I’ve been greatly discouraged to customize at all because of the fact that you must spend GC every time.
Warframe had a nice system, you could color everything, but your color options were limited by default.
If you wished, you could purchase entire palette packs of colors you were after, and once you bought the colors, they were yours.
Guild wars had an interesting way about it too, making it possible to get “common” dyes through gameplay, and more rare ones over anonymous grand exchange or cash shop, or items that gave a random one.
Paying $5 for a virtual paint job kinda hurts, especially when it’s only for THAT ship and only for that ONE time… you have to pay again if you want to adjust it.
I understand this is a F2P game, but I can’t see myself ever using paint unless I reach the final tier and thus have a ship worth customizing.