i always use autofacet build, but use smooth in truespace. i made the spikey part in max and did the rest in truespace. i have really bad luck with smoothing, i recompiled the apis fot the milionth time and its still whack. i always thought that was my video card's doing.
another thing, will glowpoints get scaled as well? it also would be nice if i could pull a rand{} it the glowpoint chunk (in the normal size, and position fields). because i have a few ideas for impoving the effect. you can create

of glowbeams at the center with random normals, but unless they 'grow with the explosion, they are useless. is also put a few fire sprites in there as well to fill out the effect. the end result would be a starbeam laden blast and it would have a degree of randoness.