It's 8 ppl in the same instance on console and 32 for steam. Basically, we can all be in the same instance and play together. The party thing is for sharing assets I think. We can all edit bases as long as we are on friends list. They have a friend code we will need for cross play, that seems to be it. Chat will probably have to be be on Discord which is annoying for some unless you can can log into PS chat.