And incidentally, about Clive's post, I guess my misunderstand is more that I disagree with your assessment, Derek. In the quote, Clive blames Animations, FLCS (or whatever pseudo-avionics they use), Models and something like "Entity Updates" for the problems. The most charitable way to interpret that is him saying it's not bad netcode, it's the fact that nothing in the game was ever budgeted for multiplayer.
So if you take him at his word, even if he is wrong, things are worse: it isn't something as simple as bad net transport. It's something as simple as those in power over this thing did not deem multiplayer important enough to give it a role in design decisions, and as a result, the game and engine explode in multiplayer situations, and it's not something that cleaning up the crappy netcode will fix.
Essentially.
CE itself was optimised around multiplayer FPS style games. That basis ensures there are going to be certain assumptions embedded into the core of the engine that are going to be next to impossible to get rid of. But that also limits what CIG can do to translate the game into an MMO environment.
Put another way, the netcode is working fine.
But - as Clive said - the engine is being asked to stuff it was never designed for. And as a result, everything is blocking everything else. Even if/when they get the netcode up to speed and viable for an MMO, because the core structure of the engine was designed for multiplayer, there are still going to be roadblocks and aspects which reduce performance and efficiency.
It could be possible to design a way around those limitations, but then the problem becomes a question of if CIG have the money and time to do so. Technically, one could posit that appropriate use of server meshing and data culling and smart design and the like could see the gameworld reduced to a huge number of 32 player server meshed zones so you could get instances with multi thousands of players, but a system like that introduces its own set of nightmares
The key point to drag away from all of this is that you can essentially do anything at all with any engine, given enough time and money to modify it, but that doesn't mean an engine is going to be suitable. CE likely would have worked for the Infinite Warfare style game Chris Roberts was pushing. But for an MMO? It lacked the netcode, the AI engine, the physics engine, the rendering engine, the server backend and integration, planet/city and instance generation, and more.
The engine COULD have been adapted, given time and money but it would be easier, cheaper and quicker to switch to an MMO engine or develop their own. That CIG then spent so much time, effort and money working on game assets and ships instead of developing the engine simply made the problems worse
