I love the way you and Gabriel do those vehicles Andrew, amazing stuff.
Generally I associate something with a hier as having a class to make it work, what I had in mind was just a static object, usually they are just a single mesh that is why I mentioned the polygon limit.
Just thinking aloud there about certain possibilities for your texture, a wreck for one, also maybe some of the cargo as a separate item to spread along the beach, things to keep in mind if I can find the time.
Gabriel, I believe you are correct about the ships, I mentioned that Gio would need to make the Junk in the same way he made some of his ships, that is beyond my expertise so for the moment we will have to use what I already posted.
My Lysander uses meshes that are on the very limit of 3000 and what I found is that if I went over that and loaded it in the QMB the screen had a fit.
So my own experience is it is still a issue but certainly using a hier gets around most problems.
Wishing you all the very best, Pete.