Progress update. Spotlights are 'volumetric' now. I'd prefer a fog volume aka Blender but that's going to involve some shader research. Astronaut (it's kind of a motif of this site) instanced, reduced polys greatly but improved visual quality. Next are poses
Top: bought in a 3D models store. Bottom: done manually. Moral of the story: buying assets is great for the first version, when you are going for optimal performance, you have to do these things yourself.