I Finally Cleaned One Of My Ships

As time goes by, game companies use the latest technology to make games look brighter and shinier. Or at least more detailed. I spent some time over the weekend looking at the ships in my hangar and noticed they were not all bright and shiny. Oh yeah, ships in EVE Online get dirty.

As part of a major graphics upgrade back in December 2015, CCP introduced dirt that accumulates over time. 

The V5++ shaders and textures introduced in the PBR Project gave us the ability to set a dirt level for ships. Initially, we were happy to have that level be uniform across the board. For the past few months, every ship in New Eden has been sporting a fine patina of grease and grime.

Now, however, a new ship will start clean and accumulate dirt over time. The curve from spotless to soiled is gradual, but definite. Players will notice the difference, but everything won’t be covered in soot overnight. The accumulation is linked directly to the initial boarding date of a ship.  The clock starts for any given ship when a capsuleer first makes that ship active.

We’ve never recorded that date before, so faced with the problem of either generating artificial age data for hulls that have been around for years or starting from scratch, we opted for the latter. With the introduction of this feature, every ship in New Eden shall be fully refurbished to a new, clean state.

Of course, clean ships are gorgeous, and not everyone will want to give up that sparkling New Ship™ gleam.  We’ve included a method by which fastidious pilots can always automatically reset the dirt level on a hull to 0.  In the left-hand panel of the fitting window, below the Ship Skin information, capsuleers will now find a button labelled “Clean Ship.” Clicking that button removes all traces of dirt, as if the ship were newly assembled. One warning: this is an irreversible process, so if you value the visual signs of aging, be careful in the fitting window! And beware of repackaging, which will also reset the dirt level to zero.

Provided that a pilot never clicks “Clean Ship,” and never repackages the hull, dirt will accumulate and dinginess will increase over time, even when a vessel is stored in a hangar or ship maintenance array. We have left the option open for future developments that modify the accumulation curve according to actual events (mining, combat, hours in space, gate/wormhole jumps, etc.) and the graphic programmers are interested in investigating some of those options in future releases.  But for now, days active since the last ship cleaning means dirt accrued. No exceptions.

All I know is that over nearly 8 years I had never cleaned any of my ships before last weekend. The ship I chose was a Skiff. Exhumers are mining ships that belch a lot of smoke and fire. And I 

hadn't cleaned my Skiff for at least 4 years. How much dirt accumulated?

What a few years of grime looks like

Looks like an entirely different color of ship. The numbering on the front left of the ship is pretty much covered over with grime. I don't know if ships get dirty at different rates or if any of the other possible factors in dirt generation were ever implemented.

Not a major find, but something I found amusing. EVE contains a lot of systems and sometimes finding one is amusing. Now I just need to go through my stacks of SKINs and see if I have any for mining ships.