Too lazy to read. Gief TLDR version.

Well... I would imagine that pretty much every player in Perpetuum has some kind of an opinion about the game balance and as such it would be very interesting indeed to hear an interview of Dev Alf about the topic.

In my defense, I kinda skimmed through it for something that was interesting. I certainly looking forward to seeing terraforming on the new Gamma/Delta/Omega/Whatever-You-Call-Them islands and constructing my base there, when you implement it.

But paintjobs first, I think we agree it's the most important feature atm, with terraforming & nullsec being close 2nd most important. Preferably by the end of tomorrow.

Nothing improves the new player experience like the ability to destroy a planet. Barring that, slapping on a coat of red paint and going WAAAGH! in PVP is pretty much THE best improvement for a new player experience.

Let me put it this way... Its vanity. You simply cannot go wrong with vanity. The paint-scratching stuff is already in game, so it creates a demand. The only thing the Devs need to do is offer a palette of colors that can be manufactured by players and sold to other players.

Everybody wants their bot to be a different and unique snowflake. Yes, there will be black bots everywhere. Yes, it will create a constant demand for paint job kits that new players should be able to produce on Alpha and offer on the market. Different colors should require different resources.

And if you don't want pink Hello Ictus! bots in the game, just don't make Pink an available color in the palette. Look at all the people spending money on branded brushes, paints, sprays, base colors, bla bla for painting their Warhammer figurines; everyone wants their army/robot to be unique and special.

So how does it improve the new-player experience?
1. The variety new players see in game. Seeing every Kain (for example) with a different color is far more impressive then seeing 250 Kain mechs all looking EXACTLY the same, going EXACTLY the same speed, using EXACTLY the same weapons.
2. It provides them with a goal they can achieve solo, without requiring a medium/large corporation. Crafting paint job kits shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier to do then grind kernels to get knowledge to create bad prototypes to get a few lines out that won't sell anyway because nobody wants T1-T2 stuff.
3. It creates a niche in the market where there is a constant demand, so prices wont drop through the floor but nobody will make a killing either. It gets more NIC into circulation, so that guy who just spent a week making paint will be able to afford a Mech without having to run 400 transport missions (or carve his brain out because it is THAT boring).
4. The cool factor. I want a red Kain. I'd happily trade all my NIC (currently 37 million) for a bucket of red paint to slap on my bot. Then I would go out and die in PVP, or my mech will get his paint scratched, and I'd go make NIC to buy MORE paint, because thats how vanity-features work.

Imagine my disappointment when i first saw the armor color of my medium drainers was not the same than my vagabond armor color. The arms are...green

Paintjobs first!  And give full palett every colors has the right to live