detailed map, vechile models and poly counts

#1 I would also like to have some idea of recommended poly counts for players, buildings etc.

Aiming for a current mid-high end machine as a minimum system spec and wanting to balance high poly count and high character count.

What are peoples general feelings, and how important is it given dynamic LOD reduction?

#2 I have kept all my models at the averidge poly count of 1000 so i think it should be fine but i will go hirer if it don't affect things to much

#3 found out its 1000-1700 polys for tribes 2 player models

#4 I thought the players were 1000-1700, but I loaded one up the other day and it topped out a little over 2000.

#5 If I'm not mistaken (and I quite possibly could be, I'm really spaced-out tonight) vehicle weapons can be seperate models. I think that's how the turret on the BeoWulf tank in Tribes2 works. Which vehicle weapon model is used would then be defined in code (i.e. Script programming).

#6 yea i will keep the player models and vechile models around 1000-1500 cos i need most people in a detailed environment as possible without lowering the fps to much.
Like the Ohmaha beach landing in sp and multiplayer i will have say, 10 in each ship and the lod should take care of the rest, i am just worryed about the others in the same boat.

#7 If your wondering about frame rates.. I Have played Tribes 2 a "few" time with 64 players at the same time and yes it does slow down a little when the action gets hot with around 30+ players shooting at each other on the screen at once. But my fps never goes below 20 at a res of 800x600 16bit colour. Normally I get around 80 fps on average. (1ghz AMD, 256mb Ram, gf2mx vid card)

I dont think you will have a problem if you keep the poly's under 2000.

#8 :)
i put like 50-60 into my transport ship (http://www.wn.com.au/dannyw/transport5.jpg and http://www.wn.com.au/dannyw/transport5.jpg)
its like 70,000 polys hehe so i maybe even put 15-20 in each ship

#9 Nice landing craft models btw.

I think you might have to limit the amount of people per ship or maybe not... Are you planning on having a player drive the landing craft? (that would be very cool) If you do plan on having the landing craft driven then you could do something like: When the player(s) spawn they start back at a ship (or similar) and they then pile into a lc and someone drives it to the beach for the attack. :) This would keep it down to as many people as the driver is willing to wait for.

#10 When the player is viewing a model with a 2000 poly count, it's likely that only about 1000 of those are drawn due to backface culling. However, I would suppose that each vertex of the is still transformed.

#11 the landing craft take of from the main ship were there is like 4 landing craft for a driver to drive to shore, turn aaround after unloading and fetch more.