Yes, I know.. they are not made with a highly detailed game model in mind.
I found a runabout hull there, and imported it in sketchup to learn from it, it had about 30.000 polys, just for the hull alone.. way too much.
Then I took the bodyplans of an almost similar one, and did it 'the oldfashioned way' by doing it from scratch just with sketchup, from the plans. It's not done yet, but hull wise about 90% finished.
Nearly similar hull (barrelback) and with my way, it now only has about 1.700 polys so far.. What a difference indeed!
With smoothing, it looks about as good too. Maybe a tadge less 'flowing' of course, but you'd never see that when textured, or ingame. And that leaves 23.000 polys for the rest of it, to keep to the low end of the poly limit.. more than enough, I reckon.
But let's get back on topic.. Or I'll have to reprimand myself..
Fred