Major Update 4 is coming next week, and we’re excited to share one of its biggest new features with you ahead of time: the new airplane livery system.
In other words, airplane skins are coming to Ground of Aces!
With this new system, you’ll be able to order and paint your aircraft in various different liveries, giving your fleet a much more personal and distinctive look.
Here, we want to explain how the unlocking of the airplanes will work and give you a few insights into our research material.
Most liveries will be unlocked simply by playing the game and completing specific achievement-style assignments.
At launch, the system will include:
16 Temperate Land Skins
16 Night Skins
6 Temperate Sea Skins / 10 Day Fighter Skins
We’ll continue expanding the collection over time. For a few aircraft, not every skin is finished yet, but more will be added in future updates.
Available for all planes except the North American Mustang. For two planes, it's already set as the default skin: Westland Lysander and Boulton Paul Defiant.
Unlock the Night skin for a bomber:
Safely fly away in 10 real scrambles (must count as “flown away to safety” in the scramble summary)
AND
Return home 5 times with under 25% health
Unlock the Night skin for a multi-role plane:
Fly 1 unsuccessful mission at >90% success
AND
Fly 5 successful missions that have gone wrong
Unlock the Night skin for a fighter:
Take part in 20 real scramble defenses - plane must have taken off in time to take part in the fight
AND
Shoot down 3 planes in scrambles
Unlock the Night skin for a special plane:
Fly 5 successful missions that have gone wrong
AND
Return home 5 times from a mission with under 25% health
Unlock the Temperate Land skin for a bomber:
Fly 20 successful Bombing missions
AND
Fly 20 successful Cargo missions
Unlock the Temperate Land skin for a multi-roll plane:
Fly 20 successful Fight missions
AND
Fly 20 successful Bombing missions
Unlock the Temperate Land skin for a fighter:
Fly 40 successful Fight missions
AND
Fly 10 successful Manoeuver missions
Unlock the Temperate Land skin for a special plane:
Fly 20 successful Stealth missions
AND
Fly 20 successful Recon missions
Unlock any Temperate Sea skin:
Fly 10 missions with sea or coast destinations (using the plane model you want the skin for)
AND
Travel 10,000 km total (again, using that same plane model)
For the following planes, you can have the Temperate Sea skins:
Short Stirling Mk.I (RAF)
Bristol Blenheim Mk.IV (RAF)
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress F (USAAF, RAF)
Bristol Beaufighter MK.IF (RAF)
Avro Lancaster MK I (RAF)
Handley Page Hampden Mk.I (RAF)
Unlock any Day Fighter skin:
10 successful mission on enemy territory
AND
5 returns with 25% or lower health
For the following planes, you can have the Day Fighter skins:
Gloster Gladiator Mk.I (RAF)
Gloster Meteor Mk.III (RAF)
De Havilland Flamingo (RAF)
North American Mustang Mk. I (RAF)
Hawker Typhoon Mk.Ib (RAF)
Hawker Tempest Mk.V (RAF)
Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IX (RAF)
Hawker Hurricane Mk.II (RAF)
Westland Lysander Mk.III (SD) (RAF)
Boulton Paul Defiant MK.I (RAF)
A few important things to know about how liveries work:
Skins are unlocked per airplane model. A Lancaster skin only works on the Lancaster, not on other bombers.
You must complete challenges using the aircraft type you want the skin for. Want a Spitfire livery? You’ll need to fly Spitfires to earn it.
Multiple planes of the same model can contribute in one mission. All qualifying aircraft of that type will count toward progress.
Progress carries over across missions. You don’t need to complete everything in a single run.
Example: Flying 5 Spitfires in two missions counts as 10 total Spitfire uses.
Unlocks are stored globally, i.e. can be used on any save. Unlock progress of individual assignments is only stored per save.
In addition to gameplay unlocks, we’ll also offer a set of special liveries that can be redeemed with promo codes. Like the Pre-War Gloster Gladiator which you can unlock by signing up for our newsletter.
At launch, it's possible to unlock Natural Metal Finish Skins and certain unique Special Skins with promo-codes.
These codes will be distributed through:
Our own livestreams
Content creator collaborations
Special events and community moments
Our first promo code was already given out during our latest dev livestream:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2693952090
And more will come later. We’ll keep creating new skins, and their codes may appear in future streams or events. To stay updated, keep an eye on our community spaces like the Discord and newsletter.
We’re also working on an in-game news system to make sure you won’t miss any upcoming codes.
For research, we worked with books like British Aviation Colours of WWII – The Official Couflage, Colours and Markings of RAF Aircraft, 1939-45, which you can directly check out as a PDF.
And "The Complete Book of World War II Combat Aircraft" is an essential part of our research and has a permanent place in our office:
Websites that collect information about aircraft colors and camouflage that are also used by model painters helped us a lot by giving clear overviews of the colors of the different scheme types.
For very active players who don't want to wait, we have a test version of the Major Update 4 up on the testing branch right now!
The unlocking assignments are not set up in the test version yet; this means in this version you have the Night Skins, Temperate Land, Temperate Sea, and Day Fighter skins available directly.
This will be different in the default version, which will be released in a week.
How to switch to the testing branch:
Right-click Ground of Aces in the Steam library list.
Go to the “Properties…”
Go to “Game Versions & Betas”
Switch to “alpha - Alpha test”
You can switch back to the default branch at any time.
Try it out and send us back your feedback, and we will continue to improve the features and fix bugs until the normal release of the update.