Yeah, i was about to link that but i'm slow af. Also check out 
glows in GIMP. The color used originally is 
#FFAABA, and i think a good width would be in the 20-30 pixels range but it depends mostly on your ship. Try multiple values, and be sure to add a dark background to check how the glow would actually look in space! 
Updating ship graphics is not possible as far as i know, but you *could* maybe come up with an artillery weapon that, when bought from a store, could "add" parts to your ship; keeping in mind that whenever you jump to a new beacon those parts would disappear. 
 like in this example
 like in this example, the animated parts are not included in the hull image and they disappear while jumping.
Chrono Vortex wrote:As for updating ship graphics mid-fight, the only way I can think to do that is making the entire ship a weapon animation.
What is this wizardry!? :0 Like, you mean a transparent hull image or is there a way to use an animation as the hull??