Honestly, its stupid that no matter how much you attack a vehicle the only visual sign of damage is smoke. What I propose is that decals be overlayed on each side of the vehicle that provide a visual representation of the armor on the vehicle that side. The decal would change every time an armor plate is lost/gained, making the vehicle look more/less damaged when it is attacked/repaired.
i agree; indications about specific hull damage would completely and utterly nullify the armor detect skill. However, I could see, if one were so inclined, a slight adjustment to know when the vehicle is yellow, red, and flashing. But this is strictly a superficial extra and a trivial addition, so naturally low priority.
the smoke does change depending on the level of damage, but frankly I want to see a lot more decals on both structures and vehicles. these of course would be harder to see, especially at range, and would only indicate the damage of the side you can see (which the grenadier skill doesn't do) and whats more would still only be a rough guide, but it would be a great addition. Ideally, the decal would fade depending on how much damage it represents, so if someone repairs a tank the decal would slowly fade away instead of popping out of existance. on another note, there are certain areas (but not all) of tanks that already get decals when shot by machineguns, so you can totally pimp up your tank before you ride it into battle.
Maybe so the grenadiers armor detection doesn't lose its use though: armor type detection, and it would still show you the number of plates. decals would require guesswork.
Knowing what type it is, however, would prove useful. It would make more sense to research the hard counter to regenerative armor (bio shells) if you actually knew the enemy had regenerative armor.
