This is essentially the way eve online does it (or did when I last played). The simulation is entirely server side, the client interpolates and every so often g

This is essentially the way eve online does it (or did when I last played). The simulation is entirely server side, the client interpolates and every so often gets the authoritative version from the server. You always knew you’d dropped when your ship would still be flying around shooting at things but wouldn’t take any input. They had another interesting wrinkle to make it handle huge populations. Having enough players in the same region would trigger “time dilation” and slow down the simulation. In a big fight (thousands of players), it could take 10 real minutes for one minute of game to pass. It made big battles a slog, but at least they were possible.