Best practices for network optimization

[steady ocean]

So i noticed in my project which is still in the very beginning that if three or more people are connected i get jittering already.
I think it has to do with the fact that my Player entities are quite large already while also being dynamic ghosts.

Now, the player has several components which need frequent updating (eg position) and components which are rarely updated (eg equipped items).

In such cases would it make make sense to have the Equipment as seperate static ghost entity with the player having only a component holding that entity? Or is there a way to mark certain components as static?

I am also unsure how hundreds of opponents would work if they all need to synchronize atleast their position but of course also other data such as health. The maximum packet size being 1400 bytes eems very limiting if i understand correctly that is.

[lapis kettle]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.netcode@1.9/manual/optimization/optimize-ghosts.html

You'll need to run the Profiler to see what your bottleneck actually is. Jittering is usually caused by Prediction issues. You can test player counts with thin clients but you'll be hard pressed to get more than 100 players on a server without an MMO architecture.

[steady ocean]

To clarify, i have only 4-5 players but around 50-100 AI opponents. But these obviously need to be synced too.