Creating a legged vehicle, need answers and tips.

I am currently working on a quadruped vehicle that I intend to market in the hopes of helping positive L$ flow. I have the main body down to about 12 Prim the minimum I can for the time being till I learn to make texture alpha maps or sculpties in order to further reduce prims and increase build detail. I plan to budget 4 prims for each leg, 1 for the "Hip", 1 for the "Upper Leg", 1 for the "Lower Leg" and 1 for the foot. This will bring me to 28 Prims total. As for locomotion I was planning to use an invisible skid/track system that very likely will take up the remaining prim, 1 skid/track on each side.

Now for my questions.

First and most importantly what is the absolute maximum prim count for a physical Vehicle?

Do occupants count towards this prim count? IE if it is 31 Prim does that mean 31 prims minus each occupant that can be seated? Just the driver then being 30 prims max?

Are there any animation aids I can get that will allow my project to be distributable? If not what tips or tutorials can be offered on animating the legs? This being purely for looks at the current time.

31 prims is the maximum physical prim limit, but this can be avoided, by using the interior as a physical engine, while attaching the outside. giving it atleast a maximum limit of 287+
And no occupants do not count.
Also the vehicle can, more or less slide over land using a flat square prim, then you can put attention to the legs, this is the difficult part. I do not know much about this, but I do know there are tools that animate prims for you.

I don't know much about the scripting side of vehicles, but I know the building side of it, which Blabla2 Eponym seems to have messed up in one way or another.

So for some corrections/clarifications: 32[after testing, I stand corrected, 31] is the max amount of 'prims' in a vehicle (or any object marked "physical" for that matter), but the pilot counts as a prim, so it's actually 31[er, 30... I really need some -strikeout- formatting here]. Passengers DO count as additional prims. Like Bb2 tried to say, you can get around this limit by scripting the vehicle to make (potentially hundreds of) prims into avatar attachments once somebody sits on the vehicle. Just keep in mind that avatar attachments are phantom (things pass through them rather than colliding).

Sorry Al, but 31 is the prim limit for a physical object - including the pilot and any passengers.

Eventually try sculpted prims to reduce their number.

Yes, in point of fact, they do.

They half-do. People can sit on a 31 prim physical object and it won't go non-physical as a result.

But if the vehicle looses physics, its all over.

I do intend to use sculpted prims and/or alpha textures in the future to increase the detail of the build. Perhaps if some one can direct me to good tutorials that assume one knows nothing about these I could start working on these till they are good enough to add to the build.

Right now it is looking like I may be able to sneak under the prim limit as where I had originally intended to use one "Hip" prim per leg, it looks more like my build should use 1 "Hip" prim per pair of legs, so yet another 2 prims reduced.