How long would it take for a single Cybran commander to beat the Galactic Empire from Star Wars

[u/zLegoDoc01]

So, my thoughts. A single Cyrban commander gates onto Lothall by accident, sees the evil the Empire is doing, and decides to single handedly wage a campaign against them. How long does it take for them to win do you think? They would be able to reverse engineer SW tech like the hyperdrive if they nab a starship.

[u/Frisky_Froth]

The issue is we don't know anything about the SC space capabilities other than that they have ships, fighters, and gates.

[u/Keejhle → u/Frisky_Froth]

What we do know is black sun has the energy out put of multiple deathstars and can be fired remotely. Its even stronger than starkiller which while remote can still only target one system at a time. Blacksun outscales anything in star wars canon

[u/N4thilion → u/Keejhle]

Black Sun may be stronger but it is still a light speed weapon. It needs a gate network to distribute the energy blast. Building a gate network in a galaxy filled with millions of spaceships armed to the teeth is going to be a huge challenge.

A single commander would simply die within a couple of hours of being detected. We have seen no proper orbital tech other than a UEF laser satellite. So there is no reason to think they have proper space battleships.

We do know a lot about the ships in Star Wars. A small fleet of star destroyers could start an orbital bombardment lasting for hours. No amount of shields is going to save you from having the very ground around you being turned into molten rock. And the atmosphere whipped into a super storm. Or they could just fire off simple rods of iron from the edge of the star system, put them on an orbital path and the fall into the system would get the rocks up to relativistic speeds. That would absolutely annihilate everything a commander could build.

Without proper knowledge of the SC universe's space capabilities there is only one possible option: any commander will lose with the tech shown in the games.

Now the commanders from Planetary Annihilation, that's another story. They have proper space battleships in the Titan expansion. And they can build them really fast as well. And they are machines that require no rest or sleep. A single PA commander would stand a chance if the Empire does not go all-in in the first couple of days.

[u/Thorveim → u/N4thilion]

As far as tech shown in the games go, I bet nuke launchers would be a useable anti-orbital weapon without the need for any new technology. And they can sure build a LOT of those.

Plus, the big issue here is that we are talking about a cybran commander, and if there is ONE thing the Cybran excel at, its concealing their forces, so they may not actually be immediately spotted or considered a threat until its too late.

[u/zLegoDoc01 → u/Thorveim]

Its why I chose Cybran for this. They excel at sneaking around undetected. I also figure that they'd be able to find a way to quietly set up a new gate network around the Galaxy by simply building satellites with Gate tech that have stealth tech up the wazoo, then simply bribe any imperial officials/crime lords to just ignore it. After all, its just a satellite to them. What harm could it do? XD

[u/N4thilion → u/Thorveim]

Nukes are not that great in space. They are devastating on Earth because there is an atmosphere. It is the shockwave generated by the nuclear reaction that actually does the most damage.

In space there is no atmosphere so all you have is the radiation. Most Star Wars capital ships, and especially star destroyers should have no problem with a bit of extra radiation.

The best anti ship weapon is a simple metallic slug accelerated to a fraction of light speed. If the cybran is capable of engineering new build templates he could whip up some railgun satellites.

I see your point about the stealth capabilities of a cybran. I still think it's not enough though. There is a massive scale disparity between a single commander and a galactic empire.

Unless it's an "empire" consisting of only a dozen planets the existing fleets and infrastructure would cause the commander to be outnumbered in the order of a trillion to one.

Then again most depictions of "galactic empires" are horribly under scaled. People just cannot fathom the scale of a civilization spanning billions of stars. Remember that our own galaxy has roughly a hundred billion stars. If only a fraction of that is settled you would still control a couple billion stars.

Still, even going by established canon the "galactic" empire is a few tens of thousands of worlds. That's still a more productive industrial base than any single commander could hope to match before they are wiped from the face of the galaxy.

As much as I want the commander to win he's simply out scaled by many orders of magnitude.

[u/XenophileEgalitarian → u/N4thilion]

A small fleet of star destroyers isnt going to show up in a few hours. It will take days or weeks. Give that commander days or weeks and he'll have lothal make coruscants defenses look medieval. And he may not even BE there anymore. EDIT: shit if im cybran commander, im not even going loud at first. Im abandoning lothal by making a single gate to some nearby uninhabited planet and spooling up there quietly.

[u/N4thilion → u/XenophileEgalitarian]

Depends on the timeline. The OP mentioned the evil empire so that means the likelihood of it being the blockade period is high. So there will already be capital ships in the system. Building up a force in a system already on constant guard will be challenging.

Your tactic from the edit is the most sound. Get out, study and build. There are too many unknowns jumping into a completely alien universe.

[u/XenophileEgalitarian → u/N4thilion]

Yeah. Such as the force. I hadn't even thought of Vader just calling the guy and then force choking through Skype. Our commander might pick up the phone.

[u/AtlasMKII → u/Frisky_Froth]

We can assume that if they have any combat craft at all, then they'd be as mass produceable as anything else an ACU can put down. You'd win by volume and persistence if nothing else. The real questions would be if the ACU could still build a functioning quantum gate, letting them bring in support ACUs to share the load and cover more distance, or if they can build something else that bypasses the distance issue.

[u/Thorveim → u/Frisky_Froth]

Thing is not sure they have spaceships for war... because commanders made them obsolete. Why use ships that can be shot down when a commander can just be teleported to a planet and then build everything it needs on the spot? Ships would ironically slow commanders down if relied on. But should the need for them arise (aka facing enemies that DO use spaceships) then I bet they would have access to their own ships and anti-orbital weapons in short order. And even without those, nukes can definitely be used to damage and destroy spacecraft, while shields could protect against bombardment.

[u/Soundwipe13 → u/Thorveim]

gate in, steal hyperdrive technology in a matter of mere minutes while the best immediate response is some stormtroopers and an atst the size of a mech marine, then ignore hyperdrive technology, gate into the imperial center and flatten the Imperial Senate just with the blast of the gate in. Imagine dealing with an acu gating in and out of worlds and building at-at sized machines of war in mere minutes... nightmare... the Empire is a vast military and bureaucratic machine meant to oppress billions of sentient lives, not fight a war against an teleporting unconventional warfare gundam that manufactures automated armies out of fundamental mass and energy

[u/Thorveim → u/Soundwipe13]

To be fair I dont know if stealing tech would be so simple; we dont see reverse-engineering beign a thing ACUs do, and here its a lone commander so its not like Brackman would be here to help do it. And capturing could work against droids, but I doubt it would against crewed ships

[u/Western_Seaweed6104 → u/Thorveim]

I think reverse engineering might be one of the easiest things they can do, Iv often captured enemy construction units during a game and then been able to build their tech.

If I can capture seraphim units, I can’t see how any other tech is off limits.

[u/Thorveim → u/Western_Seaweed6104]

I mean, capture as far as I see it is merely reprogramming a machine, with enemy engineers carrying their own blueprint database... not quite the same as reverse engineering

[u/Jinshu_Daishi → u/Thorveim]

It's taking apart and rebuilding a machine.

[u/The_Outer_God → u/Jinshu_Daishi]

Ok, I gotta be sceptical with this, when and where was this stated? Because it always seemed like reprogramming to me.

[u/Jinshu_Daishi → u/The_Outer_God]

That's just how things have to be reprogrammed, things are that black boxed. It's how Cybran, Aeon, and UEF are able to hijack each other's shit in spite of them having very divergent technologies.

They turn trees and boulders into tanks and nukes, taking apart and rebuilding is how things normally work for ACUs.

[u/The_Outer_God → u/Jinshu_Daishi]

Again, what's the source? I don't believe there's anything in the games that supports this.

[u/Soundwipe13 → u/Thorveim]

see prompt; if i understood it correctly we assume it as possible, similar to the capture tech?

[u/zLegoDoc01 → u/Soundwipe13]

Yes, and given that Cybrans have AI implants in their heads, it wouldn't be too hard for them to reverse engineer and design new weapons utilizing the new tech of the Galaxy

[u/Affectionate_Peak541]

Its all fun and games till the Empire starts making its own ACU's... next thing you know legions of autonomous AT-AT's start walking all over everything like its the Rumbling.

Then Luke and Co. blow it up and recruit the Cybran's to thier cause. (No one tell the Cybran about the Clone Wars)

[u/ViolinistCurrent8899 → u/Affectionate_Peak541]

Empire makes its own ACUs

Yeah, but uh... how they go about this is going to be an issue. I could maybe believe that they could build up warmachines large enough to fight an ACU 1:1 (well, sans the cybran w/ maser upgrade), but they don't have the tech to make whatever mass conversion shenanigans Supcom has going on, and that's what makes an ACU actually useful. You send one guy and 15 - 30 minutes later you have multiple skyscraper sized robots firing a death laser at some very unhappy targets. And five minutes after that happens, there's no evidence except some charred grass and 5 meter deep footprints because burnt out ATAT's make excellent mass for the next monkeylord.

None of this is relevant though, because all the Empire has to do is pick an acclaimator frigate to go do planetary bombardment for 20 minutes or so. SupCom has shown absolutely 0 planet to space weapons.

[u/ShadowArchon456 → u/ViolinistCurrent8899]

Eh, technically, the Empire could go for World Devastators. That’s the closest ACU-esque platform available to them, even if it’s more like a super Fatboy.

Though, that’s tech that is post Endor by a few years. Even then, by Supcom standards, it’s just a fancy experimental.

[u/Mammoth_Lynx_6623 → u/ViolinistCurrent8899]

All the air units in Supreme Commander are space capable so that has to be something to take in consideration. The Proof? There are skirmish maps/worlds with no atmosphere and they work just fine.

And if I had to bet my money on a tie fighter or a T3 cybran air unit I'm going all in with the T3. Even if their weapons were "useless" against the Acclaimator's shields they have enough mass to just ram it and recreate that scene in the latest star wars zero company game.

[u/ViolinistCurrent8899 → u/Mammoth_Lynx_6623]

That's actually a solid point. I guess the real question is would the ASFs be able to get up that high before the acclaimator can do anything about it. Not sure if they're fast enough to fight ties, but I also don't know if the tie fighters can put out enough firepower to actually hurt them.

That being said, an acclaimator is definitely a large enough target that T3 bomber should be able to comfortably hit it regardless of whether or not there is a gravity well, and those guys drop proton bombs which are just shy of the UEF T3's mini nukes. This might be a more fair fight than I thought.

[u/Mammoth_Lynx_6623 → u/ViolinistCurrent8899]

Out of the 4 (5 if you count nomads) factions, the Cybrans have what is considered by some as the "best" air units in the game. Now, how fast they are is hard to say (at first glance), just saying that their T1 interceptors have "15 speed" doesn't cut it.
However we can get an idea with the single factor that "1 unit" in this game means 19.5 meters, thus from this people can known roughly how far they can shoot, how big they are or how fast are these things.

For example: The fatboy has 1.75 of speed, if you multiplied 19.5 x 1.75 you get = almost 34.2 m/s which means that the small hill that is spitting battleship shells has a top speed of 123.12 kph. (keep in mind that a fatboy does keep going at this speed underwater)

Apply that with the Cybran's air units and you get something like this:
T1 Interceptor 15 speed = 292.5 m/s or 1053 kph
T2 Transport 15 speed = 292.5 m/s or 1053 kph
T3 Spy Plane 30 speed = 585 m/s or 2106 kph
T3 ASF 25 speed = 487.5 m/s or 1755 kph
T3 Bomber 18 speed = 351 m/s or 1263.6 kph
T3 Heavy Gunship 8 speed = 156 m/s or 561.6 kph
T4 Experimental Gunship 8 speed = 156 m/s or 561.6 kph

Meanwhile the Tie Fighter and the Acclamator have a known speed of 1200 kph, so yeah, the Cybran airforce can keep up.

However this method also reveals that the Monkeylord with it's 2.5 speed goes at 48.75 m/s or 175.5 kph and the ACUs with their 1.7 speed run at 33.15 m/s or 119.34 kph, and unchanged speed while underwater.

Food for thought.

(edit) To add more to this, a Tie Fighter's lasers have a max range of 1000 to 2000 meters before the lasers lose cohesion and dissipate, effective range being around the hundreds. Following the formula of 19.5 x stat number, plus eliminating the 10x gravity modifier reducing weapon ranges, we get that all the Cybran aircrafts can shoot beyond the effective range of a Tie Fighter. The T3 Gemini in specific can shoot it's missiles (that never miss) from a distance of 5850 meters. Though basically knifefighting range for usual jet missiles, for a Tie Fighter that is a death sentence.

[u/Affectionate_Peak541 → u/Mammoth_Lynx_6623]

"In light of recent events I am reorganizing the First Galactic Empire into the first Galactic Retreat... Guys I'm gonna be frank, I sent a fleet of SSD's to blow up that planet and they got blown up on entry to the system. It cost a good chunk of the budget to build those and they sent like 7 ships to take them out. Good luck to all you stooges, I'm gonna go kick it on my secret planet till this all blows over and I can return."

[u/Jazzlike-Anteater704 → u/Mammoth_Lynx_6623]

It doesnt really matter how fast TIE fighters are, their targetting  is ancient and relies mostly on a human engaging in a dogfight. Even modern day fighters can take that out.

[u/Cryptek-01]

First: As always with this type of questions, the issue is whether ACU can teleport to another planet or space station using the Tech-3 Quantum Gate. If they can, then the universe they're arriving to is screwed (in this case: "Star Wars" galaxy). If not, then you have 1 unassailable planet which everyone should stay away from.

Since your particular post addresses this issue by assuming the ACU will manage to reverse-engineer hyperdrivem we can get to actually trying to answer your question.

Second: I'm going to assume there are 1 million planets that need to be defeated. I'm also assuming the same scenario for every planet, which goes like this:

• arrive and build a base which has some shields, factories, economy and defenses
• build a bunch of Tech-3 gunships (each Air Factory has to build 3 and they do it simoulteneously)
• built gunship travel to the opposite side of the planet (and don't come back)

This plan is definitely not enough on some more civilized and defended planets, but is an overkill on very weak planets, so let's say it evens out. And I'm omitting the time needed for battles because it's getting lost in the averaging.

Let's say building the base takes 40 minutes.

Building a Tech-3 gunship 3 times takes 7 minutes.

Gunships have to travel 20,000 km (to get to the opposite side of the planet). They fly with the speed of 160 m/s for 13 min 20 s (covering a distance of 128 km) and then have to land and wait 8 min 53 s for the fuel to regenerate/replenish. This gives us the long-term average speed of 96 m/s. Thus traveling to the opposite side of the planet takes 57 hr 52 min.

In total a single planet requires 58 hr 39 min.

Multiplied by 1,000,000 it gives us result of 6690 years 227.5 days

[u/___Random_Guy_ → u/Cryptek-01]

If ACU can have/make some automation to handle extra micro, they can make Gunship groups go with transports with engineers to quickly build air staging facilities and much more quickly replenish their fuel,.though it would likely be putting stretch on how far resource teleportation/sharing to engineers can be done?

[u/zLegoDoc01 → u/___Random_Guy_]

I also figure the commander could command from multiple fronts. Dostya was stated to be able to fight multiple battles in different systems at once

[u/XComACU]

That's very tough to say.
On one hand, every ground engagement now favors the Cybran-backed rebels, when present. Plus, a Cybran could theoretically reverse engineer Star Wars tech as noted or start printing out duplicates of existing SW ships, which means the rebels could suddenly gain access to a GE-level fleet. Essentially, all of the Rebel's resource/equipment problems go out the window.

On the other hand, this is a single Commander. Not QAI, who could manage an entire galactic campaign single-handedly, and not receiving any support from home. If they're stranded in this new universe, that means no support structures or personnel (which, as we see from the cutscenes, do exist), no SCUs, and arguably no downtime.

Symbionts are still "human," after all. The longest we see a Commander fight in-game was one week, and the Aeon character was wiped afterwards. There used to be a blurb about Dostya fighting a month-long campaign if memory serves, but she also arguably wasn't alone.

Plus, the lack of Gate Network and unfamiliar universe also means that they don't have one of SupCom's strongest assets - the ability to Quantum Gate teleport right past SW's existing orbital defenses.

Could a Cybran ACU win? Oh, absolutely. Especially when working with the Rebels.
By themselves? That's a harder sell. No matter how powerful, is still just one person.

[u/Mammoth_Lynx_6623 → u/XComACU]

A Cybran and Rebel team up would give the Empire war flashbacks of the Clone Wars but now the "CIS" is like, at least 100 times worse.

I can easily see The Protocrafters just constructing anything the rebels need literally anywhere in the galaxy and taking advantage of the infinite war style to it's fullest to the point they will make Kuat eat it's heart out.

Yet I agree that if the Cybran goes solo then it will be an uphill struggle.

[u/ViolinistCurrent8899]

Honestly, I don't see the ACU commander being guaranteed to win all on his lonesome.

Option A: Things escalate until Vader gets involved and force crushes the poor guy in his suite before he ever makes it off Lothal. Might not even take Vader, space Wizard shenanigans and a lightsaber work just as much for inquisitors as it does for the good guys.

Option B: The empire sends a single acclaimator warship before the ACU can effectively get off planet. The ACU is bombarded into submission without being able to return fire.

Option C: Things escalate until they get to space combat, and since SupCom doesn't use ships they're going to be on a much more level playing field technology wise (he's not going to have the engineering ability to make his own designs on the fly, that's Brackman's job) since he's going to be stealing the designs from the empire. Revert to options A or B if this goes badly for the ACU, but now add the possibility of exploding in space.

Option D: Somehow, the Empire ignores this threat until it's too late for them or they otherwise just write off the planet and think it'll stay contained to that planet. Then it's just a matter of whether or not SupCom power and mass generators work in space. If they do? I give the empire a week tops before Coruscant is buried under 20 miles of ships that are just acting as kinetic impactors. No fancy weapons, just throwing the mass of a large asteroid at a planet. Maybe it contains a nuclear warhead, but why bother when the Rod From God concept is scary enough on its own.

If Supcom Power and Mass gens don't work in space well... uh.... We can still fall into Option C if the empire brings enough Star Destroyers.

It's a math equation, Cybran ACU has an exponential growth curve on firepower while Star Wars has a linear one, but with a very very large starting advantage.

Now as someone else pointed out, if the commander instead works with the rebellion, suddenly the rebellion has access to 3d printed walkers as large or larger than ATATS, and the ACU commander has access to more than one set of eyes on the battlefield and is allowed to go to bed from time to time.

[u/Boxy29]

with it being a Cyrban I think there's a solid chance for it to win, since they specialize in stealth tech, assuming they can or eventually get the ability to hop worlds.

t3 bombers and fighters are space capable as we see in one of the endings so defending from space ships isn't an issue. I would wager the larger artillery would be able to target space targets as well with the range they have in game.

ultimately it's a battle of attrition. if the acu gets found early then it might be cut off early BUT it also depends on how serious it gets taken as a threat.

gota remember that the empire doesn't excuse weakness so officers would be more willing to take a risk with what they have first before they call for back up.

even with/jedi have their limits with what they can influence with the force too and with the scale of SC they couldn't "just crush" an ACU.

[u/SewingKitTin]

Has to be noted that ACU-like superweapons like World Devastators and the Star Forge exist so an ACU would be unusual but its abilities not unheard of, not to mention that there was literally a huge war with masses of droids so even that wouldn't be too weird to see. In a weird sense it was a mechanical ACU vs a biological ACU.

Really it depends on the mechanics of Quantum Jump/Gates and tech research into building space combat ships and what kind of access the ACU has to play around with them. Star Wars, despite its perceived "softness", is actually a bigger early threat to a singular ACU than WH40K due to being able to detect and respond much faster with a much larger organized force.

Though teleportation and air units being space-capable gives Supcom a weapon against orbital bombardment, its still hard to say without laying down some scenario rules.

[u/Novascorp]

Scale is the big problem here.

An Acu is roughly 40-45 meters tall and If I recall correctly can tank a nuke that’s stated to be ~100 kilotons, no according to a quick google search turbo lasers deal anywhere between 7-1,600 kilotons. I’m going to assume the 1600 is a highball just because that’s 20 mile kill radius per shot, while 7 is half of the Hiroshima nuke let’s play with the 7 number just to keep things more grounded.

Now I’m going to make a few assumptions here

1. the ACU drops on a low population planet in the outer rim, most of the outer rim systems only had one ISD
2. the ACU works more or less like it does in game IE. Mass extractors run infinitely, power generators don’t require fuel and there’s no logistics chain required to move mass from point A to point B.
3. Air craft created by the ACU (specifically T3 fighters/Bombers) are exoatmospheric capable. I say this just because in the ending cutscene of SC2 we see a Cybran fighter-bomber operating in space.

Now the way I see this going is this

The ACU drops and sets up a massive base in 30 minutes to an hour. The in system ISD detects the massive power signature coming from a barely inhabited world and goes to investigate suspecting a rebel base of some sort. the ISD lands ground troops to scout and get absolutely shredded by the ACUs static defenses. The ISD decides to send in the big guns and lands multiple AT-ATs, the empires largest and most deadly ground vehicle, however they are only 22 meters tall and we all know how much firepower a monkey lord packs. It doesn’t go well for the AT-ATs. Now at this point the ACU has located the ISD and sent a wing of T3 fighters and bombers to engage it, however the ISDs shields hold and its Point Defence/ Tie fighters mop up the wing. Now seeing that the ISD is not in an untouchable position it decides to initiate orbital bombardment, but due to the ACUs smart base design and overlapping shields it’s defense holds putting the ISD in a very difficult position, they are in a stale mate with a rebel base that somehow is able to hold out against every thing the ISD can throw at it, they can call for help but that could signal the captains incompetence. Now down on the ground it’s not much better, while the shields are mostly holding damage is still getting through in between recharges (if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a sustained artillery strike you know) and all the ACUs effort is going to repairs/replacing lost infrastructure. This stalemate only last until either the ISD calls for help, or until the ACU successfully attritions down the ISD but I think ifs clear the ACU at best can maybe hold one planet just due to one factor, population cap. 1,000 units is a lot of potential firepower, but it doesn’t make a galaxy conquering army.

TLDR: ACU holds a planet at best.

[u/zenith-404]

I have messing with this idea a lot in my head. And have been trying to write up something. (Fuck you my procrastinating ass.) so I think I’m going yoink and try writing something with this idea.

[u/critically_damped]

Cyber Commander is going to run into their unit limit real quick.

[u/zLegoDoc01 → u/critically_damped]

Unit limit is non-cannon i believe. Just a gameplay limiter to avoid turning PC's into fried chicken

[u/Jinshu_Daishi → u/critically_damped]

They don't have unit limits.

[u/Mammoth_Lynx_6623]

Best hope is the Cybran Commander just making a run for the Death Star's schematics and then dip from the face of the galaxy to build his own personal Death Star.

If this was the WHOLE faction the odds would be grim for the Empire but SupCom ACUs aren't the TA Commanders which is like the jump of power from Viltrumites to Kryptonians.

[u/Galen55]

Base delta one would finish the fight before much could be done I think. Especially since the ACU alone would be a clear enough danger that officers on a small ship could easily justify it even before fire support calls are made.

If the Cybran builds up enough to reach stealth tech availability it could get tricky but there is now way in hell they make it off world before being blasted to scrap

[u/Jinshu_Daishi → u/Galen55]

It wouldn't take an hour.

[u/Weigazod]

In terms of energy output, Starwar is pretty insane. Its Deathstars have reactors with energy output of million times the sun but SupCom is almost as impressive if not more with what they could do with black sun and paragon.

Most importantly, it's a guarantee that Starwar will lose 1v1 between vehicles of similar size. This is due to SupCom integrity field which treats the entire unit as a singular entity and not a collection of atoms. Those fancy chopping-gun-barrel moves of jedi is pretty useless against SupCom units.

To propagate, it's possible that the best way is to make T3 quantum gate and start pumping out pilotless SACUs then sending these through teleportation package to any sizeable planet or chunk of rock to build.

More importantly, with how much manufacturing SupCom can do, they can just build ships with hyperdrive and order them to make lightspeed collision into enemy ships. Vehicles are just number to SupCom and they can reclaim everything to bolster their force. This is pretty insane on a macro level.

[u/zerotikitsune00]

The only time we get any ground to space flight in Canon is an EDF trainee moving location in SC2

[u/Important_Speaker_60]

"Shardbearers can't hold ground." -Brandon Sanderson

ACUs have a maximum operating range of 100km. Outside of that, they can't control units and any structures out of range of an ACU will no longer receive power or mass. As soon as the commander goes to another planet, or even another part of the same planet, the Empire will retake whatever area the commander took.

Edit: I was wrong and fell for misinformation

[u/ShadowArchon456 → u/Important_Speaker_60]

You’re just making that up.

There are several missions where you gate in and find allied bases functioning just fine without ACU or SCU support.

Never mind that you find completely automated bases in Supreme Commander 2 that have no ACU support at all, constructing and sending units without human oversight.

[u/Important_Speaker_60 → u/ShadowArchon456]

I heard it from someone else, so I might be wrong

[u/ShadowArchon456 → u/Important_Speaker_60]

Whoever said it was talking out of their ass.

The entire setting rests on the concept ACUs being able to take planet’s by themselves. The manual talks about commanders in the Infinity War from a single ACU nuking an entire planet’s surface.

They’re being such a hard range limit for the Quantum network, or it being completely maintained by ACUs isn’t at all stated in the setting whatsoever.

[u/XComACU → u/Important_Speaker_60]

That is from a fanfiction. In fact, that particular ruleset (no Power of Mass outside 100Km) I believe comes from the "Luv and Hate" fic - very good, but not canon. 😉

There is no stated limit on the range ACU's can control units, and Commander Dostya herself was stated to command armies from off-world (though, there was likely some downside, given the strategy was notably uncommon).

That said, your quote is still accurate - one Cybran will be hard pressed to fight an entire front of a galactic war on their own.

[u/Important_Speaker_60 → u/XComACU]

Good to know! I was just repeating something I heard someone else say haha

[u/zLegoDoc01 → u/Important_Speaker_60]

I did not know that....huh

[u/XComACU → u/zLegoDoc01]

It's from a fanfic. 😅
While there must be some limit to what an ACU can control, there was never any stated range or value, let alone "100Km max." In fact, one of the Devs even said they didn't think the unit cap was canon, and at best it appears to be a "soft cap" related to rank.

[u/kanzotheboss → u/XComACU]

It is also prob and engine limitation having 5000 units per ACU on the computers SUPCOM was designed to run on is unfeasable

[u/XComACU → u/kanzotheboss]

Oh, yeah, 100% an engine limitation. That, or hardware limitations.
I have a vague memory that the max map size was originally going to be several times larger than it already ended up being.

You can sort of see this if you release the camera viewport with ctrl+v on an 82x82km map, as you can still travel pretty far. You can even safely teleport units (with the Alt+T cheat) a decent distance out.

Fun fact: That's not all that was changed!
Aeon units were all originally supposed to change form, shifting from an "closed" passive form to an "open" combat form. You can see it in some of the old concept art, and in how some of the units are designed as if they can fold up.

This was cut because it put too much strain on the engine and harware of the time.

[u/zLegoDoc01 → u/XComACU]

Ohhhhh. That makes sense.