When you repair your ship with the salvage beam, it doesn't restore your paint job, so there's some third state beyond the pristine and damaged ship, something like unpainted metal. Is that part of what you're exploring right now?
TL;DRJonny Jacevicius says a distinct patched-metal look for field repairs is the design goal, but technical feasibility still needs checking with graphics and other teams, so he won't commit to it.
Yeah, so there's a lot of technical considerations that I don't want to write checks for at the moment, because we have to talk with the graphics team, we have to talk with a bunch of different people to make sure that that system will work. But that is what we want to do from the design side, if we can, because it does give you that nice visual feedback of, like, I've been through a few battles, I've had a few scrapes and I've patched it myself, because I want to keep going while I'm out. I don't want to go back to a landing zone or anything to get fixed up. It feels cool, right? Like you've been flying around for a while, I've taken a few hits, but I've scraped through and I'm patching up myself. I think it'll make a few ships look battle-scarred and awesome. And it also kind of ties into the fact that you might not necessarily be able to restore that part back to its full health again, unless you go and either get a replacement for it or go and get the proper repairs for it as well. So it gives you visual feedback on both sides: I've been out and about and had some scrapes, and also, this is a little bit weaker than it was to start with.