That's one of the main flaws of p2p, it relies on each client connection. Also it doesnt scale with players in the same instance (the traffic increases exponentially). That's why i disagree strongly with this architecture, for a real time massive multiplayer game. It's quick and easy to implement, and fits the budget and small team of FDEV at the time, so it's a fair decision i guess from the management as they did release successfully. But "massive multiplayer" it's not (it's "asynchronous multi" if you want, your actions are indirectly seen by the other instances) but that's it. And i maintain my last minute addition, that presentation linked by MoleHD (which i had seen too) strongly reinforces that argument, they really did it to save time and budget: this means it's not the core of the game design (which is something you pitch to producers when you want a budget..) - it's peripheral, and honestly they are maybe right as it was thought mostly as a solo game (as power play was a complete afterthought too, lets be honest, i still believe they are talented, so that cannot come from them as a really thought out process). Core elements of the game design were clearly the Stellar Forge, VR (definitely thought out from the game concept), flight mechanics carried over more or less from the previous Elite iterations, the trading system (also carried over), and of course iconic stations with the mail slot.
Dual Universe by contrast is centered around its network code, it's a core element. It should be for SC too, since a lot of things were promised back then, and with that kind of pitch one would tend to start with a really strong and innovative multiplayer network engine, and then build around that (and of course bartender AI and fluid physics for your glass of wine would come much much later in an expansion maybe)... That shows the difference in management of priorities between these companies.
