I've always noticed the slow down thing with an increase in individual objects. If I remember right, that ship has 300-some objects. Really, it doesn't make sense; I would think that polygon count should make the big difference, but it doesn't. What I would do is to set up the rest of the scene and save it. Then load only the ship, texture/proceduralize it, save it as a .vob, then open the scene and add it. Hide everything while you get your lighting straightened out, and then just render it all. Using Vue is like using the tax laws. You work around what you need to. Not good, but it can't be successfully fought. ;)