I'll try to find and ask ragingloli for the mesh or his progress.
However, it does look to me that the poly count is really high for something like a support ship...
nope. Medusa is 17k polygons, and a support ship isn't much smaller.
which is in all honesty, overkill. Saboo made a goddamn good job at texturing it, and a good chunk of polies do show, no doubt about it. But i still think that 17k polies is a smidge much for a fighter model.
(ignore the above if the whole mesh is 17k, with the turret, lods, debris and the whole shebang included in that count)
17k polies for the base mesh of a cruiser sized ship is a bit on the low end for that scale.
What's overkill won't be in a couple of years. Plus, Hades' new Medusa seems to be on par in terms of detail w/ this Hygiea. I suggest that if FSU has this model on hand, we should get it in-game.
R
Have you seen a ragingloli model? he does lovely work, but before you can even think about getting it in the engine, there is much, much optimisation and polygon reduction to do overall.