You CAN paint your aces to be as flashy as you want, but you don't need to. The highest scoring WW2 fighter ace took to flying a regular plane so people wouldn't run away from him if I recall.

I have a tendency to fly my ace pilot in a different colouref fighter. Something I shouldn't do, as it tells your opponent which one to shoot first.

...A lot of people who fly two generic ships with the same baseplate use a different model for one of them to help keep track of which is which during the flurry of the game, if you can't be bothered to check the baseplates then that is your problem.

different models okay but you still have to track which pilot card the shields/damage are on. Say if they used the alt paint model such as the TIE Fighter from the Gozanti cruiser with the alternate art pilot card Academy pilot to separate it from the other one in the core set then that is good.

I have said this before and continue to say this X-wing is not a card game it is a miniatures game that uses cards to track stats and hitpoints throughout the game. Still with that being the case each model must be have an identifiable and unmistakably unique card connected to it.

I've recently moved back home after a stint overseas, so I get to introduce X-Wing to my old mates. We're in our late 30's and loved SW when we were younger. Despite having read a tonne of SW books and played every SW related game over the years we tend to stick with OT ships.

Interestingly, it has been easier to teach these guys the game when the ship matches the card art. Despite only playing OT ships, we have unquestioningly accepted the new paint jobs on the Interceptors, red B-Wing and blue A-Wing (I love that re-paint. Those Ralph Macquarie concept sketches are the greatest. I have some ESB ones on my wall).

Conclusion, as a teaching mechanism, the alternate repaints can be helpful in easily identifying specific ships.