Are there people inside support commanders?

[FirstandLastBAC]

I have been wondering if there are people inside support commanders and came across this page

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/3p7x4p/supreme_commander_do_support_acus_have_people/

What is everyone's opinion on this?

[Antineutron]

Originally posted by T-Bone Biggins:

Seems like an inconsistency in the lore somewhere in there. All other units can be built on the spot, but those have to be warped in at a gate. They are built like a unit at the gate, so what is the gate doing? Why not just a factory for sACU's?

because it is a factory and also a gate, idk what the problem is with it being both, especially since gate part is only ever used in story and only by scripted events

basically gate *is* just a factory for SACUs, same like how ships can only be built by naval factories and not land factories/engineers, there is nothing special about naval factory, you even can start building a unit at a factory, pause the factory, and assist it with engineer where now the engineer will be the only thing building the unit because the factory isn't anymore and the unit will get completed and walk off factory just the same, you can do the same thing with gates by pausing them and letting only engineers build the SACU (it may take a while), are engineers suddenly able to warp things in themselves? they are still using mass and energy depending on their build power to build the SACU just like any other unit

I'm just saying mechanics wise SACUs are being built on spot, not warped in, because it builds the same way as any other unit with all the same mechanics, and really if we could just warp in SACUs, it wouldn't cost resources and more importantly time, and getting a gate would be same as seraphim's quantum arch in story where they just keep teleporting in a continuous swarm of units for free, because they don't have to build them, someone else does and sends them through, and even when SACUs do teleport in in story, they do so instantly appearing at the gate with no time or resource cost, and also cause the teleporting in effect instead of just walking off, so based on it I think they do indeed teleport in in the story but are only built on the spot otherwise

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by Antineutron:

Long post

You don't get it. We understand functionally the gate is just a type of factory in the game. That's not what is being asked at all. We are talking about lore-wise, is the gate being used because there is a human in each sACU? Otherwise if it's a robot unit then why not a sACU factory? We are talking about the LORE inconsistency here. Not that the developers just coded the gate as a fancy looking factory.

[Antineutron]

yes and I'm saying that the building can double as both a gate and as a factory, that's why there is no separate "SACU factory building", but since the developers never specified whether someone is inside every one of them or not themselves, there is no way to know

however I listed the reasons *in story itself* where there are confirmed SACU/ACU without a human inside, it means it is possible to have these units fully functional without a human inside lore wise, so the question is what is the point of sending in a human through the gate when they are just going to sit inside a unit that someone else is controlling with zero agency of their own, merely watching the screen with no control over the unit they are in, to me it suggests there is no one inside them when built, only someone being inside ones that get sent through during missions, coupled with there being a cost and build time for built ones versus no cost and instant teleportation for the ones that get sent in plot-wise, indicating they are two different uses of the gate building and not the same thing

but yes we will never agree on anything because nowhere in game it states whether or not someone is inside to prove either so all we can do is argue whose headcanon is better because we aren't who wrote the game and story

[FirstandLastBAC]

Yea I have been trying to contact some of the developers but they are hard to contact nowadays since the company is long gone.

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by Antineutron:

but yes we will never agree on anything because nowhere in game it states whether or not someone is inside to prove either so all we can do is argue whose headcanon is better because we aren't who wrote the game and story

There is no canon on sACU's beyond the story in the campaign. No explanation. I don't do headcanon. That's point I was getting at, we don't have many unknowns in this game IP besides the sACU pilot mystery. Even the aliens which were only hinted at in the original SupCom were revealed and added as a playable faction in FA. Kinda liked it better when they were mysterious.

[Red Spot]

IMO, support commanders are an after-thought.
Sub-commanders are in the campaign, so they got introduced as 'build-able' and the gate-building was simply repurposed for it :)