This is subjective to a number of things and depends where the model is being used and how many other polygons will exist in an area. Here is some rough guides, but there is some leniance with it:

Small ships (fighters and transports): ~2000-3000 polygons (depending on how big your NPC patrols are).

Big Ships (large transports): ~3000-4000 polygons (subject to same conditions)

Really big ships (i.e. Battleships): ~5000-6000 polygons (if there are large numbers of capital ship encounters, reduce this count)

Space Stations (for a single model, excluding module extensions): ~12'000 (this is approximately the largest model in Freelancer size).

THN Planetary Scenes and Dock Scenes: ~15'000-20'000 (because of their nature in the code, I have found their counts can go a little higher than the rest of the models in game... however, remember to take into account all other models in the area as well).

The exact maximum polygon count is debatable, but large_old_station is set to around 12'000 polygons (the biggest Solar Object I've found so far in regards to polygon count), so this is a good judge to go by for what Freelancer can handle and still remain within the manufacturers system recommendations. The counts can be pushed a bit a higher, but the higher you go, the better spec machine people will need to run a mod with those models, which is not an ideal stance for a mod to be slapping new minimum systems specifications on the side of their mod.

Freeworlds Mod Developer
Author of Modular Station

'There is no Good nor Evil in the universe, just perceptions and circumstances.'

Your estimates are on the conservative side actually.

You could easily add an extra 2000-3000 polys for each category without a problem. The capships in FL are well in excess of 10,000 polys and I've seen small ships released here at TLR over that number as well.

I've seen fleets of capships meet in-game and the slowdown only really kicked in when the pyrotechnics began.

The ship's polys only really matter when the NPC's fly them and only then if they'll be onscreen in large numbers. If your making a ship strictly for players then you have a lot of room to play with.

That said I've never seen a small ship with more than 4000-5000 polys that wasn't overrun with useless polys.

Like I said, it is open to debate to exact figures. I always stick with a conservative value though and aim for that. That way, if you go a bit over, you should be still ok.

Hi. Do these figures represent a single type of hardware used to play FL or is it Universal? I run a P4, 512mb ram, default graphics card, does that also make a difference in polys?

[IMGhttp://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1638/logo19mv.th.jpg[/IMG

Hmmm,

I sense either lazyness or spam.. take a look a couple of threads down.. exact same subject.. similar responses, some right some wrong.. there has been a host of threads on this subject.. time to start locking some..

"click"

Harrier

Moderator.