Surface count problems are not limitated to Blitz3D or minib3d.
For such things like particles,grass or other small things with heavy count,
it will be always a good choice to go single surface.
Its just an effect of how 3D APIs and Graphiccards works internally.
It is much faster to send 1 block of 65535 vertices than sending 20000 blocks of 3 vertices through
the Grpahics pipeline.
Too make it short: unfortunalty yes!
For such things like particles,grass or other small things with heavy count,
it will be always a good choice to go single surface.
Its just an effect of how 3D APIs and Graphiccards works internally.
It is much faster to send 1 block of 65535 vertices than sending 20000 blocks of 3 vertices through
the Grpahics pipeline.
Too make it short: unfortunalty yes!