Millisecond-Scale UDP Packet Emission Analysis in Star Citizen

This paper presents an empirical, packet-level analysis of the real-time networking behaviour of Star Citizen under live gameplay conditions. Using client-side UDP captures with millisecond-resolution binning, the study focuses on packet rate, burst behaviour, and temporal aggregation rather than raw bandwidth utilization. Measurements reveal sustained server-to-client packet emission rates on the order of 10³ packets/s per client (≈1–1.5k packets/s in the observed captures), including frequent millisecond-scale microbursts, even under low player activity and nominal server tick rates (~30 Hz). The observed emission patterns appear decoupled from simulation tick cadence and are consistent with an event-driven or component-level replication model with limited global aggregation. These findings raise concerns regarding scalability, jitter sensitivity, and CPU-side networking overhead in large-scale multiplayer scenarios.