In multiplayer games where large quantities of units are produced, certain issues related to performance and pathfinding become increasingly prevalent. These sorts of issues are of course compounded in multiplayer when some players have lower end hardware, resulting in significant (sometimes crippling) sim speed drops.

Are there any ways these issues could be alleviated to some degree, perhaps via a mod or game start option? I'd expect some sort of gameplay tradeoff to result but it seems it may be worthwhile regardless.
I've pondered on this occasionally over the years, and some of the silly ideas I've thought about are below:

-Disabling of collision between friendly units, so they can pass through each other

-Some sort of squadron system, where only a single unit is used to represent and interact as a whole group of units. Or alternately...

-Add 'elite' (or a better label) versions of factory produced units (for example, a t1 tank that costs 10x as much in time and resources, but has 10x as much hp and damage output) to organically reduce swarm sizes in longer games.

-Disable bullet physics/terrain checks, so that only the range check is required for direct attacks to hit.

-Add an upgrade system for all structures, so that economies and production can scale up to the same level with a significantly smaller number of buildings on the map.

I'm guessing doing any of this would either be too hard or break the game in some way, but I'd be interested to read any ideas you might have about this topic.

I did a quick search but was unable to find an appropriate thread, so please direct me there if it exists already and I missed it.