No, that's not possible. Textures are associated with MAT entries, which in turn are tied to hex-level entries in the CMP's VMESHDATA segments. In short... the only way to have multiple color-schemes for a ship is to buy a ship with a different color-scheme.

Now, that said... it might be possible to make a ship add-on that would, essentially, be the ship's hull. The only problem there is that if you built such a thing, it'd be very easily abused- players could remove it, and have a ship that was nearly invisible. And if you made it non-removable, like a Powerplant, then it'd defeat the whole purpose of the exercise- why not just have seperate ships then?

So... basically... if you want ships with multiple color-schemes, then you're going to have to put the work in. I've been looking at doing something very much like this for the mod I've been working on, but it's not something where you can avoid the work.

maybe that's not possible ... but if the claoking is available .. maybe you could use this function to add new exterior texture ???? instead to removed it ... no ??

Cloaking doesn't remove the textures... it just fades the ship out with transparency settings until the ship's invisible, and then it turns off the Glows (which is why the Engines disappear last).

As I said above... the only way I can think of that would allow us to "mix and match" paintjobs would be to treat ships as parts. Which is not terribly practical at the moment, in part of the problems it would create with SURs, not to mention Hardpoints. I know that we can add things to the outside of a ship very easily- this is not a problem, and such things could have their own health ratings, etc., and could be mounted/dismounted, giving people the ability to radically change the way that the ship's "peripherals" looked... you could make custom wings, for example, that people could mount/unmount- make them a Power source or something, so that people couldn't take off without them. Of course, such things would look rather stupid if the art assets weren't very carefully constructed, but I digress...

huummm ...
if i create an objet fixed on the center of my ship, with the CMP of this ship and one new MAT file .. that's could give this illusion, maybe ... no ??? the SUR file is the same ...
i tried to test that's ....

i must keep the same CMP of my ship for not discenter the model, just add to this objet a new MAT .. and a new specific hardpoint ....into the original model to mounted and unmouted it.... nice idea....