That's the SOCS that wasn't even a thing until the initial OCS implementation turned out not to be the jesus patch many fans were similarly hyping prior to its release, and CIG retconned it into separate client and server parts so that of course it was the server-side tech that would be the real deal, and anyone who claimed otherwise didn't understand game development and obviously wasn't following SC closely. Still, they had technically delivered the client-side part, and even though it made no noticeable difference to anything I expect that's one of the "tech milestones" on your list, just like all the other failed jesus patch contenders such as network bind culling and serialised variables.
And when SOCS doesn't magically unlock all of SC's potential? A new buzzword, and a new future patch to evangelise. Round and round it goes.
Now, I'm no Ci¬G fanboi by any stretch...but CSOCS made a huge difference to general play in the PU, I know this of course because I was around playing it before and since. It improved framerates by 10 fold across the board for everyone, regardless of what PC they were running it on. It wasn't new tech since it's been around in gaming like forever...but Ci¬G had issues belatedly selotaping it on to their Franken-engine.
SSOCS will simply enable Ci¬G to add more stuff to the PU without having to remove something to do it, it's not god tech by any means....but SC needs it. Once again, not new since practically every multiplayer game uses it to some extent server side...
The thing is, it should have been implemented at the beginning of production as a foundational requirement...probably would have been if Ci¬G had built their own engine or used a game engine sufficient for the demands of making SC as it's turning out to be, but as we all know, Chris Roberts had other priorities, like getting rich first.
He took criticism for Freelancer about it's crap graphics, took that criticism to heart...had no understanding of current game dev so he picked Cryengine because it would make his vision look pretty...and it was cheap. It didn't matter to him that it was possibly the worst game engine he could have picked...he thought in his ignorance he could just employ somebody to make it work. The technical details of implementing new tech to an engine not designed to support it totally escape him...if he wants it, he'll fire 20 programmers that tell him it can't be done until he eventually finds one that will tell him it can...whether it's feasible or cost efficient to attempt it or not.
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