Peters,
Balancing the historical and realistic content against the needs of a gaming environment, seems to be something that doesn't always allow for the obvious to occur.
Imagine if you will that every time a flight of Buffs flew over, in game they peppered a runway (extremely easy to do). This featured would be gamed immediately and many players would soon turn an angry eye towards the developers. Take that same concept to the few Carriers that are in the game and some of the most fun and challenging battles in the game would be wiped away by a single hit from a Shore Battery or single Jabo run.
Now, me personally, I would just love to roll my tank over a few twigs and leaves without ricocheting off like a pinball machine, ditching my perked vehicle because I landed upside down.
But, I leave it to the developers to decide if that feature would be more helpful or harmful in the present state of gameplay.
So, I am not dumping on your idea. I am only offering a flip
side to ideas about changing damage models. Having said that, the one area where HTC has gone way out of their way to recreate realistic damage modeling has been with the aircraft and munitions.