Yeah definitely, we'll need to be able to scale down pretty low, and I think we can do that without a lot of trouble, turn down the draw distance and reduce the mesh resolution. And yeah as we scale up the server and get more people in we'll have to make some fundamental changes, which is why 'server scaled up' is currently a stretch goal. 'Improbable' has been courting us, and that might be a viable option.
One fun fact is that we have a mode to run the server in fast forward, so you can see the results of the simulation after 2 weeks in a few minutes time, so we want to keep the base simulation as performant as possible.