Polygon limits on objects

#1 As I understand it, this is very dependent on what system specs you're targeting and how well you put LOD (level of detail) to use. The TGE is a very versatile and robust engine. With LOD, the objects will render at various polycounts depending on their distance to the viewer/player. So, for example, up close you could have a 3k player model and a few meters away it could render at 1.5k and more than that it'd drop to a few hundred. I'm sure some of the 'engine gurus' in the community could expand on the technicalities better than myself.

There's Intel's Multires plugin for 3DSMAX to handle the LOD for you (about $100). Or for those of small budget, you can do it manually (hopefully someone can eventually tackle this for Milkshape as well).

*EDIT*

Here's the average for Tribes T2 models to give you an idea:

Characters - roughly 2200
Vehicles - roughly 1500
Weapons - roughly 600
Misc - roughly 400

#2 here's a test I did a few days ago. Specs are on the pic.

I know that each model has no texture or animations and that adds to lowering the framerate, but how often are there more than 10-12 people in an area at the same time? 64 player models, rear view and other stuff made up for this adequately methinks.

http://www.insite-design.net/~storm/pushingit.jpg

#3 This is great, I'm ensuring a level of detail goes into the game, but I'm aiming for specs in processor speed of that of the XBOX and perhaps a 32 MB video card for recommended.