I've read about the animation controllers and frames, but my biggest issue is the fact I can't rig worth a damn, as I assume the game uses a skeleton for animation purposes?
As for polycount, I guess I'll just go add detail and smooth it out a bit since I have around 3k tris left to play around with. I think I'll model, unwrap and skin the plane, then someone with proper experience and knowledge should be able to get it rigged, animated and into the game :) I'm already having trouble learning the HL2 compile tools courtesy of the mod team I work for: Hostile Intent, which by the way should be featured in this site's "tacsim" section. It's much more realistic than AA or First To Fight :D