Well: The ED F15 Strike Eagle have arround 2.800000 faces per fighter. The result is a very slow working simulation and a lot of frame troubles. I love the details of that beauty but it still have to work with "normally" hardware.
So , thats my 2 cents, if you set a 500k limit for model, markings, damage model, numbers, lights and you bring the polycount down with LOD`s under 50k it should be working very fine.
However: The work will need some time and the hardware limits grow up year per year. When the model will be complete its will work I`m sure.
CU
TOM