I sort of agree. I normally wouldn’t focus my reply on this area unless I thought I could provide a good example of some kind.
This asset reminded me of another asset that I hand re-modelled based on previously separate static meshes to optimize a gears of war 3 level. They originally had custom normal maps and materials made by a dedicated hi poly modeller but due to optimization reasons (huge hangar bay on ravens nest ship with tons of things going on) had to re-UV them to use the wall materials to save texture memory. Turned out to just be easier to remodel from primitive shapes than adjust the UVs of complex meshes.
The original poly count of the combined meshes was probably somewhere in the 10-20k ballpark too not unlike your mesh. At first the missiles actually had separately popped off plates and everything, and you might even think “wow, it’s too bad they had to remove that” if you saw the original asset, but I don’t have that asset to post a screenshot of anymore… Still I think it looks pretty decent considering it is using a wall texture.
Total polycount here is around 5100 for 4 missiles and 2 ‘bracket things’ that each has a nicely curved handlebar bit. I think the complexity is fairly close to your mesh:
Of course I have no idea how big or up close your object is going to be, but I would guess that with minimal clean line loops you could have your mesh looking pretty good anywhere in the 2-6k poly range. A screenshot from the editor wireframe would be more helpful, we can’t really see how many triangulated edges are on your mesh.