I just did a test. AA bulldogs (evolva models) are 143 polygons. I got 200 of them onscreen at one time and maintained 15 frames per second. (143 polys x 200 bulldogs =28600 polygons)
Now, that's 28600 polygons at 15 frames per second, but: a sizeable portion of the processing power was used for calculating LoS, and pathfinding (they were colliding with each other quite badly, jiggling all over the place. In this mod it will not be necessary to calculate so many lines-of-sight (which SJ has said is quite processor-intensive), and all the other individual functions that are performed on 200 different units, regardless of their graphical properties.
Oh, and for the record, without ANY in existence (ctrl-a, ctrl-d), my framerate skyrocketed to only 30 fps since I was playing at 1280x1024 with all options to maximum including 2048 res shadows and dynamic clouds. AND quite a lot of net traffic, as I was downloading a 200 mb game demo.
In practice, units will not be nearly as large as the one I posted pics of. I just multiplied its size to make it look exciting ^_^
Here's a pic of 20 Cahudhris onscreen at once. They're untextured, but still sexy. Framerate drops to 24 FPS from 30.
And here's 10 more, only not joined at the hip. 28 FPS.
