Translucent Draw Order: Object coor or bounding box?

Hey, I started modeling some trees for TGE 1.5 with a lot of translucent textures for the branches and leaves. I only have one specific translucent branch texture, but it's used multiple times on the same tree, and so of course I've run in to some issues with their draw order. Assuming the draw order uses the distance from the texture/object from the camera, here are my questions:

1) On .dts objects, does the draw order use the object's bounding box or its mission coordinate (x,y,z)? It seems to use the bounding box... but maybe not.
2) If it is in fact the bounding box, which would explain why some of my branches (which are separate .dts objects from the tree trunk) get out of order at certain distances (ie a branch that is technically above the other gets drawn later than it should, thus appearing below), then is there a way to use the mission coordinate of the branch object instead of the bounding box for drawing?
3) And if so, could it be accomplished with scripting or would it require c++, or would it need both?

and if it is not the bounding box, then what are some ways or resources of dealing with this kind of draw order problem?

I don't know if I'm using the right jargon for this... Hope it's clear enough.

Heelp!