Hey SoliceSeven, welcome to the forums :wave:
since the ai will now move into differnt parts of bulidings (by the way does anyone know how that works?)
The designated positions inside of buildings are in the p3d model of that building, there is a "paths" LOD, which you use to define the paths AI use to move through out the building... then you designate points on those paths as position numbers
Your ideas on the faux trenches sound possible to me.... though I haven't done too much experimenting with it yet. I do plan on making some rather unique bunkers at some time in the near future, and may very well come upon some of the same issues that you would when making trenches of this sort...... I believe there are other people out there who are working on some version of trench that may be able to give you some more concrete information
Also, you asked:
"while a lot of grass hedgegrow models would slow down the frame rate to a crawl would making very large models that contain blocks of train fetures speed up preformance"
I'm not sure you would see any difference in using lots of small, individual models representing the grass and bushes or making one model of the lot of it... because it still comes down to polygons, and the larger object would perhaps have even more polygons because of the extra faces needed to act as the "soil" connecting them all together in your example.....
regarding the small island idea, I have been working on an island for quite some time now that is alot smaller than any of the official ones, but absolutely packed with trees and bushes, and has one rather large city on it , I find it loads quicker, and never really lags , but mostly it will be alot easier to complete
:cheers:
Kaliyuga