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Im fielding an I.G army made up mostly of plastic catachans, and Im looking for an easy way of distinguishing between my squads/platoons.

Im looking for all good/bad suggestions, so far the ideas I've got are:

1.tatoos (who would want their squad number on their arm?),
2.different colored berets (kinda weird from a military point of view)
3.making some kind of shoulder pad/guard that can show squad numbers.

Im leaning towards 3. but I need to get more good ideas/suggestions.
So bring it.

If you're fielding Catachans, I'd suggest tattoes. I believe this was mentioned as distinguishing vets and FNGs in the original Codex....somewhere. Keep it to a minimum however as, IMHO, Catachans are more a guerilla army. Normally guerillas and irregulars don't have obvious squad/command decorations as this would make them prime targets for enemy intelligence, snipers, and assassins.

I agree that from a realism perspecive ANY squad markings would be out of place. You'd probably only see company, battallion, or division markings anyways. At least, not any other markings that you could see from an arm's length away. Most IG armies on the table are no bigger than a company, so they probably wouldn't have any distinguishing markings anyways exept for that crazy fluff piece about every single squad having a 3 digit number assigned to it!

Now from a gaming perspective squad markings are a great tool for keeping your squads and platoons straight. I use markings on the shoulder pad of my cadian minis and that works great, so if you don't mind some extra work, I'd go with 3. I usually just split the shoulder pad in half. I leave one half the normal green color and paint the other half with the squad color. Each platoon has their marking angled differently than the other platoons. For example:

Black squad, first platoon has a shoulder pad with the top half painted the normal green (like the rest of their armor) and the bottom half of the pad painted black. Black squad, second platoon has a shoulder pad painted with the top left corner painted green and the bottom right corner painted black. Black squad, 3rd platoon has their pads painted green on the left and black on the right half.

You could use this method on lasguns, shirts, greaves, or whatever. Or, you could just go with the old standby and paint the bases different colors.

i used the cadia decals on my preatorians, but i put the squad numbers on the base instead of looking for a place on their jackets. check it out, i think it turned out rather well. seen here