I didnt read Pyton before my last coment. I dont know how complex can be damage in meshes. Maybe with the added colision, is posible to shot a house and even make a sound for it (animate the shot against the wall or damage, would require more job i suppouse).
Same way for shot a car or a plane.
My idea was a simple way for a simple begining while the more complex system can be implemented and improved.
... well ... it depends on what one needs - still, you have to look back at the MAFIA I game as for the father of basic shape-destruction. I guess, for a military and aerial plane, its much more hardcore - DCS itself has aircrafts split corectly after shapes of internals, with some damage-textures and random meshes as debree flying around - not sure if that kind ewer gets to vehicles at all, as you cant use that approach for all posible penetrations (aircrafts are quite delicate, so damage by 30 mm cannon can still ripp off part of the plane, if not even the 12.7 mm caliber (like Kord machinegun on most soviet-design armor)). All small-arms are then just the slapped textures of gun-shot holes. But armor has a much more variety of destructive end-effect, thats why even ARMA has just the normal model and a destroyed model, witch switches after a big boom, no mather what __
EXAMPLE :
-- normally flames or HEAT munition - hull is actually there, but all flamable stuff burned and some hull-breaches due to massive oxidation and fire corrosion effect on metal parts of not much width.
-- cumulative warheads - basically munitios in the tank explode, lifting the turret away - but the main-frame doesnt have to be burned like this, but look from the exterior quite ok ...
-- Heawy mines or really powerfull munition (hell-cats etc.) - basically ripping the texch appart at the place it hits - and you cant simulate such destruction in a PC - no way, when the model isnt on maybe vertex base and with complete internals like that.
Yet, some parts are breachable or bendable with no problem, like anti-RPG barriers, or some really thin metal parts (normally track-cowers, if they arent armored) ... yet less stable tech, like BTRs are much more worse, as there even a 12.7 can shoot a hole trough and by intensive fire, you can make an circle with that part falling off no problem. such destruction is impossible to make (and its basically the heawy mine/munition thing, but on far less width-armor tech). ... I dont think anything new in this will be done in the next 20-30 years, till computing power and a lot of other stuff gets much much better in PC sphere ...
Also, all variations of damage of each separate part has to be a separate mesh in the model ... no-buddy would spend 2 years + on a single tech model just from the modeling part to cover such a variety of influences ... id like that, but, its a full-time job time-frame, so 3 decades for a home-modding effort ...