Best method for piece transforms

[SpliFF]

I'm a big fan of doing things properly but I've run into a problem where the best solution isn't entirely clear.

The Assimp importer brings in a piece (node) hierarchy which specifies child piece positions relative to the parent. This can include piece scaling. I believe this is different to the 3D0/S3O implementation because those models are pre-scaled and rotated in UpSpring.

What's the best way to handle this data, particularly scale. I seem to have a number of options with various pros and cons.

Option A: Ignore transforms.
Pros: Simple and fast. Nothing needs to be done except preserving offsets.
Cons: Requires artists to pre-transform their models in UpSpring or other 3D package. This may mean telling the software to "bake" a nodes rotation and scale. Likely to be confusing. Won't work for existing models you can't directly edit (ie, you pulled it from a model collection but you don't have a compatible importer for your modelling software). Could complicate animation.

Option B: Transform on import.
Pros: Scaling is done once only. Collision volumes etc are correct.
Cons: Animations and bones would be out of alignment with node - making animation a more difficult task (you'd have to scale all the frames).

Option C: Transform in UnitScript/COB.
Pros: Scaling could be done through Lua/COB.
Cons: Framerate drop?

In a "normal" game you'd generally just set glRotate/glScale for almost no impact but pieces are synced data with game-altering consequences in Spring so that isn't possible.

It seems like C is the most natural option but also the most difficult and most likely to affect framerates. COB already handles rotation and position so it's only missing scale to be a complete solution. Still scaling would affect offsets which is going to have side-effects. Also C is complicated by the fact collision volumes and unit radius still need to be calculated during import.

So where do you think I should plug this in. References to the actual Spring source files would be beneficial in your responses. Naturally, if you don't have the Spring source don't answer the question please.