I don't think recolouring for different fleets would be a problem. You just modify the hue/sat/lum map - like GTA1&2 did with the cars for example.
You could perhaps only replace a narrow band of hues - this would allow a ship to be made with some parts common between fleets. Another option would be to use a second monochrome "mask" image to determine the areas to be recoloured.
Alternatively, you use a 256 colour palette and reserve some to represent different shades of the fleet colour/engine/cockpit etc.
It really wouldn't be difficult anyway.
What would be *really* great is if you could have "deltas", allowing ships to sustain visible damage, again, like in the early GTA games.

The deltas would be front/left/right/rear (not corners like in GTA) and would be used when a given proportion of components are destroyed on that side.
Somewhere on these forums, somebody suggested that it was unrealistic for the player to be able to see exactly which components are damaged on an enemy ship. That's a fair point. Using deltas would not only look really cool, but would give the player a more realistic idea of how much damage they have inflicted on an enemy ship.
Re: Vectors being easier than rasters for less artistic people...
I'm not convinced that's true. I think most people could do better in paint than they could in critical mass's ship editor, although their vector ships might look *relatively* good because nodody else's look good either, I suppose.
There are huge communities of people modding sprites for all kinds of games, including GTA (at the time). Subspace:Continuum is another good example. I'm sure Critical Mass could attract a lot of attention too. Many of these people will start out just modifying existing designs - copy&pasting bits from different ships together. However, with practice, I think anyone would be able to create nice ships.
Wouldn't it be great?!
