Far Signal's going to start out on one server box, so this one's about what happens when that box fills up, and the groundwork for spreading the universe over more than one box later on.

Far Signal simulates basically everything, every ship is made of real parts like generators, breakers, pumps and cables, each with its own heat and wear and power draw, and a server runs all of it for every machine in its region every second while sending each player whatever they can see, so this post is about how that stays cheap.

A round of loose ends before the first proper run with a friend.

This was the last piece of the core loop, going outside. You walk out through the airlock, step off the end and you're on the pack, which is a thruster pack with a limited tank that tops itself back up when you're aboard, plus magnetic boots that keep you stuck to the hull and a tether to stop you drifting off into the dark, assuming you remembered to clip it on.

Stations come out of the same generator as the ships and use the same pieces, so a hub, some modules and docking arms reaching out to the berths, and they can be anything from a lonely little outpost to a busy port.

The ship you walk around in is the simulation, so if you cut a cable the lights it was feeding go out, if you run a new one it gets drawn along the wall where you ran it, and if you pull a part out the slot's just empty, with the server deciding what actually happens and your view following along.

The first proper walk through a generated ship looked like this, which, to be fair, is clean and flat and a bit like a hospital.

So the big thing about Far Signal is that every ship is generated, nobody sits there modelling them by hand, you hand the generator a family, a maker and a size and it draws a hull, fills it with rooms you can actually walk around in, and wires in every part the simulation needs, drives, generators, life support, the docking collar, all of it.