I was wondering, in your guys' opinions which is better the former or latter?
A few questions too, with map entities are objects placed in the map entity after the fact, affected by the light built with the map entity? and entities built with the map entity, do the still retain their orignal action? or are they now static. I realize the build time is faster, and the level runs fast using map entities, but at what expense. Also, are map entities affect like level geometry as far as light goes that is added after the fact?

From what I recall when using blocks and map entities (ages ago), map entities needed the light to be baked (lights in the build process) and are not effected by level lights but are from dynamic lights.
The advantages as far as I could see, were rather enormous in that you could shadow map and colour map your entities to fit the mood of the brush build and that actions could be assigned to them.
The disadvantage was that they had to be rebuilt if you changed lightin or color.

Great for buildings though.

Your real expense is the one you cannot afford to ignore, time.

If I was using brushes again then map entities would be my choice for as much as possible.

Do entities placed inside of map entities act of there own or are you static once you import the map entity?

As far as I know, any entity without a script is a static entity.
If you have an entity with animations or scripted behavior then you have a dynamic dont you? I dont know really.
But if I have your question right then it doesnt matter if you use scripted or non scripted entities but again, its been ages since I used blocks.
The only time an entity can act of its own is when you have an animation series for the entity or it is reacting to some outside (another entity) force.
When you apply a scripted action it can no longer be said to be acting on its own.

Am I anywhere close to what you are actually asking?

sort of, I mean that, if you build a map entity with another entity, lets say your game's enemy in it, and then import the map entity built with the enemy in it. Will the enemy act on his own, or is he now just a part of the map entity?

Something is screwy with this thread, this is my third attempt to reply.

From memory, this was supposed to have been implemented but I didnt get around to trying it.
Only suggestion I can offer is for you to just try it.
If it works, your in, if not, well its back to the drawing board

Sorry if Im not much use here,
Cheers...

There is no one best sollution.

This can be simply shown by two extreme examples:

#1:
classic Egoshooterlevel:
-only Indoor, small rooms/passages.
Big Level, High need for Static lights, Small need for Model-Elemnts in Architecture.

then one Single "Block" Level, with visibility calculations is the best.


#2:
Spaceshooter- level:

-very large Level with a whole galaxy without level-loading pauses.
-no need for spatic lights
all Models.
Selfmade LOD System.
Low need on Collisiondetection.
Lots of shaders on many Object.

then a level using Models and possibly dynamic Map Entities is the best.
visiblity calculations make no sense then.

Map-entities take a lot of memory and are not really
flexible to use.

I thought that map entities saved loading time? both in building and in real time rendering? I thought map entities where only at the expense of light calculations?

map entities...
out of date...
best used when visible but not walkable, for different reasons like visibility and framerate...