The "old" method of trying to get all players, static and mobile non-player entities into one persistent 64bit game space (coord system), which is then replicated across mutliple servers that are spun up and down dependant on player numbers, is in the trash can after nearly ten years of trying.
Wait. They actually never tried. It's still in design phase. Current game network code is still the original CE netcode from 2008 or so. Nothing has been done, ever, to improve upon that. Hence the severe limitations on player count, and the terrible slowdowns during events with too many entities (that add to the network load) in the same area, and the endless problems related to it.
- Will the 64bit game space per star system (assuming there's ever more than one) be retained?
No reason to change that as it's unrelated.
- If retained, how will the 64 bit game space be split up into zones that shards/compute units can serve, given that some might need to be larger than others e.g. you would probably want your smallest zone to be able to contain a whole planet?
Seems like this is, kind of, what they are planning to do. The area split seems variable though and may contain the planet and its moons for example.
- Will it be using an octree system with octants (cube sub-zones of the largest global game space cube)? (I'm going to assume so for now unless something else is in mind?)
You're thinking of what Dual Universe is doing there. Didnt hear anyone at CiG mention how they would split space. Rough diagrams point at a kind of Sphere Of Influence around the actor.
- Will a "compute unit" be needed for each octant (lowest cube unit in the octree) and be running and ready to accept players (or replication traffic from the central database) if they go there?
They'll be assign to a shard, with other people in the same area unit. Or that's what they let through, so far.
- How will players travelling the larger game space traverse the octants - will they be tracked crossing the octants when quantum jumping/driving, or will they use a loading screen between octants and not bother with the empty spaces in between?
If they go with the "sphere of influence thing" they'll carry their instance around with them, i suppose. Things may enter or exit that instance depending on server load, distance... Note, this raises further questions on what actors may perform that's persistent (like setting up a planet side base to give an example, or kill an NPC..) and said persistent event drops off the SoI, or get into someone else's SoI, or is just in one shard but not in another one, thus gaining some kind of Shrödinger existence...
- If the shards/compute units are going to be dynamically spun up/shut down, how long will that take if they are "from scratch" or replicated from a "template" and populated from the centralised server? (maybe CIG need to invest heavily in elevator music to entertain whilst this happens ).
From my knowledge this can be done rather quickly nowadays with automatic provisioning, and keeping a buffer of pre-spun instances that are ready to be assigned. With that trick, it's totally transparent for the client. Note that CiG never mentioned any of this so I guess they didnt think that through yet (or will they ?).
- How will the shard/compute unit demand be funded (especially if some are empty)?
That's the 10 year anniversary question. More P2W i suppose, selling virtual credits...
- Given the nearly decade long proliferation of ships and items a player can "own", how big does the centralised database need to be, what are its compute and network requirements and how will this be funded? (Idrisi sales perhaps?) (as cheap as the economies of scale of cloud are, the monthy bills can still mount up)
See above
- Was any indication given of how long it is going to take to re-write all the entity movement, ownership and transaction code? That sounds to me like they're about to throw (or have thrown) most of a whole franken cadaver away and are now trying rebuild it into a functioning being from a few retained toes.
Brace for another decade of development.
- So many more questions.....
Oh, oh, i have one. Let's say I do like in the CitCon demo and I kill everyone in that settlement they showed. Does that mean they are now dead for everyone ? They better put a few millions of these settlements around the "Verse". Or will the NPC just spawn back ? After how much time ? Will other players have to queue in order to do that "mission" ?