Do base your believe that Factorio is under-optimised on anything specific?
The Factorio devs regularly put out blog posts on the optimisations they have done, like [1][2][3] (and many others), and they have done so for a long time. This gives me the opposite impression.
I think specifically for multiplayer, you could handle non-visible chunks on the server and figure out a better way to update the client with what it needs, rather than requiring the client to handle the full simulation.
I know it’s a well optimized piece of software, but when you get into something like the space mod with multiple worlds, where chunks you might not deal with for a long time still tax you, you can see how there’s conceivably a lot that could be done.
So, yeah, wrong to say “under optimized”.
I’m also aware that they haven’t been optimizing for a massive multi-world server with tons of clients. I definitely don’t mean it as a dig or that they aren’t top class.
I know it’s a well optimized piece of software, but when you get into something like the space mod with multiple worlds, where chunks you might not deal with for a long time still tax you, you can see how there’s conceivably a lot that could be done.
So, yeah, wrong to say “under optimized”.
I’m also aware that they haven’t been optimizing for a massive multi-world server with tons of clients. I definitely don’t mean it as a dig or that they aren’t top class.