The robots will not attack the support ship unless I tell them to. Still, that doesn't mean it will always be available and it might not work at all in multiplayer.
Another benefit of having no shield/energy drops combined with invisible/wreck based powerups is a huge improvement in the framerate. In recent combat tests, 50% of all polys onscreen is spew.
He has this brain controller prototype from leading scientists. He just thinks it and it magically appears. Unfortunately they haven't made it work well for PLAYING the game