hardDesignConceptMidSeniorStaff
When would you choose deterministic lockstep over an authoritative server, and what does each model cost you?
Deterministic lockstep vs authoritative server is a trade-off between bandwidth and trust. Lockstep sends only inputs but waits on the slowest peer and risks desyncs; an authoritative server spends bandwidth on state updates but handles cheating, latency hiding and correction more cleanly.
5 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
Use deterministic lockstep when inputs are small and all clients can stay in sync; use an authoritative server when trust, cheating, late joins and latency compensation matter more.
Mention determinism where it changes the risk, the owner, or the next check. A useful determinism point should make the answer more testable, not merely longer.
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Likely follow-ups
- How would you keep a lockstep simulation deterministic across two machines with different CPU architectures?
- A late-joining spectator wants to watch a lockstep match already twelve minutes in. What do you send them?
- If one peer in an eight-player lockstep game has a 400ms link, what options do you have short of dropping them?
- How does an authoritative server decide which entities a given client is even allowed to know about?
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