It can be done (see the editing forum) but only you can see it in MP.

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world:
those who understand binary, and those who don't.

hmmmm... why not in the SP, for own satisfaction?

Yeah, he's saying that you can change the textures, but if you play MP, you are the only person that can see the changes, cuz the modded files are on your comp. So you can do it in SP the same way.

I was wondering and since I know next to nothing about how to program for this game if this could be done,

If it would be possible to set up a mod that allows you to wrap a bitmap or some other image which could act as the paintjob around the exsisting ship skin.

Make it so these files for each ship could be stored in a sub directory to be accessed.

And add an option so that you can download the extra skins people use while in game, sort of like the option to download other peoples skins in the Quake series and other such variouse fps's, so that you can end up seeing the other persons skin?

Again I dont know much about programing but if there is a way it can be done could someone point me in the right direction, I wouldnt mind taking a shot at it.