Lightwave will choke if you push 40 million poly's in a mesh. Not to mention animating it will be almost impossible. That Rico tank you just did should not be even be close to that high of a number. My entire engine section as it sit's now is 623,000 but is nearly 85% complete.
You have to be realistic about this beast in some aspects. Cut corners where you can get away with it. The poly's you put in the opening of the Rico tank for instance were not there on the original model. You do not need them there and i would take them out and follow the original. In cg you would have to push in really really close for anyone to notice there is a difference between the original model and the cg version.
What i would suggest is make concessions on the base mesh and if you want to get really close on a certain area build it seperately for close up shot's. Otherwise even opengl will give you problems.
Other than a few nit picks good work!
