of the kit or cutting its other content, but a ship kit that doesn't offer ship customization is really hard for me to buy.

Perhaps enough parts to give us choices could be made more cheaply by reusing geometry: a Survey kit's scanner-dish geometry could be reused four times to be available at each location of the ship, that way even though all ships with the pack will likely have a dish, at least its location and/or the number of dishes used will be custom to each ship, and the same could be done with other Survey kit parts. I would go for that.

That said, the ideas in the kit themes these days are GREAT. The Hazard/Extraction pack, the Survey Pack, the Carapace Pack - these are fantastic kit themes. (Banners are a cool idea too)

(I'm also aware that another way to get a customization option out of these 3-pieces-only ship kits would be to buy two kits and mix them together, but I've found that the 3-piece design of the new kits makes that feel deeply unsatisfying and unworkable; even if the themes don't clash the few pieces available are fighting for the same slots)

Please consider making these great ship kit themes more of a customize-your-ship experience!
 
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[I posted this over xmas when anyone at FDev who could consider it was out on vacation, so I'm giving it a bump now that people are back in the office]
 
To be fair, the old ship kits are pretty awful too.
The Cutter and Vette kits have pieces that all work well with each other (except the tiny pointy nose option for the Vette, not sure why that exists), but yeah, for each of those, there's two awful ones. I mean, try making the Phantom look any good with a ship kit.
 
I noticed that in the latest Frontier Unlocked livestream, the hosts called out that the Panther Clipper's ship-kit would include six pieces to enable custom mixes.

So thank you FDev, I feel heard, and the Panther Clipper ship kit is on my shopping list :)
 
I noticed that in the latest Frontier Unlocked livestream, the hosts called out that the Panther Clipper's ship-kit would include six pieces to enable custom mixes.

So thank you FDev, I feel heard, and the Panther Clipper ship kit is on my shopping list :)
I‘m pretty sure all the „stellar“ ship kits came with 6 pieces, 2 for each location on the ship. Only the seperately published kits came with just one configuration. I would expect it‘s the same for the Panther Clipper.
 
I noticed that in the latest Frontier Unlocked livestream, the hosts called out that the Panther Clipper's ship-kit would include six pieces to enable custom mixes.

So thank you FDev, I feel heard, and the Panther Clipper ship kit is on my shopping list :)
All the initial shipkits for the new ships have 6 pieces. The additional ones only get 3, at the same price though. Old shipkits had 12 or 16 pieces. It is a brutal price hike, pay more to get less than in the past, but it's cosmetics only. And I'm guilty enough of buying two kits per ship, to mix&match from 9 pieces.
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All the initial shipkits for the new ships have 6 pieces. The additional ones only get 3, at the same price though. Old shipkits had 12 or 16 pieces. It is a brutal price hike, pay more to get less than in the past, but it's cosmetics only. And I'm guilty enough of buying two kits per ship, to mix&match from 9 pieces.
The shrinkflation is real. But, to be fair, for the old kits as a rule I only ever found just one combination that worked for me and the rest of the pieces went completely unused. At least we get 4 paints with the new ship kits, though bundling these together can be seen as a negative, too, if you only want one livery of that whole bunch. Still, for Manda, the Ace kit and included paints were all I wanted:
EliteDangerous64 2025-03-05 21-47-13.jpg

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EliteDangerous64 2025-03-10 21-34-15.jpg

Same for Cobra V and Delta pack, looks like something from Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica (though I'm still not 100% sure of the tail piece):
EliteDangerous64 2025-07-01 14-34-41.jpg


BTW, that CV of yours is stunning, that tail works really well with Delta pack (y) I wish we had Iridescent paints available, it would look amazing on new ships...
 
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