Yeah, what I am thinking is a dev oriented/originated control.
In the live stream, the devs talked about how the game WOULD lag due to the size of ships, number of blocks and objects, etc. So, if they have a basic minimum requirement for hardware in mind, then they can also establish what a maximum limit is on things like ship size, guns, shields, power grid, etc.
Right now, I build a big-assed ship. You come along and blow it up because your guns outrange mine. I build bigger guns with a much longer range, put them on a bigger ship (to accommodate the extra power the guns use plus the extra power all the engines will need) and I come back and blow up your ship before I get into range of your guns. Rinse and repeat, etc until the ships are so big that it either crashes the client, the server or both. There needs to be a mathematical cap that limits the effectiveness of increased numbers of shields/engines/guns/missiles/power so that (within reason) it doesn\'t matter how awesome your computer is, the vast majority of players will be on eqqual footing with \"real world\" resources, so it boils down more to creativity and gameplay rather than how insane a weapon you can make. Hinging it on CPU resources puts the emphasis on real world hardware, which takes gameplay out of the game and puts it in a person\'s wallet.