Oolite Bulletins

From what I've read in my travels on this forum, it's possible to change the stats of a ship by editing the ?.plist file (correct me if I'm wrong).

So for the purposes of immersion, would it be possible to have these values modified at a chop shop, in game, for a fee?

Things like adding extra missile pylons, altering pitch and roll settings...stuff like that.

We'll see!

If such a tweakability were to be implemented, there'd have to be inbuilt trade offs: if you add a missile bay, you'd have to choose between reducing speed or manouverability, or maybe it'd make the ship more prone to malfunctions/easier to damage, etc...

i'd say a missile bay would just reduce cargo size, nothing else. there is the additional matter to consider as to how these alterations would affect resale, surely a (for eg) Cobra that had missile bay removed for extra cargo would be good for a trader to buy, and a Cobra w/ the cargo bay chopped down to hold 8 missiles would be great for a bounty hunter type, but how should both those mod affect a ship when you come to trade it in?

Simple, the resale value of a 'chopped' ship would be considerably less, even if the mods were perceived as beneficial.
It would be like our cars tody...try taking a souped-up Corsa to a second-hand car dealer and see what trade-in he'll give you. Precious little as he knows it's going to be almost impossible to sell on.

...And the NPC ships cannot even have side lasers.