I think I was misunderstood about the "seperate helmet" idea, Mattn is right except that what I was suggesting is a different concept - Allow me to clarify:
As helmets get more advanced and protective, they cover more of the head and especially more of the face, until the point where the whole head and face is covered. When they get to this point, the soldier heads all look the same with that type of armor because the helmet covers everything and from the outside it isn't possible to recognize the soldiers or distinguish between them.
The aircraft pilots are already an example of this, with their helmets.
The Fix, which would also work for the pilots as well:
In the pre-mission equipping screens only the character, meaning a soldier, pilot, whatever, would not be wearing the helmet and hold it in one of their hands, so the player can see the entire un-covered head and face and easily still identify a somewhat unique look for that character. This means the pilots could also have randomly selected unique faces just like soldiers.
During missions on the battlescape, there would only be *one* mesh which is exactly the same as how it works right now for the older models, the helmet and head model combined as one head model. If the player zooms in or re-equips inventory in the middle of a combat mission, they would see this one, single head model - which again is exactly the way it already works for the old head models. It would appear to the player that between the time they equipped the soldier before the mission and when the mission began the character apparently had put on the helmet, but the game program just replaces the un-armored head with the version wearing the helmet, just like how it already works now, one single model.
I never meant to suggest that there would be two models for the head during missions, one covering up most of the other, because yes, that would be a waste of graphics resources for the game, as well as being a sloppy design with the models even if it appeared to work.
This means that for the fix I'm suggesting the "helmet-only" model that the soldier holds in their hands before missions in the equip screen would not be used at all during missions.
As for making the soldier hold the helmet, its only a matter of attaching the un-worn helmet to the off-hand with a TAG, which the body that has the hand already should have anyways (for holding items in the off-hand).
Edit: Attached is a quick-and-dirty depiction of how this fix would work for a pilot, just in the pre-mission equip screen only. During a mission, if a pilot was in a ground battle for a special mission or something, that head in this screen shot would not be rendered or there at all, and the helmet model would not be in the hand but instead on the body's neck.
