I was playing around with an exporter earlier and captured the options it passes to OgreXmlConverter.
The meshes the created with the exporter were always smaller than when I just dragged the mesh to the exe.

"-e -t -td tangent -ts 4 P:\Blender\models\pinata\export\Llama.mesh.xml"

What they mean:
-e             = DON'T generate edge lists (for stencil shadows)
-t             = Generate tangents (for normal mapping)
-td [uvw|tangent]           = Tangent vertex semantic destination (default tangent)
-ts [3|4]      = Tangent size (3 or 4 components, 4 includes parity, default 3)


This resulted in my Fionna.mesh being reduced from 722KB with drag n drop to 298KB.


Being lazy and not wanting to type in those parameters every time I need to convert a mesh...

I made a batch file to do it for me 

Slap the batch file I've attached below into the same directory as your OgreCommandLineUtils, and then drag your XML files over the batch file instead of the exe.

I just loaded up my model in guts.  Looks fine to me. Animations are working.  No issues.


I tried it with a shortcut.  That works too.

Just set it like this with the quotes around the exe.
"C:\OgreCommandLineTools\OgreXMLConverter.exe" -e -t -td tangent -ts 4

That is a huge savings.

I was only using what the default was in the exporter. 

Unless we figure out how to get a normal map shader program working in torchlight the tangent options aren't needed.

Good find!

I'll update my batch file.

Thanks so much @Vkoslak and @Lord Nyriox for these! They add a lot of value to the body-of-knowledge on modding in general!