The amount of poles being used is probably a direct reflection on the size of your tent, is it free standing and the type of set up you have in place, for example we set ours up on the weekend in nice conditions so only used the bare essentials but in our case the amount of poles is as follows..........
Main tent 2 upright poles on each fold out side of bed....we keep them on the bed so they are handy to slip into place when the tent folds out.
Awning can use only 8 poles but if you want the thing to stay up in bad conditions there are a heap of ways to make it so solid you could almost add a second story
A total of 14 poles used in this set up..........probably another 10 in the bag if you want that second story, no guy ropes used here.
Also I am not sure if the amount of poles used is a good example of design. Someone may say I only use 2 poles for my whole set up but I spend 1 hour pegging out guy ropes