[Neurotoxin]

Ranges are key. If you render everything in a 1km radius, it doesn't matter where you are. Servers would essentially need a seam-stitching method to tie all the individual continents and the servers running them to the open waters without any hiccup in the action.

I feel like there could be additional limitations... expand the boundaries and add a few captureable ports, make boats the key for water transition. They could either extend the energy radius for the empire (think of Protoss nexus crystals) and maybe smaller aircraft only have 30 seconds of battery outside the massive energy radius of a broadcast ship.

The Galaxy is probably immune to these effects, and a Galaxy can even be fitted with a smaller energy radius module to help friendly aircraft get further from the ships. Land-friendly watercraft may or may not have the same energy limitations.

The energy broadcast areas would reflect areas that the server should focus on more. Where there is empty water with no nearby energy, the chances of seeing or having to render anything there is greatly reduced, so the server can essentially ignore those dead-zones aside from processing weather patterns in those areas.