MP games support 16 players, minus 2. Is it possible to increase this to 24 without much repercussions?
It seems that online games don't typically have more than 4 players online at once, yet many usually run out of slots, so it does not seem like adding more slots would harm playability.
I don't think there is room for enough player colors.
This limit is very deep in the code. Of course it could be relaxed (nothing is impossible). It would require a lot of work to go through the code. Plus it would increase memory consumption to some extent.
Out of interest, where in the code is it embedded?
A bit here and there, since it spans both graphics and player logic.
It would increase the size of almost anything by 4 bytes. But the main problem is that 14 companies running will not leave much of a map without contribution. At least on the older networkgames I checked, not more than 8 companies were actually doing something. With the password expiring and removing inactive companies in the 112.2 things might be better.
Also distributing messages to 16 clients sound dangerous to the timing of the server. THus if I would allow for 256 clients, and really 16 or more connect at the same time I highly doubt the server could hold a stable connection to all of them without increasing the lag.
We would also run out of player colors quickly ...