Will we ever be able to tell the potential health or damage of a Player by looking at the state of their armour?

There are some technical artistic limitations. Ships currently have a second layer, extra UV sets, to show the damage it has taken if any (so the top layer gets eroded when damaged, revealing a texture underneath that gives it the "damaged" look"). Players (armour) don't have that right now, because it would cost additional resources that are unaffordable. So the first thing they're looking into instead is to be able to see the status or type of a character from a glance. As part of this they've been talking about different types of suits and clothing that Players would wear, and to potentially theme them to different jobs. This would result in changing the stats of armour to fit different types, rather than having a situation where everyone where's similar or different armour, with similar stats. To elaborate, armour adds different things to a Player's stats, such as damage resistances (and perhaps other things like weight to slow the Player down by a certain degree depending on the armour). But this works quite similar to how the ships work, with the power triangle idea (so moving a stat in one direction reduces a stat in another, such as increasing armour might also increase weight). Ultimately, it depends on the suit in question and how it's been set-up regarding these stats. What's nice about the system is that they mix and match stuff, so Players can set-up their own custom profile to a degree, such as having an Explorer Undersuit with a Heavy Armour Core, which will be a different set-up than someone who goes full Heavy Armoured Marine. Armours and Suits might therefore be rethemed to fit types, so an Explorer type will be themed towards Exploration, which will be reflected in gameplay (so perhaps better climate control for the suit, or better protection from hazardous environments) - which is important so that Players can actually feel a difference in the gameplay, but also changing the looks should help Players "read" the different Armour/Suits easier. Whilst this won't help gauge another Player's health/damage state, it will help gauge what that Player is doing, or what activities that Player is geared up for (so if you met someone and they said they were a miner, but they were geared up for combat, you might be suspicious). This is more about being able to determine another Player's overall capabilities based upon what they're wearing. On a related note, they're doing a tonne of work around Actor States right now. The Actor Status system isn't just health, but all kinds of things like hunger, thirst, knockdown resistances etc. So a Player should be able to tell to a degree what another Player's status is from looking at them, but only generally speaking, and anything more specific would require Scanning. There is dirt and wear that will affect it, but really that just shows that the items equipped have been used. They'd like to have ship-like damage on the characters, but it's a problem with the UV2 channel which needs to be used for other things on characters, so it's just about a data-set not existing for it.