Not necessarily. If you look at last year’s showcase, there are a few ships that barely differ from their default looks – there’s even one that sticks right out in the top left corner!
The only requirement that actually requires effort will be your personnel tier/flight time. I do hope that the tier requirement will be at least 70 since I’ve just reached that tier not too long ago. I can’t recall for how long have I been fighting against the Henpire though, I’ll edit this post once I get home to my pc.
Do you think it’s worth changing Dart? If yes, which option is better? Add to the Thunder squad? Write, who would you like me to add from the characters (name, type, name of the ship)?
But technically now almost all replies here are off-topic, because topic is not about posting your spacecraft, you don’t even need to do that in order to participate in the showcase…